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Xiu Xiu tell us their Top 10 "absurd / baffling" out-of-date slang terms

Xiu Xiu are gearing up to release new album Forget in February — check out “Wondering” from the LP below — and will be on tour later in 2017 including Brooklyn Bazaar on April 6 (tickets) Jersey City’s WFMU Monty Hall on April 11 (tickets). You can stream Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks below as well.

We’ve been asking artists to contribute year-end lists to us and, while most of them have been Best LPs or sings, some have turned in more esoteric lists, like Best Breakfasts, under-the-radar deaths and Cutest Animals. Xiu Xiu head Jamie Stewart may have taken the cake with “Top ten absurd/baffling, possibly charming, possibly rotten historical slang words and phrases from the absurdity of what is amerikkka and what was the United States.” They’re all from a 1957 book on slang handed down from Jamie’s grandfather. “Its entries seem to begin in the early 1800s,” Jamie tells us. “One would assume it is rife with peculiarities, racism, misogyny, ambiguity, expressive violence and thankfully, purposely or not, insane comedy,” Stewart tells us. Check out Jamie’s list below, complete with modern “can you use it in a sentence?” examples.


XIU XIU’s Top ten absurd/baffling, possibly charming, possibly rotten historical slang words and phrases from the absurdity of what is amerikkka and what was the United States.

My paternal grandfather was a complicated man. He was born in Louisiana or West Virginia or Kentucky and may or may not have been half Pawnee and half English or just all French. I have been told all of these and often within minutes of each other. He was incredibly kind to me but reigned a hell of abuse on my mother and uncles that is almost unimaginable. He grew up poor in (some part) of the rural south but moved to California, took classes to lose his accent, held three masters degrees and was the captain of a merchant marine ship. In lieu of taxable and traceable cash payments for smuggling people from all over the pacific rim to the United States he accepted museum quality Asian antiques. He had a massive collection of show tunes on reel to reel tapes and was almost certainly gay but brought his “mistresses” home from sea and made my grandmother cook dinner for them.

Maybe not surprisingly, he was also extraordinarily well read. Among the many books that have been slowly handed down to my brother, sister and me is a 1957 edition of The Dictionary of American Slang. Its entries seem to begin in the early 1800s and one would assume it is rife with peculiarities, racism, misogyny, ambiguity, expressive violence and thankfully, purposely or not, insane comedy.

Henceforth, some of our nonsensical, largely useless but kind of cute favorites.
(That description could apply to anyone in Xiu Xiu as well.)

1) “Joe Sad” – an unpopular person.
Look at that Joe Sad sitting in the bar, drunk, rumpled and alone as usual. I hate him so much.

2) “funk hole” – a foxhole or any depression in the earth used to avoid bombardment.
Marcella leapt into a funk hole to avoid the cannonade of bigoted barf launched from the new president and his goons.

3) “Jerusalem Slim” – Jesus Christ (familiar but not profane)
Dear Jerusalem Slim, please forgive us for what we have done to the natural world and please save us.

4) “syringe” – a trombone OR a vaginal douche used as form of birth control
Hey Grogmutt, can you play me some atonal freak outs on your gleaming, chrome syringe? I don’t want to have this baby.

5) “jungle juice” – an alcoholic drink made from hair tonic, turpentine, mouth wash or lubricants and mixed with fruit juice or other available beverages.
She spent the entirety of the 10th grade obliterated on jungle juice but still managed to somehow get a drivers license and job doing home delivery for CVS.

6) “honeyfuck”- an idyllic and romantic bout of love making OR to have intercourse with a very young person.
To endure what was expected to be an inexperienced but overly hopeful and caress heavy honeyfuck, Ms Mori closed her eyes and thought of Calexit.

7) “one foot in the graveyard” – an order of soup (described as such for it being regarded as food for invalids.)
One foot in the graveyard please with extra extra salt and make it quick, for it is later than you think! MOM AND DAD AND DAD AND MOM

8) “good butt” – marijuana cigarette
I went to the gym in the hopes of creating, through grit and determination, a good butt but, when no one looked my jigglin’ way nor paid me a drip drop o’ mind I had to go home and smoke two epic good butts to negate and hallucinate my way from sorrow.

9) “gruesome twosome” – lovers OR army boots
For some insane reason I thought that brutally murdering people from colonized counties in the Middle East to earn money for OLD DICKLESS HONKEY FASCIST CO. because I was too bored to find a job that was easy enough for me was a good idea, so I ended with a gruesome twosome that gave me two grody blisters which l deserve.

10) “wood pussy” – polecat
Oh wood pussy, who knows what you is/are………………………………….:(

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