Duct tape, hot melt glue, rubber bands and walt disney

Antney

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I'm working on a project at my house, and plumbing parts won't be in for a few days, so to hold us over until they arrive i mickey moused the thing together. my wife asks "why mickey mouse...why didn't you donald duck it together?" good question. does anyone know why we mickey mouse things together instead of pluto or goofy them?



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chazmo

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That's a great question. Somehow "Mickey Mouse" got into the vernacular to mean a sloppy or a poor solution to a problem. In a way this is similar to "MacGuyver" where a clever solution but usually very temporary is found. and also a character from the media.

Curious as well, but not willing to answer the question with web searches. :)
 

walrus

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Makes you wonder about Guild's "Mickey Mouse" pickups...

walrus
 

GAD

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That there’s an explanation for. I’m on mobile though.
 

Nuuska

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Hello

No idea why - but over here when something is not good quality it is often referred as Mikki Hiiri
 

fronobulax

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Never heard "Mickey Mouse" used that way as a verb. As an adjective a "Mickey Mouse" solution was one that was not serious and it is pretty easy to get from there to substandard. Not serious pretty much described all cartoons at one time and Mickey Mouse was one of the first. I have no idea whether this is correct enough to address the question or not.

"jury rigged" was the more common term in polite society around me and kludge became my preferred slang after I started writing software.
 

beecee

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.

"jury rigged" was the more common term in polite society around me .

+1..

my wife asks "why mickey mouse...why didn't you donald duck it together

Donald Duck tape??/ Cute!
 

adorshki

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I myself thought it only dated back to the late '50's/ early '60s in reference to the poor quality of Japanese toys of the era, of which Disney characters were a popular staple.
The cheap knock-off watch origin seemed credible but can't find any evidence they actually existed in the '30's by the time the derogatory connotation was already in use.
The originals (in fact all of the "legit ones") were made by some pretty decent quality outfits:
http://blog.watchdoctor.biz/2017/06/05/history-of-the-mickey-mouse-watch/
And they took their watches pretty seriously back then.
Additionally, my Grampa actually worked in a lab developing color film process for Disney back in the '30's, and he was a bit of a watch buff himself.
But don't recall him ever using the term.

SO a little more digging turns up this etymology which I suspect is the real origin:
From here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=105282

"the true origin seems to be in the jazz world. According to the
Online Etymology Dictionary (a source that I've found trustworthy in
the past):

"Mickey mouse (adj.) 'small and worthless' is from 1936, originally
used especially of mediocre dance-band music, a put-down based on the
type of tunes played as background in cartoon films ...."


Besides other comments in that post, it would also tie in with the fact that jazz/dance bands were huge in speakeasys prior to '36 and then even more important in America's entertainment life after the end of prohibition, and certainly in demand in the studios.
Funny thing is, when I hear some of the old 30's soundtracks I really love the stuff, thinking especially of Fleischer Studios' Betty Boop cartoons.
Which perhaps not surprisingly were based in NY where the jazz scene was likely a lot more "serious".
From that Wiki article:

The "Jazz Baby" Flapper character, Betty Boop lifted the spirits of Depression Era audiences with her paradoxical mixture of childlike innocence and sexual allure. And being a musical novelty character, she was a natural for theatrical entertainment. Several of her early cartoons were developed as promotional vehicles for some of the top Black Jazz performers of the day including Louis Armstrong (I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal, You), Don Redman (I Heard), and most notably, the three cartoons made with Cab Calloway, Minnie the Moocher, Snow White, and The Old Man of the Mountain. This was considered a bold action in light of the Jim Crow policies active in the South where such films would not be shown.


Fleischer was actually the top-dog animation studio in the '30's too, Disney was its biggest competitor.
Thanks for sending me down the rabbit-hole, Beecee!
 
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Quantum Strummer

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Kludge has been my fav term of its ilk since my first programming class, c. 1975. Along with spaghettified, referring to functional but poorly organized (and typically undocumented) code. Though these days spaghettified has a more astrophysics-oriented meaning. :)

-Dave-
 

adorshki

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Never heard "Mickey Mouse" used that way as a verb.
Yeah, but there's a common linguistic tendency in English to re-purpose nouns and adjectives as verbs.
Curiously enough I recall somebody saying it was a "Jewish thing" when I was a kid.
Not in a derogatory sense, I think it was actually a youth group rabbi trying to teach the concept of looking at words in new ways, and how they shape whole populations' worldviews.
Might have even been Shlomo Carlebach himself, the youth rabbi (in training) was one of his students , the group saw him in San Fransisco periodically when he came to town..
Just remember the concept stuck.
"jury rigged" was the more common term in polite society around me and kludge became my preferred slang after I started writing software.
Yeah think what's going on here is the eternal re-molding of English which is one of my pet peeves when it comes to news anchors these days.
They can't remember the original term and re-purpose another one, obscuring that term's real original meaning in the process.
The phrase "Hone in" for example never existed before the last decade**, the real term is "home in" as in homing pigeon and even more precisely "homing signal" radio navigation aids and direction finders.
Somebody apparently didn't hear it correctly one day and decided that "honing in", derived from sharpening a tool but never used that way in that context, was the same thing as "homing in".
OK I'm done.
**At least I never heard it used that way, but Merriam Webster cites '65 as the earliest known date of usage, but don't cite where that occurred:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/home-in-or-hone-in
In any case when folks use "hone in" for "home in" these days, it obscures the meaning of "hone" as in "to hone one's skills".
OK NOW I'm done.
:untroubled:
 

Quantum Strummer

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For ages I thought jury-rigged derived from jerry-rigged (a term my Scots mum was fond of using) but in fact it's the other way 'round. "Jury" was a nautical term, referring to improvising a temporary fix to something. "Captain, the main mast has cracked!" "No matter, ensign, we can jury it back together."

-Dave-
 

chazmo

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I jerry-rigged and mickey-moused this macguyverish thing while I honed in on my perfect kludge.

-- Rube Goldberg
 

GAD

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Language is fluid. It is not a dictionary’s purpose to define language, but rather to explain its current usage. That was a hard lesson for me to learn.
 

chazmo

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For ages I thought jury-rigged derived from jerry-rigged (a term my Scots mum was fond of using) but in fact it's the other way 'round. "Jury" was a nautical term, referring to improvising a temporary fix to something. "Captain, the main mast has cracked!" "No matter, ensign, we can jury it back together."

-Dave-

So funny, Dave. As I was typing that (intentionally) awful sentence above (which I attributed to Rube Goldberg), I was making fun of the evolution of jury rig to jerry rig. Wonder what caused that one.
 

Nuuska

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I jerry-rigged and mickey-moused this macguyverish thing while I honed in on my perfect kludge.

-- Rube Goldberg
Shouldnt that be "I jerry-rigged and mickey-moused this macguyverish do-hickey while I honed in on my perfect kludge."
 

adorshki

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Shouldnt that be "I jerry-rigged and mickey-moused this macguyverish do-hickey while I honed in on my perfect kludge."
It's "doohickey".
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/doohickey
:glee:

Language is fluid. It is not a dictionary’s purpose to define language, but rather to explain its current usage. That was a hard lesson for me to learn.

"Word".
Even I have to admit I used to tell my schoolmarm Gramma who was responsible for my precocious literacy and love of language:
"Gramma, y'can't fight common usage"
But that was back in my '30's before I got smart.
:glee:
 
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