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are changes within 60 days of 05/15/2002| DC Dining Commons, the dorm's feed lot. The food quality was about what one could expect from mass-produced food with a consumer cost of about $2.50. Dorm dwellers soon found that ranch dressing could go on pretty much anything, given half a chance. | |
| dead indians Half-drunken drinks that are invariably left in quantity at the end of a party. Invariably warm, flat, nasty, and containing cigarette butts. | |
| dead man's run A ski run from the top of the mountain to the bottom. There's a race someplace where they see who can do the most iterations. After one such race, the winner died that evening (or so Warren Miller says). Several Northern Californian resorts have mountains that make this pretty challenging, such as Squaw Valley's upper/lower mountain runs and the east ridge of Northstar. | |
| Del Paso Sacramento has very few contiguous strips of what could be called "bad neighborhoods", but Del Paso Heights is certainly one of them. The area runs along Del Paso Blvd at the northern end of the city. It appears that at one time it was something of a boom town, judging by the types and numbers of business once there. The area has since dilapidated and many of the store-fronts are now closed. The area begins on the west side of I-80 and runs into downtown's Alkali Flats area, which is similarly run down. | |
| delta breeze Just west of Sacramento the American and Sacramento rivers dump into the Pacific ocean in the Sacramento delta. In the evening, the occasional light wind picks up and carries all the way across the delta and into Sacramento, bringing much cooler nighttime temperatures. These are usually a blessed relief to Sacramentans, who without it can see nightly lows in the mid-to-high-70s during the summertime. | |
| Denios Large open-air flea market in the city of Roseville, just northeast of Sacramento. Denios has been in its current location for about 50 years and spans several acres of blacktop and covered stalls. Primarily a weekend location, Denios has toyed with being open midweek from time to time to keep their produce vendors, who make up a large bloc, happy. | |
| depth charge Nothing goes together like a shot of whiskey and a beer chaser, unless it's the two at the same time. One takes a shotglass filled with hard liquor of choice and drop it into a (mostly) full glass of beer and then chugs it before the two mix. The upshot is that the beer gives the hard stuff a nice, soft landing, but has the downside that you drank your chaser before the shot. If it sounds unpleasant, it's because it is, but not nearly so much so as a boilermaker. | |
| Desmond Hall Hall in which Hank, Charlie Bill, Maria, Molly, Cheryl, WE Jen and Lil' Jen all lived for a year in college. For the first 18 months of its existence and about four months of the pre-House member's tenure it kept the name "New Hall". | |
| digimag Nobody covered the local music scene as comprehensively and as up-to-date as digimag did. An online labor of love of sorts, digimag dragged a number of local bands kicking and screaming out onto the Internet, publishing band photos, bios, sound clips and tour dates. The founders quit the operation in 1997, giving control over to the Sacramento Bee. While digimag lost a bit of its funky edge when it went big-corporate, it's still one of the best local resources online. The site can be found at http://www.digimag.com | |
| "Ding Dong! Hall Slut!" Mating cry of a hall slut: those persons who would screw anything that moved. Not surprisingly, most of the hall sluts were guys who had just broken up with long-term girlfriends. | |
| "Dippy in my fanny?!?" Chris Rock had a character on his HBO show called Pootie Tang whose slang was completely incomprehensible. Chris Rock somehow always managed to understand Pootie, though, except for the end of the bit at which time Pootie would misspeak and then have to correct himself: "um, uh...dippy on my fanny?" Sada te! | |
| diss Short from "disrespect", this term was misappropriated from the hip-hop community. An insult, especially one of an explicitly personal nature. | |
| The Distillery See the Swillery. | |
| docs Dr. Martens. Originally popular in the UK where waterproof footwear was a must, these somewhat ugly orthopedic shoes made it over to this continent riding the punk wave. They were a shoe of the subculture for about 15 years until the grunge explosion in the early 90s, when they became de rigueur footwear of the hipper-than-thou set. | |
| "does this make my breasts look bigger?" A WE Jen-ism. She'd pulled her backpack straps across her chest. The responding "why, yes, yes it does" from a female passer-by was a bit unnerving. | |
| dog on a mission There are usually two sorts of dogs one sees wandering the streets: lost dogs and dogs on a mission. The former are quite happy to see friendly humans, sometimes to the point that they won't resume their journeys. Dogs on a mission have little time for humans. They are out on the long hunt and won't go sniffing things or slowing down to be pet. Dogs on a mission have a spring in their step and an air of alertness about them. | |
