"I'm not a speaker of dudish, so I could be wrong " ~ Mark Liberman

Dude...
It is a word like Smurf....Who remembers smurfs? When everything was smurfy...or you need to smurf that smurfy smurf. Dude really is a catch all phrase...
I admit I use the word Dude way too much. I just change the inflection, the pitch or tone, in my voice and it means something completely different. That is just plain handy. I also do this with the word Lady.

Lady!!!!
Laaady.
Laaaa-deee.

The other day Mr. Speaker asked me why I call my friend Lado. Yup Lado. (She's the only one I call Lado though, the other Rotten's hate it and have banned the use of it.) It just sounds better and rolls of the tongue if you say it fast. It evolved from Lady at some point and I guess the truth of it is that my friends and I seem to have developed a language all our own. I've been in public places having a conversation and some person with us wonders what the hell we are talking about. We all understand this lingo but to anybody outside our group, without the same pop culture references and such, it is just gibberish.

Without context it means little to the vast majority if I say,
"Hey Dudes remember when we went pirate with the Indian at The Moontower" but to me, and my group of friends, this makes perfect sense...

We have our "Hey you's" Which is a reference to an old, *old* SNL skit about a perfume called "Hey You" that a chick wears in the bar to pick up guys. The next scene is her, with a love bun (that knot of messed up hair in the back of your head after a night of rumpeh-pumpeh), with last nights' clothes on and her make-up down to her ankles...she's hailing a cab. So Hey You's became the name for the place we would all meet, at one of our houses, the day after we went to the bar. We'd all drag our sorry, hungover asses, with our love buns, back to Ronnies and gossip about the night before and where and with whom we ended up.
Usually this Hey You/meeting of the hung involved "Getting Grease" which shouldn't be confused with getting greased...
No 'getting grease', or the 'ole Potty Picnic' (cause it goes right through you, so you might as well eat it on the toilet), refers to getting McDonald's before going to The Hey You. The magic elixer and cure of many hangovers...greasy McDick's food.

We also call cake "Cock" (and Coke is often referred to as "Cock"....just for fun)which has to do with Martin Short's brilliant portrayal of an "English as a second language" Wedding planner in "Father of The Bride" ("Faja of the Bride" or "Pather pa da pride" if you're my Lado...)

Imagine standing in Blockbuster with me and my ladies and I turn to you and say, "want to rent a pussy movie? Oh and should we get girl-drink-drunk or Cock tonight?"

You can see how this can get confusing...Sometimes I forget myself and speak this way with new friends and they look at me like I have lost my mind...
So I start again and translate "Sorry Lady (or Dude)I mean... do you want to get a sappy-girly movie? Shall we drink Pina Colada's or Coke tonight?"

These obscure references to things from the past are now part of our collective language. Try explaining purse bitch...(Without a picture of Bogg)
No doubt other groups of individuals do this but I wonder if they have as much fun with it as we do? I doubt it Dude.

Okay enough procrastinating...

Song Du Jour: Burn One Down ~ Ben Harper