Super Tiny Udders

[00:00] Alright, Coalson, let's take it home.
[00:05] Hopefully we can answer some questions for you.
[00:08] Do you have any burning questions you need to answer for this week?
[00:14] We do under Googles.
[00:27] That was the play of Super Excited.
[00:29] You told us we had to, sir.
[00:32] You said we signed up for it.
[00:37] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[00:41] This is funny. This may be one of the shortest ones we've ever done,
[00:45] but really, it's a burning question.
[00:47] It came to me today.
[00:49] I was walking to work, and there was a chocolate milkshake spilled on the sidewalk.
[00:59] And I was like, God, that is so tragic.
[01:02] That's just really awful.
[01:04] A chocolate milkshake is so delightful, and it's just spilled.
[01:08] And then I thought, there's a phrase similar to this.
[01:12] Don't cry over spilled milk.
[01:15] And I know what it means, but I started obsessing about when it came about
[01:19] and when the context would be, and whether it's the 50s or the 1800s.
[01:27] And I thought, you know what?
[01:28] I want to know the history of the phrase, don't cry over spilled milk,
[01:33] even though we kind of know what it means, but maybe it's from Shakespeare.
[01:36] I don't know.
[01:38] My friends know more stuff than I do, but that's my question.
[01:45] What's the history of don't cry over spilled milk?
[01:49] We've never done this before?
[01:51] No.
[01:52] Really?
[01:53] Because it seems almost too easy.
[01:55] We know what it means.
[01:56] Milk lobby, right?
[01:58] Big milk.
[02:00] Of course.
[02:02] Wasn't that what a band you were in?
[02:05] Big milk.
[02:11] Yeah, so the sentiment is basically like it's a trifle.
[02:16] It's a small thing.
[02:17] There's no reason getting super upset about it.
[02:20] Well, no, I always thought of it as there's nothing you can do about it.
[02:23] It's not that it's a trifle.
[02:25] It's that you can't put that milk back in that pail or back in that bottle.
[02:29] I always thought of it as like something that you would tell children
[02:34] so that they wouldn't be so upset.
[02:37] It's not that big of a deal.
[02:38] It's spilled milk.
[02:39] But maybe it's more, yeah.
[02:42] This is really interesting.
[02:45] Well, Coalson, I thought more along your lines,
[02:50] but it was also not for something super serious.
[02:55] Something happens.
[02:56] Whatever.
[02:57] Something happens.
[02:58] You can't do anything about it.
[02:59] You can't do anything about it.
[03:00] Don't cry over your spilled milk.
[03:02] It's already done.
[03:03] It's in the past.
[03:04] It's in the past.
[03:05] But you're right.
[03:06] There is some level of it, Jason, that it's a small matter that you can't fix.
[03:13] Right, because we already covered this.
[03:15] Because something that is like you can't do anything about it.
[03:20] The cat is out of the bag.
[03:22] The horse is out of the barn.
[03:24] The horse is out of the barn.
[03:26] There are other phrases.
[03:27] The cat is out of the horse, right?
[03:30] It's raining horses and cats.
[03:36] All these phrases are so familiar.
[03:37] I think we've done most of them.
[03:39] I'm smelling t-shirts in this conversation, so keep it coming.
[03:43] I will buy them all.
[03:46] So, you know, don't live in regret.
[03:51] Don't focus on that which you cannot change.
[03:55] Okay.
[03:56] I mean, that's really interesting.
[03:58] I mean, that makes me wonder whether it is, you know, originated in a different language
[04:04] and was poorly translated to ours or something, you know?
[04:10] Because, I mean, that's not a very...
[04:13] I don't know.
[04:14] It's a little zen for the American.
[04:19] Actually, we should be very upset about this milk that spilled, you know?
[04:24] Like, milk costs a lot of money or, you know, we worked really hard to get that milk pail
[04:29] or whatever, you know?
[04:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[04:31] Let me speak to the manager.
[04:32] I don't like to spill milk.
[04:44] But what was it, Harper?
[04:45] So, what is your, you know, your interpretation of this?
[04:49] I mean, I think my experience is cool.
[04:53] I think Joey summed it up pretty well for me.
[04:57] It's definitely something that I interpreted.
[04:59] I mean, it's definitely something that we tell our kids, right?
[05:02] And so the context that comes with that is interesting, right?
[05:09] You know, I just...it's definitely something that, you know, it can't be done.
[05:16] It can't be done, right?
[05:18] So, move on.
[05:20] But it's definitely something that you only use for less drastic things, right?