| dogged Insulted, though usually with playful intent. Ex: After I wrecked my car, everybody was dogging me for days every time I got behind the wheel. | |
| doggie crack For some inexplicable reason Chianti has a hard-on (or as much of a hard-on as a nutless dog can manage) for the "burger" stylee dog food. Being a rather large dog, feeding him anything other than kibble is simply cost prohibitive. Hank brought down a box of the fud from Redding and the dog simply went nuts, showing a zeal that not even table scraps seem to engender. Every so often now, as a treat, the dog will get a bit of doggie crack, though mostly for the entertainment of his owners than anything. | |
| doghouse Originally, "doghouse in Chris' backyard", which was where a group at the Cabin could stay next time if they didn't like it there. Unfortunately, this was all that was coherent. At first it meant anything incoherent, but quickly became anything confusing as well. Sometimes expressed as a bark, often with scratching behind ear. | |
| the Dollars Birdcage Savings Cinema in the north part of town is a magnet for teenagers, low income families and poor college students. The theater shows second-run movies, ones that have been out for a while, for a much-reduced cost. For a goodly while the theater was referred to as the "dollars" reflecting the cost of admission. While the cost has risen considerably since then the name remains, for the most part. The presence of a number of nearby bars and a bowling alley makes this something of a mecca as well as something of a police hangout. Jon, Bill's roommate in the dorms, got married when he and his then-fiancee discovered that the dollars were sold out and continued up the road to Tahoe. | |
| doma de amor Spanish for "love dome" (more or less), any one of a number of tents erected(!) for the purpose of housing a camp staff member's significant other while (usually) she was in the valley. | |
| "Don't go blind" The obligatory toast given in addition to any others when one is consuming moonshine. | |
| Downtown Market A several-blocks long outdoor market with a somewhat forced "farmers market" feel. This is a weekly event on Thursdays along the K Street Mall in Sacramento. The somewhat run-down pedestrian mall becomes completely clogged with suburbanites who'd have nothing to do with the area were it not the hip thing to do. | |
| Downtown Plaza At one end of the K-Street Mall used to sit an open air mall with a number of department stores and walk-in eateries with two galleria-type buildings in the middle of the mall. This mall was mostly demolished to make way for the Downtown Plaza, a curious outdoor mall that took up most of the same real-estate and then some. The old mall was integrated in place for a few of the department stores and the gallerias, making for some odd abrupt design changes. The Plaza regularly has some sort of draw, such as a sledding hill in the winter and giant professionally constructed sand castles in the summertime. | |
| "drink more, think less" A phrase from Grampa Roy. Quite often used as a toast, or as a call for a social. | |
| drinko de Mayo Perversion of "Cinco de Mayo", the Mexican independence day. California, having a fairly large Mexican population, celebrates Cinco de Mayo fairly heavily. House folks use it as a drinking holiday, hence the name. | |
| the drunk driving incident Bob and Charlie Bill were up in Chico way back in the Cherry days--back so far that Bob was still living in Concord. He had come up with a friend of his who later agreed to take Bill and Bob down to the local Taco Bell stumble-up to get some much-needed nourishment. Bob's friend left to duck back inside for a moment, at which point Bob thought it would be funny to move the car across the street. Bob, far too drunk to drive, pulled off on what was supposed to be a short trip, but picked up a few concerned friends who panicked at the sight of Bob behind the wheel. Now this was Good Fun, so Bob encouraged them to give chase by driving just fast enough across the parking lot across the street to keep them from reaching the truck. By the time Shavor arrived on the scene, he was plenty pissed and gave both lads a stern lecture about the perils of drinking and driving. Years later, Bob and Bill still find the incident funny while Shavor still is pissed about it. | |
| drunken stumble For some strange mechanical reason known only to God, one always managages to pass the point of "too much" far to easy. Excess takes many forms, but when it comes to drinking, it can have disastrous, upheaving results. We get around this via the stumble, whereupon we encourage our metabolism and take a natural pause to let things catch up. | |
