It's from the days of punch-card computer programming:
"Each card had 12 rows (numbered 12, 11, then 0 through 9) and 80 columns. By punching holes in a column using a mechanical hand punch, you caused that column to have a meaning...Having punched your program onto a stack of several hundred cards, you took them to the computer room and delivered them to an operator, praying that he would not drop them (a computer program only works if its instructions are executed in the right order). The operator, in his own good time, would feed them into the card reader—"face down, 9 edge first", according to the instructions on the reader."
"Are you high, man? That Yoda scene wasn't tits; it was completely pants."
For some reason, I love this sentence madly.
Yes. I'm going to be muttering it under my breath all day.
I always thought "tits up" meant something akin to "kerplooey". As in "...and then the alarm went off and everything went tits up"
Tits up = pear shaped
That, oddly enough, has given me a form of enlightenment.
That, oddly enough, has given me a form of enlightenment.
Whereas for me I just have to scratch my head. I've understood tits up to mean something bad, but not why. Pear-shaped is even more perplexing.
"Are you high, man? That Yoda scene wasn't tits; it was completely pants."
For some reason, I love this sentence madly.
Yes. I'm going to be muttering it under my breath all day.
*preens quietly in cubicle*
Pear-shaped explained, sort of. Whereas "tits up" felt fairly straightforward to me, as that's the configuration you'd have were you dead. And had tits, 'course.
Surely you can be dead in any configuration.
But bodies tend to be placed in coffins for viewing -- face up.