[05:26] It's not something that you would apply.
[05:28] Even though the facts remain the same, right?
[05:31] If a mistake has been made, right?
[05:34] I mean, you do have to learn from it and move on, right?
[05:37] But we don't deploy the phrase in that way.
[05:39] We only deploy it in situations where we deem the consequences less severe, right?
[05:47] Yeah, no.
[05:48] So, like, if a kid spills milk and you, like, hey, there's a phrase for this,
[05:53] like, and the kid's freaking out, which happens.
[05:55] I've seen it happen.
[05:56] A lot of milk.
[05:57] I remember spilling a lot of milk as a kid.
[06:00] Yeah.
[06:01] And you freak out.
[06:02] And you're like, yeah.
[06:03] Luckily, they loved me.
[06:04] Otherwise, they would have hated me.
[06:05] That was terrible.
[06:07] But, like, that's the thing, right?
[06:08] It's like, okay, well, this is...there's nothing we could do about it.
[06:11] This is replaceable.
[06:12] But, I mean, like, you're right.
[06:14] We don't say it where, like, you know, if you accidentally cut your foot off
[06:20] with an axe, we're not like, oh, don't cry over spilled milk.
[06:22] Yeah, exactly.
[06:23] Walk it off.
[06:25] There's no don't cry over a crashed car.
[06:27] We don't have that.
[06:28] Right, right, right.
[06:29] Exactly.
[06:30] Yeah.
[06:31] Well, that must mean that the phrase comes from a time when milk is less precious, right?
[06:37] When it's more easily gettable or mass-produced.
[06:42] We're not just, like, milking it ourselves.
[06:44] I suppose if you had a cow.
[06:46] Or the terms meaning has changed over time.
[06:50] Mm-hmm.
[06:51] Okay.
[06:52] Mm-hmm.
[06:55] I would say that the value of milk is, you know, I mean, it's accessibility.
[07:02] I mean, think post-refrigeration, right?
[07:06] Right, exactly.
[07:07] Right.
[07:08] This has got to be the most available it's been, right?
[07:10] Yeah.
[07:11] I mean, today you got all kinds of milk.
[07:16] I mean, would you advise a child to cry over, like, spilled oat milk?
[07:22] Yeah.
[07:23] That stuff is expensive.
[07:24] Yeah, yeah.
[07:25] That's right.
[07:26] At least shed a tear for how much money I've got to go to spend to replace that.
[07:30] Yeah.
[07:31] Just one tear, you know.
[07:32] Why aren't you crying?
[07:37] Timmy, do you realize what you've done?
[07:41] Think of all the oats.
[07:42] How many oats had to be milked for this?
[07:44] It's so hard to milk an oat.
[07:47] It really is.
[07:48] Really tiny udders.
[07:51] That was another band you were in, right?
[07:53] That was the only popular band I was in, actually.
[07:59] We got some traction.
[08:00] Super commercially viable.
[08:02] That's right.
[08:06] The latest album from Big Milk.
[08:16] And I'm guessing you could use these for your farmer's market band, too.
[08:19] I think these are out there.
[08:20] Yeah.
[08:21] Super tiny udders is definitely, this should be your band name.
[08:25] That's right.
[08:30] So, okay.
[08:31] So, since refrigeration, this phrase could have come into use that would make sense.
[08:38] But I agree with you, Harper.
[08:40] Like, this may have nothing to do with milk.
[08:43] I mean, clearly, at some point, it has to do with milk.
[08:45] But we may be getting it.
[08:48] Like I'm saying, it could be from Shakespeare.
[08:53] There was no refrigeration with Shakespeare.
[08:55] Yeah.
[08:58] This seems very, this seems German to me.
[09:00] I don't know why.
[09:01] Seems like this was brought over by German immigrants to the Americas or something like that.
[09:08] Like, it's a very practical phrase.
[09:12] It's, yeah, don't waste your time.
[09:17] Yeah.
[09:18] Go make more milk.
[09:20] There's nothing we can do about it to make more milk.
[09:23] Visit Bessie and give me another glass of milk.
[09:25] Yeah.
[09:26] No, I'm with you.
[09:27] Austro-German.
[09:30] Okay.
[09:31] Okay.
[09:32] That's pretty good.
[09:33] That's pretty solid.
[09:34] So, what era are we thinking then?
[09:35] You're saying before the Americas?
[09:40] Well, I think, I mean, I don't know.
[09:42] That's a good question.
[09:43] Like, I was sort of envisioning, you know, German immigrants to the states or something
[09:48] like that.
[09:49] I don't know why.