| dude If there is an all-time Californian slang term, this is it. While it's popularity has waxed and waned throughout the rest of the country, it is a perennial bedrock term here. It is an interjection, a generic pronoun, and an exclamation Dude can be gender neutral, but usually used in the male form. Ex: So this dude comes up to me with his hands in his pockets, and I'm like, "uh, dude?" Well he pulls out this big ol' bong and I realize that it's my friend from high school and I go "dude!" It'd been such a long time since I'd seen dude. This last example is used, but fairly seldomly. | |
| dudefest A male-only or heavily male-dominated event. Large groups of drinking men tend to frighten women off for some funny reason. | |
| dumpster dive To search for booty in someone else's trash. This is actually extremely rampant in Sacramento. When working warehouse, Hank and Bill discarded a broken down soda machine into a large, truck-sized dumpster. The thing weighed several hundred pounds, and required a forklift to get it in. Nonetheless, it was gone the next day. Hackers regularly search for credit card and computer information this way. | |
The Duplex
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| The Dustbowl A large area at camp often used for campwide games and other large group gatherings. This is also the area right near the bridge and suffers much foot and vehicle traffic. | |
| "eat my pussy" The regulars were at The Mushroom one evening when some aging bar trash asked if there was anywhere a woman could dance in town. She then recalled a story of when she'd gone to a dyke bar and several other stories now blotted from memory. She uttered this memorable phrase during her discourse. Maria directed her to The Rage, which would have provided hours of entertainment for all involved had we been there to enjoy it. | |
| Egyptian Stew An ungodly concoction served by the DC, usually on Sunday Nights. Its content was never really fixed, but signs of leftovers and usually corn could usually be spotted in the glop. | |
| El Dorado Saloon While not nearly as cool as the Cattle Club, the layout of the El Dorado Saloon is far superior, having two bars, a "pit" and ample standing and seating room. Unfortunately the management there hired numerous assholes for staff there whose fascist tactics all but dared the attendees to start trouble. It's location in the middle of suburbia also made it a target for neighbors and its life as a musical venue was short indeed. | |
| ElDo Area slang shorthand for "El Dorado". Being near gold country, this name crops up quite a bit locally. | |
| Elliot's Elliot's Bar, in Danville. Our favorite East Bay dive. | |
| England can kiss my ass. A quote by Jerry Lee Lewis, the original punk-rocker. Often used as an exclamation during times of extreme drinking. | |
| Ernesto's Downtown Mexican food joint that serves some damned fine margaritas. Ernesto's is located amongst a number of state offices and is a popular lunch spot. It's a popular destination for nearby Lavender Heights residents. The interior is what could best be described as cozy, sometimes becoming deafeningly loud when a few state workers stop in for a farewell party or a birthday. | |
| The Esquire The K-Street Mall was, at one time, a cultural nexus of sorts. It had that solid 1940's "Christmas Story" feel to it with numerous department stores and movie houses along it, such as the Crest and the Esquire. The Esquire fell onto hard times with the rest of the Mall as it slid into decay for several generations. The building was later converted into offices, through a list of the names of the theaters that had taken up residence in the Esquire told the tale, the last of which being "The Pink Pussycat". In the late-90's, all but the very front of the Esquire was torn down and replaced with an enormous office building and the theater proper replaced with the large-screen Imax. Once again, movies were playing at the Imax. The new office building behind it sports a large sci-fi looking neon array pointing skywards, as if one of the B-movies from the old day had sprouted and taken root on the spot. | |
| Evangeline's Funky purveyor of all things kitch and tacky, located in Old Town Sacramento. Evangelines doubled their capacity a few years back, initially starting a sister store, then conjoining the stores. The shop is one of the better places to go in town for reasonably priced cool Halloween costumes. There are few places in Old Town local Sacramentan's would admit shopping at, but Evangeline's is one of them. | |
| exploding eye trick The exploding eye trick makes an appearance about once or year or so at a coffee shop or a dinner and goes like this:
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| eye of God The four-gazillion candlepower light the police use to illuminate bad guys with a light like a fluorescent sun. Most standard squad cars have at least two mounted with handles on the inside. Higher crime towns like Richmond's squads look like landing strips with the number of spotlights they use at night. Copper choppers have, by far, the best "eyes", and fit the name the best. | |
| F-n-G Fox and Goose, local English-style pub. Usually pronounced "effn'gee", as "fucking G". | |
