I said this in 2010:
Brian J. Noggle notices the word “shellac” has come back into vogue in a big way. Who updated the style guides?
Because, gentle reader: In 2010, one side or the other got “shellacked” in the midterm elections. I think it was the Democrats, and the Republicans made gains. Ah, it was a long time ago. Who can remember? I guess I could go back, as this blog was seven years along by that time, but the first decade and change was the most boring part of this blog. No kidding: when I’m wallowing in my archives, the political and news stuff of the early years (not to mention the early “joy of blogging” things where bloggers (who were a thing then) talked to each other or jibed each other or tagged each other in posts–kinda like they later did in social media before it just became a firehose of ads and slop–wow, this is a long double-parentheses parenthetical with several em dashes–forgive me, gentle reader! But it’s better than two-sentence hot takes on George W. Bush or that other guy, or that other guy, or that other guy, or the other other guy again)–sorry, I don’t read the other stuff because the blog proves to me that what was old is new again–it’s just the volume and maybe the crazy-activation gets greater.
But, yeah, shellacked. Even back then they were probably applying a metaphor they’d seen in a sports story to politics.
I mean, why does nobody say that the Republicans got varnished? Or rubbed deeply with food-grade oil? Or more betterer: stripped and sanded?
Because, now, sixteen years later from the gorram Facebook post, nobody hot-taking on the Internet for fun, Klout (remember that? No?), or (likely foreign) money knows crap about refinishing furniture or finishing a jigsaw puzzle, looking at your household décor, and thinking it would be something to put on your geffen wall if only you could kragle it together with a clear finish. Nobody knows anything but the Internet. Who schnucking needs AI slop when the humans have been producing the equivalent for many years already?
