The Urban Garbage Dictionary

By Mink

I was having a brief conversation with my friend Joe the other night when it struck me that at no point in the conversation did we converse in normal English. The exchange consisted entirely of grunts and some sort of nonsensical code. Here is a little snippet (and no I don’t mean a circumcision you sicko):


Joe: Sana!
Me: Daaaaaaaaaaaa.
Joe: Hey man
Me: What up?
Joe: Nuthin whatchya you doin tonight?
Me: I dunno Grimple....It is really a what to do.
Joe: You are gross. Choices?
Me: Eh, maybe downtown maybe to Brenda.... Wanna meetcha?
Joe: Maybe I'll meetcha..... I'm tired though, not getting enough sleeptcha.

Now clearly there was little uttered in this Verizon to Verizon call that should make even remote sense to a reasonably sane observer. (It is also worth noting that I divide my friends and family into two categories: The Gold Members [a.k.a. the Verizon users] and the Assclowns [a.k.a. the other cell company users who eat up my peak minutes]. If it is the end of the billing cycle everyone but the Verizon Gold members are dead to me until the cycle starts over. This sadly includes my own Sprint using parents.)

Anyway, what you read above amazingly was an exchange between two pretty highly educated adult men. Sadly, such a conversation is par for the course for us. So I feel like it is necessary to devote some of a post to translating some of this bizarre code in which I converse with my less sane friends. So with out further ado, the Urban Garbage Dictionary:


“Sana” Pronunciation "sä-n&, (sounds like Donna)• noun

A nickname that derived from the heroic Solomon Milgrome. Born in 1903, Milgrome survived the Kossacks and several bullet wounds as a grocer in inner city Baltimore. At 104 years young, the man is unknowingly a cult figure for some twisted 20-somethings in Baltimore. The very first time I saw him he was a young 92, and he immediately approached my friend Joshy, and grabbed his long hair as he uttered an incomprehensible word we thought to be “Shithead.” One thing led to another and before I knew it I was writing school newspaper articles and college admission essays about him changing my life.

With the Sol Milgrome worship came a plethora of nicknames for anyone connected to us. The nicknames took many forms and featured numerous adaptations. Sana, for some reason is the one that is most popular today. Although it sounds nothing like his name, the root of sana comes from sanoma which comes from Milliams-Sanoma which comes from the cookbook Williams-Sonoma. The William was changed to Milliam after we decided, somewhere in the 1990’s, that Milliam was the official nickname for Mr. Milgrome. As such, everything that even rhymed with Milliam, such as the name Williams, was given this absurd Milliam name. Years later we dropped the Milliam, but for whatever reason Sana name still lives.
(other Sana variations include: Sanoma, Sans, Sanopa, and Sansy)

“Daaaaa” Pronunciation: just imagine some kind of dying animal • no grammatical description

Is a grunting sound that has become a common phone greeting especially when speaking to Zev. The grunt originated as an imitation of Zev’s sound effect just before he verbally dismisses something. The grunt is generally coupled with hand gesturing with rapid hand movements.

“Grimple” • Pronunciation: 'grim-p&l (like simple) • noun

Another variation of a Milgrome nickname that is far less attenuated than Sana. Originally the variations of the Grome part of his name included: Grums, Grooma, Grumple, Grumpelstiltskin. As counselors on a summer west coast trip, my friend Yoni and I had a bus full of spoiled Jewish 16 year olds calling each other these Grome type nicknames. And if you don’t believe me the trip sweatshirt designed by the brats themselves, prominently displays the phrase “AberGRUMbie and Fitch Company” on the front of the shirt.

“What to do?” • Pronunciation: figure it out yourself• can be used as a noun

This phrase originated in my heavy Madden playing days of 2005. Any time a remotely difficult strategic decision would arise in the video game, the player would usually slam down his controller as he rhetorically asked “what to do? what to do?” Now the “what to do’s” are thrown around in social situations like figuring out plans or deciding whether to eat a burger at 2 AM.

"Brenda" • Pronunciation: 'bren-da • noun

An extremely pleasant eye candy who bartends at the local tavern. Some sick individuals plan their visits around her shifts. Unfortunately the pickup line “I got my drinks, but didn’t get your number” has yet to pay dividends (besides for shelling out an unnecessarily large tip).

"Meetcha" • Pronunciation: 'mEt • verb

Our buddy “Big Baby” inadvertently started the widespread use of this word in late 2005. At the time he was doing pretty much nothing with his life. He would call you up and once you told him where you were--without any regard to the time of day or the proximity-- the Big Baby would have same two word response: “I’ll meetcha.” You could be in Tennessee at 4 am on Wednesday and he was always eager to meetcha. Obviously, the meetcha response took a life of its own and any word with even a few of the syllables of the word meet was changed to a form of meetcha (i.e. I’m hungry lets go grab some peetcha.”)

"Sleeptcha" • Pronunciation: 'slEp-ch(E-)• noun The act of sleeping when spoken in Meetcha language. See Meetcha above.

Example Sentence: It is ridiculous that I am up late and losing sleeptcha writing this blog entry.