| Fab 40's An approximately 10 block by 10 block area running starting on 40th street and about J. This area is where all the large, old homes in town are. The homes are all immaculately maintained and landscaped. | |
| Faces Downtown Sacramento's best known gay lounge, though only one of many in it's area. | |
| faded A not-quite-with-it state of mind. This usually comes from not getting enough sleep, general tiredness, or through the assistance of marijuana. | |
| Fairytale Town In the middle of William Land Park lie a cluster of attractions that seem somewhat out of place in somewhat unsophisticated Sacramento: pony rides down a forested track, a tiny amusement park, a small zoo and Fairytale Town. The latter is home to all manner of giant playground-like aparatus from children's stories: some direct references like Casey Jr.'s train, and other more generic sets such as a pirate ship in a moat. | |
| "Falling!" "Fall on!" A call-and-response used up at Camp on the team-oriented obstacle course. This has been perverted into many different forms and can be used with any sort of adverb. | |
| Falstaff A particularly ungodly brew that Geoff and Roy picked up at the Bel Aire market across from the House at the Landing one time during a particularly cash-tight period in House history. Charlie Bill thought that the beer was somewhat reminiscent of baking soda. One would almost hope that the beer had been allowed to sit too long and had gone over, rather than believe that the beer was actually this bad. Years later, Falstaff would be mentioned in the Sheryl Crow song "a change". [Entry #800] | |
| "fat floats" Used to indicate that someone is being a little harsh in their treatment of another. Wildfire was being bashed on by the group once, to which she replied "maybe I should just throw myself in Butte Creek". This was the response. | |
| fatty Large, usually in reference to pot cigarettes or "joints". Food that can be stuffed or rolled can also be fatty, much like the now- renamed "Fatty Eggroll" | |
| Federal Ass Fucking Prison In the Mike Judge sleeper Office Space, the characters decide that they will strike a blow against their soulless company by siphoning off the rounding errors in the software to an account--a classic bit of hacker lore dramatized on the big screen. Unfortunately, something goes wrong. The group realizes that if they get caught the won't be going to the "country club" prison that their original scheme would have landed them in, but the more sinister Federal Ass Fucking Prison. The term has crept into House use whenever jail is mentioned. | |
| filter hit The drag off a cigarette which was one drag too far, burning past the end of the tobacco and causing the fiberglass filter to burn. This is an unpleasant experience. | |
| fire Generic term for matches and/or a lighter. For those occasions when you don't want to play the "No, I don't have matches, but I do have a lighter" game. | |
| "The first rule of Fight Club is don't talk about Fight Club" As the saying goes, boys will be boys. This is especially true on bachelor parties where questionable behavior is downright expected. The House/Chaunch crowd is exceptionally fortunate in, for the most part, having fallen in with womenfolk who trust their significant others to not get into too much trouble. In return, while the boys have been known to get plenty rowdy by normal standards, has been deserving of that trust. Just the same, they recognize that regaling one's better half about some of the things that menfolk find particularly entertaining might not go over so well and have instuted a code of silence amongst themselves. Starting with Dave's bachelor party and cementing itself with Doug's, this phrase was the reminder (during the outings) that details would never come out in public after that night. The boys, of course, can be pretty well expected to give a full report to their women, but certainly no public discourse would be brooked. | |
Fish Party
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| the fistulated cow Once a year in the spring, UC Davis hold a big open house where all their departments have exhibitions and events and generally try to make the campus seem like an interesting place to prospective students. First and foremost UC Davis is an ag school and so on this, Picnic Day, there are a great quantity of animals and plants on exhibit from dogs to cows to tomatoes to bugs. Amongst them for a great many years was the fistulated cow. The fistulated cow is this cow with a large "port" cut into one side and into one of its many stomach's so one can observe firsthand the process of cow digestion. The hole is sealed with a large rubber gasket and stopper. Apparently the cow doesn't feel this, much, and you could actually STICK YOUR ARM INSIDE THE COW. INSIDE A LIVING FUCKING COW Now, on an abstract conceptual level, sticking your arm inside a cow with a hole in the side seems like a pretty cool thing. The reality, unfortunately, is a little less happy and is actually kind of depressing. |
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