Pimp My Cart in Racine

Teens have been busily pimping the bookcarts at this Wisconsin Library, even though the mandatory few don’t care for the terminology.

June 4, 2007 by birdie Uncategorized 6

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shoe says:

June 4, 2007 at 6:21 pm

Neat Idea

Oh, c’mon. This is a neat adaptation of the “Pimp My Ride” and the Overdue Media ideas….. I probably would have hesitated myself to use the word pimp, not because I have any problems with it, but because of the headaches that might ensue. I have enough self generated headaches without patron generated ones. I am glad that Racine had the cajones to do it. (Ha ha, I said “cajones!”)

I think this is a great way to get the kids creatively enjoying their library. Also brings a lot of new life to bookcarts, most of which were looking pretty rough at my library.

And what better praise can you get from a kid than, “It was better than sitting at home doing nothing?”

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Cyberpunk Librarian says:

June 4, 2007 at 10:29 pm

Relevant Statement
From the article:

“I don’t think you should use an old dictionary to try to defend a modern meaning of a word,” said Callaghan. “Language changes over time.”

The language police need to remember that the reason we refer to parts of poultry as “white meat” and “dark meat” is because it used to be considered profane to refer to these parts as “breasts” and “thighs.” People once thought those words to be too sexually suggestive. Now, no one cares.

Language changes and it can happen slowly or quickly. Once upon a time, Google was the name of a website. Now it’s a verb. That happened in less than a year and it happened despite Google compplaining that they didn’t want to be a verb.

Too bad. Language doesn’t care what you want. Just like it doesn’t care that “McJob” offends McDonald’s.

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sarahmae says:

June 4, 2007 at 11:00 pm

Re:Relevant Statement
The language police need to remember that the reason we refer to parts of poultry as “white meat” and “dark meat” is because it used to be considered profane to refer to these parts as “breasts” and “thighs.” People once thought those words to be too sexually suggestive. Now, no one cares.

Interesting, I didn’t know that.

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Chuck says:

June 4, 2007 at 11:20 pm

profane or accurate
Does this mean I could say “Librarians everywhere have pimpsmacked attempts to censor works like ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘A Catcher in the Rye’?”

The OED entries for “bitchslap”, “beatdown”, “tear open a bag of beatdown” and “join the Slapaho tribe” are ambiguous at best.

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Cyberpunk Librarian says:

June 5, 2007 at 12:55 am

Re:profane or accurate
Does this mean I could say “Librarians everywhere have pimpsmacked attempts to censor works like ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘A Catcher in the Rye’?”

I am all for that statement.

But, as a fan of language, I believe that better and more effective description might be had through the substitution of the word “pimpsmacked” with “bitch-slapped.” Pimpsmack is one of those words where the noun involved doesn’t quite fit the action. In my opinion, pimpsmack would be the action of smacking a pimp, not a pimp smacking someone else, such as his “ho.”

Meanwhile, censors are bitches and deserve to be slapped. Ergo, bitch-slapped.

And indeed, the word bitch merely indicates a female dog. My friend has a very cute bitch, and his wife isn’t bad either.

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Fang-Face says:

June 5, 2007 at 2:47 am

Re:Relevant Statement
In Victorian England, people supposedly “dressed” the legs of pianos. The Taliban outlawed applause and paper bags. To each his own.

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