[09:50] It seems very pastoral American type phrase.
[09:54] But maybe that's because that's the only context in which I've heard it, you know?
[10:00] Yeah, I don't know.
[10:03] Yeah.
[10:04] I mean, if you're truly agrarian, right, then you can literally just go milk the cow yourself.
[10:10] Go milk the cow.
[10:11] Well, and that's why you shouldn't cry over spilt milk, right?
[10:14] Like, on some level, like, the cow is right there, right?
[10:17] Like, let's just go get more milk.
[10:20] Yeah.
[10:21] So, I'm wondering if it's, like, actually from farmers, right, before the refrigeration.
[10:26] Yeah.
[10:27] Like, it's not about, you know, consumers that go buy milk at the store.
[10:31] I mean, because, I mean, they're, you know, poor folks, you know, buying milk is a real
[10:36] expense.
[10:37] So, you're telling me it's not during the Industrial Revolution?
[10:39] Like, we can, like, block that out.
[10:41] Like, during urbanization is probably, right, it's either post-refrigeration or, you know,
[10:49] pre-industrial revolution.
[10:51] Yes.
[10:52] Yeah.
[10:53] Yeah.
[10:54] That's my guess.
[10:55] I think that makes a lot of sense.
[10:57] Or Shakespeare.
[10:59] Or Shakespeare.
[11:01] Or falconry.
[11:02] Or falconry, of course.
[11:04] Didn't we come up with a new category last week, Joey?
[11:07] Last time we...
[11:08] It was our thing.
[11:10] Probably.
[11:11] Oh.
[11:12] I mean, seafaring is...
[11:14] Seafaring is the thing, for sure.
[11:17] Right.
[11:18] Pirates definitely cried over spilled milk, if they had any.
[11:21] So...
[11:22] Big cry over anything, though.
[11:26] Yeah.
[11:27] Cry babies.
[11:28] Big cry babies.
[11:30] I really like this, like, German immigrant thing.
[11:33] I'm super into it.
[11:34] Okay.
[11:35] Yeah.
[11:36] And they could be the pastoral Germans, you know, like the, let's go, like, late
[11:42] 1700s.
[11:43] Mm-hmm.
[11:44] Mm-hmm.
[11:45] And probably in German it means clean that up before I beat your head in, but somehow
[11:49] when they brought it over here, it turned into don't cry over spilled milk, you know,
[11:53] just like poor translation.
[11:55] Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
[11:57] Exactly.
[11:58] It's very practical.
[11:59] I found some things.
[12:01] Okay.
[12:02] That doesn't sound like good things for me.
[12:04] Well, no.
[12:05] It's interesting that this is the first one that I know that I've seen that there is
[12:11] a national day.
[12:14] February 11th is national don't cry over spilled milk day.
[12:19] That's definitely big dairy.
[12:22] That is big dairy.
[12:23] Oh, for sure.
[12:24] Mm-hmm.
[12:25] For sure.
[12:26] I'm saying the first historical reference appears in a document written by British
[12:31] historian James Howell in 1659.
[12:34] Okay.
[12:35] The same most likely comes from European folklore.
[12:38] Yeah.
[12:41] In that one with James Howell, it's no weeping for shed milk.
[12:46] All right.
[12:48] Very similar.
[12:49] And this is, I'm on punchwool.com.
[12:51] They say, according to the old tales, fairies were particularly fond of milk and
[12:56] would drink up any spills left behind.
[12:59] Yeah.
[13:02] No.
[13:03] All I can get back is that 1659 is as far back as I can see it.
[13:10] Jonathan Swift used it in the polite conversation in 1738.
[13:17] So I guess the English, not the Germans.
[13:21] Let's see what it seems like.
[13:22] I mean, age old idiom.
[13:25] Right.
[13:26] Right.
[13:27] Yeah.
[13:28] It seems like maybe this was pretty pervasive and one of those things that
[13:32] was in the vernacular before anybody was using it in literature, which
[13:38] happens so often with these idioms.
[13:40] For sure.
[13:42] So we're close, though.
[13:43] I mean, I think, you know, off by a few countries.
[13:48] But I mean, yeah, you're right.
[13:49] By a few countries in a hundred years.
[13:51] But like, you know, we said late 17th century, no?
[13:55] 1700s.
[13:56] Fairies were involved.
[13:57] Yeah.
[13:58] Well, I think we said 17th century, not 1700s, right?
[14:01] Oh, okay.
[14:02] Then we were.
[14:03] Well, we'll have to look at the tape.
[14:05] Right.
