bang bang

there was an anorexic boy in my yoga class this morning who wore neon yellow spandex tights and a tie dye tank that showed off his belly button piercing. he was accompanied by 2 female friends plus 1 of unidentifiable gender, and they giggled and whispered to each other until one of us finally told them to shut the fuck up. we all gave her a silent namaste.

on an unrelated tangent, i was considering the etymology of the phrase, "bust a cap in yo ass."

the phrase, according to urban dictionary, basically means to fire a gun at someone. "Cap" would refer to the bullet, since it's more likely that the bullet would be the thing ending up "in yo ass" than the gun itself, unless of course you got really crazy and actually fired a gun embedded inside of someone's ass, which would be rather impressive but a different kind of scenario altogether, more freakishly sexual than threateningly angry. anyways. so a cap, or percussion cap, is an antiquated piece of a gun, invented for more reliable shooting in bad weather. take it away, wiki:

The percussion cap is a small cylinder of copper or brass with one closed end. Inside the closed end is a small amount of a shock-sensitive explosive material such as fulminate of mercury. The percussion cap is placed over a hollow metal "nipple" at the rear end of the gun barrel. Pulling the trigger releases a hammer which strikes the percussion cap and ignites the explosive primer. The flame travels through the hollow nipple to ignite the main powder charge.

modern bullets now include a primer within its casing, which serves to replace the percussion cap.



before this invention, the percussion cap butted the primer which butted the ball. so, to recap. when someone feels homicidal tendencies towards you and threatens to "bust a cap in yo ass," they mean that they will pull the trigger which will cause the striker to hit the primer, or butt-end of the bullet, which will then crush and ignite, propelling the bullet out of the barrel and ultimately into your ass. but the phrase is "bust a cap in yo ass," not "bust a primer in yo ass," and as we have learned, while the design of the modern bullet technically replaced the percussion cap with the primer, the two pieces are separate and distinct. therefore, the phrase's historical reference creates a striking visual. the speaker intends to pull the trigger which will kick, crush, and explode the ass of the ass of the bullet, thereby killing (kicking, crushing, exploding) your ass. expresses the full and exact extent of speaker's rage.

fascinating.