throw another bear in the canoe

My uncle is black Irish. His family was a branch of a merchant family who set up an office in Ireland. A dubset of that subset emigrated to the US years later.

"A dubset of that subset"... That would be Jamaican black Irish, then?

I wish I could have transcribed the "conversation" that I couldn't avoid overhearing on the train Friday morning (as was the case for anybody within 20 feet) between a young woman and her sister as she was on her way to court to stand trial for stealing a car.

Let's just say the FCC would have charged them rather a lot.

My own favourite was a few years ago, on a MARTA train here in Atlanta. A young man, clearly Mexican, speaking a mix of Mexican Spanish and English, with every other word a swear word in either English or Spanish. At one point somebody, fortunately absent, was referred to as, if I recall correctly a 'motherfucking chingón'.

Overheard in the street market a couple of years ago, from an older woman looking at the Bonzai trees on the market stall

"Oh, look, the poor things are pot-bound. They need repotting."

I was walking across Harvard yard in, oh, say spring of 1997, when two men came up behind me, passed me and continued on out of earshot. What I heard was - in a very educated British accent -

"...of things which are neither machine nor human but something in between, and of the process of maturation of a fetus, and of the crab nebula..."

Then they were gone.

I figure, if I keep telling this story, one day I'll meet one of them, and I'll be able to ask them about the bits I missed.

...I think that is the story. What you just said, and did.

Good, but still nothing compared to "But it's a monkey."

Nothing ever is. *g*

It's true. They're like the perfect storm of primate-focused conversations.

Best thing I've ever overheard, hands down, was a conversation between two women at a fabric store--

Woman #1: Was he at least good-looking?
Woman #2: Child, he wasn't just ugly, he was goat-ass ugly.

I was going to just reply to Bear and say that I loved the black irish and the jury line, but "he was goat-ass ugly" has to be one of the best things I've read today (and I read a good 200 pages of Joe Abercrombie's delightfully vicious prose). Thank you for that, person I do not know.

You're quite welcome, person I also do not know. :)

*sporfle* @ goat-ass ugly - that's soooooo good!

I overheard two women talking about an unexpected impending grandchild (waiting room with me as captive audience). Potential new grandma says, "I'm-a teach that baby to look at her daddy and say, 'Twiggy-headed bastahd,' mmm-hmm."

btw - icon lust! Sir Anthony's 1st role, wasn't it? TLIW is my 2nd favorite movie.

I once overheard a woman saying "Stress? You don't know stress till you've bathed six parrots!"

I so wanted to hear the parrot story.

That's just shiny. *g*

I love the anonymity of cities, and the stuff people say.

My best one *ever* was a guy on the bus. "Since I went back to being a gangster, I got all my Christmas shopping done."

Two students walking through the park, and the girl-student said to the boy-student, "..Yes, but you only went because you fancied the Tasmanian Devil shower-curtain."

Standing on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, my husband and I overheard an American-accented voice say, "You take this sheep, see, and everything you can't use any other way..."

The speaker walked out of earshot, and we turned to one another and said, at the same moment, "I fancy a haggis."

Hah!