Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Ringdinging



What does somebody have to do to be a permanent fixture in one's culture? And what's the least amount of effort one can put forth to get this to happen?

Here's an idea... introduce a new word into your language. "Truthiness," for example. Right now, the Blogger spell-checker is marking "Truthiness" in this typed post as an error, but, if this word somehow survives its novelty as a satirical concept promoted by a TV comedian, and enters into the holy halls of Regular Usage, perhaps someday the spell-checker will nod, yes, no problem with that word. That seems like a pretty amazing accomplishment to me.

So, now, I present... my word that will spread like a filthy little virus -- hell it might even enter the OED with balloons and party horns:

Ringdinging

So far, two definitions.

1st Definition -- The act of an actor in a film or TV show, who in a line of dialogue mentions the name of the TV show or film he/she is acting in (e.g. "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.").

Character actor Dick Miller is a notorious ringdinger, and has ringdinged in at least two films that I have seen.

He uses the word "gremlins" in the Joe Dante film Gremlins, and says the words "after hours" in Martin Scorsese's After Hours. Even when he isn't ringdinging, I am on the edge of my seat expecting it. He played the gun shop owner in The Terminator, and when Arnold asks for a "Phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range" I always expect Dick Miller's character to reply, "What are you, some kind of Terminator?"


2nd Definition -- The act of promoting one's self through the introduction of some lazy conceit, or a feeble twist on a preexisting novel concept.


So, by the second definition above, I myself am ringdinging in attempting to introduce the word "ringdinging" into the language.

Wow, I am the coolest loser on the planet!

4 comments:

Coaster Punchman said...

Check out Jintrinsique Unplugged on my link list. She just posted about my recent contribution to the English language.

Splotchy said...

Cool!

The more words we have in our language, the better (maybe excepting acronyms).

My only beef with "Kristian" is that to me it denotes something wacky, seeing as the 'C' has been replaced with a Krazy K. I mean wacky in a good way, of course.

That's not to say Kristians aren't wacky, it's just the scarier kind.

Joe said...

Amen to that.

Dick Miller is one of my favorite actors of all time...probably even ahead of Strother Martin and Dan Hedaya.

Splotchy said...

What, no L.Q. Jones?!!