[14:07] I'm not going to look at the tape and say we nailed it.
[14:09] Right.
[14:10] We just just doubled down.
[14:11] That's how we do things is these days.
[14:13] Nobody can prove otherwise.
[14:15] Right.
[14:16] Not after the edit.
[14:18] It would be like 17.
[14:27] Don't cry over spilled milk.
[14:28] They promote a positive attitude, even when things might not be
[14:32] going your way.
[14:33] And there's a, this is on the national day calendar dot com.
[14:37] And there's a picture of a woman at the kitchen counter basically
[14:41] just pouring milk onto the counter.
[14:50] That really captures the whole spirit of the thing.
[14:54] How to observe.
[14:55] Be prepared.
[14:56] Okay.
[14:59] Expect the unexpected.
[15:01] Have a backup plan.
[15:06] Breathe.
[15:10] Okay.
[15:11] So yeah,
[15:12] I'll remember to breathe next year.
[15:14] Yeah.
[15:17] So a couple of a couple of fun facts.
[15:20] You already mentioned the fairies, right?
[15:24] So apparently the idea was if you spilled milk, it was considered
[15:29] nothing more than an extra offering for the fairies that
[15:33] they would often leave out food for you said that.
[15:37] So maybe you're trying to like get your kids to calm down and
[15:39] say, Oh, don't worry.
[15:40] It's for the fairies.
[15:41] Sure.
[15:43] Which I don't know.
[15:44] Is that scary or not?
[15:45] I don't know.
[15:47] Oh, right.
[15:48] I don't know.
[15:50] I did find Coalson.
[15:51] I'm surprised you even brought this up.
[15:54] But there is a, there is a drink called the spilled milk.
[15:59] I don't know how to make that.
[16:01] But I'll give you the ingredients right now.
[16:03] It's an ounce and a half of rye whiskey, quarter ounce
[16:07] amaretto, half ounce milk, liqueur, half ounce cherry
[16:12] shrub, a pinch of sea salt flakes, two lemon wedges, and a
[16:18] dash of apricot kernel bitters.
[16:21] And your garnish, of course, is a lemon twist, of course,
[16:24] or a ginger snap cookie.
[16:26] You make the call.
[16:28] I don't have several of those things.
[16:31] So I'm just going to assume that that got its name from
[16:34] people seeing that drink again.
[16:38] Or I was thinking just knocking over the glass when it
[16:41] was served to them.
[16:44] I'm going to have to have something else.
[16:46] Whiskey sour.
[16:48] Yeah.
[16:49] You have beer too, right?
[16:50] Beer's beer's good.
[16:55] I've told you guys that story before, right, with who is
[17:00] the old governor?
[17:01] Mitch Daniels.
[17:03] I was bartending and he came in to dinner one night and
[17:08] he ordered a drink and we didn't have a couple of the
[17:10] ingredients.
[17:11] A drink sort of like this.
[17:12] We just didn't have a couple of the ingredients at
[17:13] Chinese restaurant.
[17:14] Like, you know, we've got, you know, the normal, you
[17:16] know, the base stuff and then a couple other fancier
[17:19] things.
[17:20] And then we just didn't have certain things.
[17:21] I just said, told the service, like, we just don't
[17:23] have this.
[17:24] Ask him to order something else.
[17:25] And he's like, no, no, no, just do the best you can.
[17:27] And I did.
[17:28] And it was, and I was like, I'm making this drink.
[17:29] I'm like, I know it's not good.
[17:31] And I do the best I can.
[17:33] Like, what am I going to do here?
[17:35] So he, uh, uh, he, he politics his way out of that
[17:39] by doing that.
[17:40] He accidentally knocked it over and then ordered a
[17:42] beer immediately afterwards.
[17:44] Oh, wow.
[17:45] That is a politician right there.
[17:47] Yeah.
[17:48] Well done.
[17:49] Well done, Mitch Daniels.
[17:50] Can I ask what the drink was?
[17:52] Um, it was like a, like an old fashioned or
[17:55] something like, I don't even, I don't remember
[17:58] specifically, but it was, uh, or, uh, what's a, what's
[18:03] an old man drink?
[18:04] What's an old white man drink?
[18:06] A Manhattan?
[18:07] No, no, no, not a man.
[18:08] A gimlet?
[18:09] No.
[18:10] An old man drink with heavy cream.
[18:12] A rusty nail.
[18:16] We're going to say he ordered a white Russian.
[18:18] Yeah.
[18:19] No, the rusty, none of those have like enough
[18:22] ingredients to be a pain in the butt.
