The Meaning of Pluggers turns 30

Pluggers, 20150827:

Today, "Plugger" means "Someone who uses food to cover the gaping wound in their soul where music should be".

Makes sense, really. If you have no funky flow, no sick beats, no song in your heart, no poetry, no art, nothing but jealousy at ordinary people and their ability to tune in with the fundamental harmonics of the universe and lay down some fresh jams, then why wouldn't you pretend to be joking about fruit preserves being more "your kind" of jam to hide your pain?

I'm not sure if it's funny, though.

Your humble critic's plugger status: My singing is better than my cooking.

The Meaning of Pluggers, part 20

Pluggers, 20150815:

Today, "Plugger" means "Person who uses cash".

This can seem old-fashioned and quaint to some people. Some people even want to get rid of cash altogether, reasoning that every legitimate place of business should be able to afford a card reader and the banks' fees for using said card readers. And every legitimate person should be able to afford a debit card with an accredited bank.

This lie is nearly as dangerous as money itself. It places more power in the hands of the powerful, it pushes not having money closer to actually being a crime in itself, and it makes the economy even further removed from reality than it already is.

I believe something like 3% of all the money in existence has physical form. The rest is a shell game, a parlor trick, a soap bubble, a breath, a heartbeat in between the moment where we have our fun and the moment where our bill comes due. Someone, at some point in the future, will suffer for this imbalance; this koyaanisqatsi.

And I'm almost certain it won't be the banks.

Your humble critic's plugger status: Poor enough to use paper money almost every day.

The Meaning of Pluggers, part 16

Pluggers, 20150811:

Today, "Plugger" means "Someone who jealously guards their cookie recipe to the point where they literally cannot imagine anything worse than seeing it published on the local gossip magazine's website where other people may get to enjoy it".

Note, by the way, how in this nightmare Mr Chicken (or is ir Mr Dog? How do fable creature marriages work?) displays an appropriate amount of slack-jawed, newspaper-dropping shock at this horrendous turn of events. In this worst of all possible worlds, hubby is there for her. He doesn't really matter; his reaction is irrelevant, as are his comforts. Deep down, all Mrs Chicken loves is that no one else can have her peach muffins. All she cares about.

Anyway, I was going to make a joke about how no hacker in the world could be paid to leak Ma Chicken's secret recipe, or about how utterly unbelievable it is that she'd store such information on an electronic device, but then I thought over what kind of characters and authors we're talking about here and realized when this chicken woman says "We've been hacked" what she means is that Mrs Rabbit looted her recipe box when they were over for supper last time and the local gossip magazine's website is having a field day with it.

I'm your humble critic, and I believe truth should be told.