Do I need to? lol, but yeah, we played a few 1v1s a while back (in the 4mils I think…). If anyone gets into THOTA I'd think it's worth congratulating, anyway.
The first use in fictional dialogue that I can find is in George V. Higgins's 1972 classic hard-boiled novel, ''The Friends of Eddie Coyle.''
''I first heard it when I was driving a truck for Coca-Cola,'' recalls Mr. Higgins, whose most recent novel is ''A Change of Gravity.'' ''It must have been about the summer of 1960.'' The late 50's appears to be the time of the phrase's genesis; Michael Seidman, editor of Charles Durden's 1976 ''No Bugles, No Drums,'' another novel using the entire line, remembers the insult he heard growing up in the Bronx in that post-Korean War era: ''. . .and the white horse you rode in on and all your relatives in Brooklyn.''
The key word is in. ''The horse he rode on,'' without the necessary in to conjure the image of a scene, is an ordinary phrase that can be found in use as far back as Shakespeare. (''Some hilding fellow, that had stolen the horse he rode on,'' with hilding meaning ''bent downward, twisted waywardly aside.'') But rode in on suggests a startling entrance.
A clue to the term's origin is immortalized in the halls of the Treasury Department in Washington. In the background of the oil painting that hangs as the official portrait of Donald Regan, who served as Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, can be found a book titled ''And the Horse You Rode In On.'' No other book title is visible. In their 1987 book, ''Showdown at Gucci Gulch,'' Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Alan S. Murray, then reporters for The Wall Street Journal, note that it was not a real book title but rather a favorite saying of Mr. Regan's. He attributed it to his friend, John (Buck) Chapoton, who claimed he heard the phrase appended to its obscene imperative during a poker game in Texas.
This is an example of a vestigial metaphor. It occurs in such phrases as ''my turn in the barrel'' or ''where were you when, etc.'' The jokes or anecdotes are deservedly forgotten, but the punch lines, or portions of them, live on. In this case, though the sentiment is not as elegantly expressed as in Churchill's alliterative ''in defeat, defiance,'' the intensifying message stands tall in the linguistic saddle.
Blitzaholic wrote:congratz to the newest Thota member: Jiminksi
welcome aboard
Am I correct in what I've read that THOTA have just accepted a challenge from The Spanking Monkeys, and Jiminski used to be in the Monki's, and now he's just joined you? Some controversy there, methinks.
Or is this just a complete wind-up?
Last edited by Duality. on Mon Nov 02, 2009 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Blitzaholic wrote:congratz to the newest Thota member: Jiminksi
welcome aboard
Am I correct in what I've read that THOTA have just accepted a challenge from The Spanking Monkeys, and Jiminski used to be in the Monki's, and now he's just joined you? Some controversy there, methinks.
Meh, it's not like jim was a huge asset in TSM's clan challenges (he hasn't play casual games since '08). Is that going to change?