24/7–365–180! Bingo

Did you ever play Buzzword bingo? It’s a little game I got from the funny papers. Ever read that comic, Sally Forth? Sally works in an office. Goes to a lot of meetings. So, for fun, she and her colleagues play buzzword bingo. It’s like regular bingo, except instead of numbers, you have...buzzwords. Supposedly stylish or trendy words or phrases. It does kind of help you pay attention in meetings. I’ve never actually heard anyone "bingo," either, but it’s fun. If I were doing a current general-purpose buzzword bingo card, here’s what I’d include.

24/7. You like that? You ever say that? Not me. I don’t even like to hear it. I don’t even like to look at it. But it’s everywhere.

So where did it come from? Not military, like A-OK or 19 hundred hours. Not police like what’s your 20 or we’ve got a 5-1-1 on the 9-2-7.

I looked it up. It’s right there in the dictionary. Merriam-Webster’s online language center (available 24/7). It’s an adverb. Or adjective. Date 1986. No derivation given. This ain’t the OED. Here’s the definition: "for twenty-four hours seven days a week Example: " Great.
But where’d it come from? I was thinking technology, or advertising, or both. Online. Access. 24-7. But 1986? Didn’t have too much online access then. No internet. No dot.coms. Automated tellers? Toll-free phone numbers maybe. Our operators are on call. 24/7.
The earliest mention of 24/7 I could find was a group involved in the mid-eighties New York based Black Rock Coalition, once again on tour as the legendary South Bronx NYC Heavy Metal Soul band, 24-7 Spyz! They got it from somewhere, though.

Keep tracking it down, you come up with drug dealers, or as the Texas police note in their drug slang web site, "Clockers - Entry level crack dealers who sell drugs 24 hours a day." In the immortal words of Dre and Snoop Dogg, "ain’t nuthin but a G-thang."Our crack dealers are waiting for you to pull up. 24/7.

We’ve got ourselves a catchy phrase–from the drug culture thank you very much–that everyone seems to be using: tech support is available "24/7" library reference service is offered "24/7" a mom’s job is "24/7." Oh, yeah? You saying your mama’s a CLOCKER?

So what’s my problem? Besides just being tired of 24/7? I don’t believe in the concept. In my view, there is no reason for ANYTHING except 911–fire, police, ambulance–to be available all the time. OK, maybe Waffle House. But what’s wrong with Open 24 Hours, or We Never Close? Time honored, perfectly clear. My son and I were in Paris a few years ago, and there was a little café close to our hotel. Open 23 Hours. Now that was confusing. We never did figure out which hour it was closed. Same guy always seemed to be working there, too.

Cut to 1992. That’s 12 years ago already! 24-7 was campus slang, along with "buff"or "biscuit" to describe a fit or cute guy; gill-net theory of dating (go out with anyone, I guess); "earth-muffin" Birkenstock-wearing, no-make-up nature lover. . . So maybe it was clever. The first time you heard it anyway. Maybe you even had to process what it meant. 24/7? Oh, yeah, 24/7! I get it! OK. We got it.

So why does the term 24/7 appear in more than 600 recent articles? It’s like face-painting. Have you ever seen a news article about a fair or carnival that doesn’t have a photo of some kid getting their FACE painted? Find something else to take a picture of! Please!
12 years later, 24/7 is still with us. I’m surprised CNN doesn’t just go ahead and change the name of headline news to 24/7. I’m surprised none of the new cop/fire/emt shows is called 24/7. I’m surprised the 7-11 hasn’t changed its name to the 24-7. Folks, 24/7 has entered the vernacular. Like I said, it’s in the dictionary!

That’s the only 1992 slang which seems to have survived: I looked up biscuit, it’s there, but only the bread, pottery, and color definitions, not the cute guys. No "gill-net daters." No earth muffins. They made some suggestions, though, for earth muffin, like I couldn’t spell or couldn’t type. Like "maybe you meant": earthmoving, earthmovings, earthmover. No. earthmovers . Uh, no.

anthemion (I had to look that one up. Flat floral form, like in relief sculpture) erythremia (had to look that one up, too– told me to look under polycythemia ve·ra.) Something about too much blood, causing nosebleeds and enlargement of the spleen. Not an earth muffin, that.
unthrifty, arrhythmic, earthworms, more suggestions. Sounds like a found poem to me: Unthrifty arrhythmic earthworms.