[18:24] Right.
[18:25] Right.
[18:26] Okay.
[18:27] You need, you need a lot, neither does an old
[18:30] fashioned though.
[18:31] So it's probably not.
[18:32] It's true.
[18:33] An old fashioned.
[18:34] Yeah.
[18:35] I don't think.
[18:36] But anyway, he, uh, he did an expert politician
[18:40] job.
[18:41] For sure.
[18:42] Maybe, was it like an aviation?
[18:45] Potentially.
[18:46] I don't even know what that is.
[18:48] It was one that I had to go look up in the book.
[18:50] That's, that's the kind of drink it was.
[18:52] You didn't call me.
[18:53] You didn't, I'm like, it's like phone a friend.
[18:56] It's a bartending emergency.
[19:00] You, uh, didn't call you.
[19:02] You didn't have a cell phone at the time.
[19:04] Oh, we're supposed to get ahold of you.
[19:06] It was called the restaurant that he worked at.
[19:09] I had to, I had to call you from my house
[19:12] to tell you I was coming over to your place.
[19:14] So you knew it'd be around 20 minutes.
[19:16] And then I would get a pulling and I would
[19:18] honk the horn so you could come down and let me in.
[19:20] Cause I could not call you.
[19:21] I had no.
[19:22] And we also had no buzzer.
[19:23] So.
[19:24] Right.
[19:25] That was the last person you knew to get a cell phone.
[19:31] I think we discussed pitching it to get you a pager,
[19:33] but then those were like prohibitively expensive for some reason.
[19:37] Uh, do you remember when I was leaving your house
[19:40] and I ran out of gas and, uh, I came back to the house
[19:43] and of course I couldn't get in and I didn't have a cell phone.
[19:46] So I threw rocks at your window and for like,
[19:49] I don't know, 20 minutes and realized that wasn't going to happen.
[19:52] So I went back to my car and I got the gas can out.
[19:54] And I was walking to a gas station and this guy stops me.
[19:57] He's like, why are you going that way?
[19:59] I'm like, well, I'm trying to get gas.
[20:01] And he's like, you shouldn't walk around with a gas can
[20:03] in this neighborhood.
[20:05] You're going to get jumped.
[20:06] Let me walk you to this other gas station.
[20:08] So we walked way out of the way to this other gas station.
[20:11] And the whole time he was telling me about his plan,
[20:13] if I could just come up with a few dollars,
[20:15] there was this house we could stay at.
[20:18] As long as we bought some drugs,
[20:19] they'd let us spend the night.
[20:21] Um, and then I got my gas.
[20:25] And, uh, used to pay phone where you have to hang up,
[20:30] you know, before like the answering machine,
[20:32] because I only had like 50 cents or whatever.
[20:34] You have to keep hanging up right before the answering machine picks it up
[20:37] until my girlfriend woke up so she could drive and pick me up.
[20:43] Do you still carry a gas can around in your car?
[20:46] This is like a concerning piece of inventory to even own.
[20:52] I run a, no, that car, uh, the gas tank, uh, the meter was broken.
[20:57] So like, I just always assumed I would run out of gas.
[21:00] So I just had the gas can in the, in the, in the trunk at all times.
[21:03] I tried to keep, you know, track of it,
[21:05] but like once you're doing city drive,
[21:07] like when you're going cross country and be like, all right,
[21:08] I need to stop.
[21:09] But like, you know, city driving, you can, you can lose.
[21:12] Oh, oh, also the issue was, um, oh, that's right.
[21:17] Joey, you had to jump my car for me to leave
[21:19] because my battery was dead.
[21:21] So I didn't want to go get gas because if I stopped,
[21:24] I would have to turn the car off and then I would have to get,
[21:27] and it was like two in the morning.
[21:29] I didn't want somebody to jump my car at two in the morning.
[21:31] So even though I got gas,
[21:33] the girlfriend still had to come and jump the car.
[21:38] Nailed it.
[21:39] I needed a cell phone.
[21:42] Glad you made it out of that one alive.
[21:44] I don't know how I, I don't know how I made it through my twenties.
[21:47] Honestly, triple A would have been the option, I think.
[21:52] But I was only like 10 minute drive from home.
[21:55] You were a several hour drive from home.
[21:57] At least.
[22:01] You are an all matter away from home.
[22:05] You know, nowadays I would have been like,
[22:07] I'm not going to cry over this spilt milk.
[22:08] I'm going to go with this guy to this drug den and just see what happens.
[22:13] You know, that's your answer for everything I've evolved.
[22:17] Thank you.