24/7. . . 24/7/365 Just in case you didn’t get it yet. Or maybe we want you to know WE NEVER CLOSE. Not even Christmas day. Even WAL-MART closes Christmas day. People should close Christmas Day. No one should have to work on holidays. Or Sundays. People should have days to be not busy. Not have a choice but to stay at home. Or go for an aimless wander. I’d even like it if they disconnected the phones. I even like it when the power goes out! You just have to be quiet. No noise. It gets dark, you go to bed. Quiet. 24/7. 24/7/365.

You know what really kills me? People who use these phrases you hear all the time, but they get it wrong. Smart people do this. My boss has one he does all the time. We tease him about it. Throw the baby out with the wash. Right. We all bathe our babies in the laundry. Another friend, very smart, ALWAYs instead of "for all intents and purposes" says "for all intensive purposes." So people say these things without really thinking about what they mean.

Like "do a 180." Know what a 180 is? It’s geometry. Like a 90 degree angle. That’s a right angle, right? So if you double that, it’s 180 degrees, which is a straight line, only if you’re talking about a 180 degree turn, you’d be going back the way you came. Like if you spin out on the interstate and do a 180, you’ll be heading the wrong way. Not good.
So you’re doing a 180-- a complete reversal, an about-face, a GO BACK before it’s too late. However, a lot of folks get it mixed up. Didn’t pay attention in geometry class, I guess.
Like they’ll say a 360 degree difference. A CIRCLE is 360 degrees, all the way around. Big change, there. Gets you right back where you started from. My favorites, though, are the ones who don’t even have a CLUE.
I watch these crime shows all the time. You know, true crime, like Forensic Files, and the New Detectives. City Confidential. Lots of times the people who commit the crimes don’t really think it out all that well. I mean, they’ll do something and try to cover it up, but they don’t know all the tools the police have. Luminol, dna, fiber analysis. Anyhow, this one lady decided to kill her husband, because he was too demanding. She wasn’t about to do it, though. She had enough sense to know she would be looked at if his death was suspicious, so she recruited her sister.
The sister, apparently, had self esteem issues. The wife managed to convince her sister that this apparently nice-looking, hard-working, family man whose main fault as far as I could tell was that he wanted to do it EVERY night was a BAD GUY. So the wife convinces her sister it would benefit HER (the sister) as well as the wife for him to be dead. Something about insurance money.
Now this is our first clue the wife maybe wasn’t all that bright since she wrote this all to her sister IN A NOTE. But, here’s what she said: first, you can get your boobs done. Get your boobs done...that’s bringing out the queen early. The wife listed a couple of other things the sis could do with her share of the insurance money: quit her job, move into a nicer place. Oh, yeah, go to rehab.
Ah, now we see the vulnerability of the sister. Boobs, job, condo. Those things are nice, but a motivation to kill someone? Nah, it’s the rehab. She’s got a problem. I guess a woman who would kill her husband probably wouldn’t mind too much to exploit her addicted sister, either. The wife wasn’t taking any chances, though, so she hammered the message home. Get your boobs done, Tell your boss to shove it. Get a nice condo, get off drugs and alcohol, in short! a 365 degree change in your life!!

365 degrees? 365 degrees!!! That’s the number of days in a year! It’s got nothing to do with a direction! It’s not a turn-around! It’s all the way around and then some! 365 degrees? That’s not even an oven temperature. Really. Did you ever see a recipe that said to pre-heat the oven to 365 degrees? No.
So, yeah. Figure out with a mind like that at work what happened. The wife woke the husband in the middle of the night saying she heard a burglar. The guy gets his gun and goes into the garage where the sister is waiting with a gun, she fires, and misses, the guy fires and kills her, then realizes it’s his sister-in-law and calls the cops. Make a story short. The sister died, the wife went to jail. Only the husband survived. I’ll bet he knows how many damn degrees are in a circle. He probably even knows how to do a 180.