Cracker

Formed from the ashes of Camper Van Beethoven in 1989, Cracker is David Lowery's current Pitch-a-Tent project. David joined ranks with old Monks of Doom pal Johnny Hickman, a brilliant guitarist with a smile that can make you feel like you're best friends...even though you're sitting in the tenth row.

Whereas Camper focused on the psychedelic weird and indie-odd Cracker has a classic-southern-roots rock and roll feel with plenty of guitars and a pedal steel poking through here and there. Lowery's mopey-weird lyrics always have that sardonic edge you've come to crave and Hickman can lick around with the best of them...4 albums to date:

• Cracker
• Kerosene Hat
• The Golden Age
• Gentleman's Blues

The tool used to crack open a canister containing nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas or "whip-its."
The simplest crackers look like a short fat cigar that unscews at the middle to form two equally sized, hollow pieces.
One of the pieces is solid and smooth inside, while the other side has a sharp protrusion of metal (pointing inward) next to a small hole at the very end.

To use the cracker, place a canister of nitrous inside with the sealed end pointing toward the protrusion and hole. Screw the back end on until the seal is punctured, and you're on your way.

You can buy plastic or metal crackers, though metal is best as the extreme cold may cause the plastic to become brittle. Aluminum crackers are good, although the best are brass like the Brass Monkey.
It is also possible to make your own out of pvc piping and a little know-how.

A television show (originally from the UK, remade for US audiences) about a criminal psychologist named Fitz - who probably has deeper problems than his cases. He helps the police solve freaky murders, by smoking and putting out a stream of often non-sensical psychobabble, then suddenly cutting through it all with simple but harshly worded insights.

Played in the UK by Robbie Coltrane, I don't know who plays the part in the US version. Certainly the UK version was cool, worth catching a repeat. I read somewhere that the US version had been neutered and was kinda shit. But then UK reviews always say that about US adaptations of shows, so I can't judge.

crack root = C = cracking

cracker n.

One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of hacker (q.v., sense 8). An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this sense around 1981-82 on Usenet was largely a failure.

Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. The neologism "cracker" in this sense may have been influenced not so much by the term "safe-cracker" as by the non-jargon term "cracker", which in Middle English meant an obnoxious person (e.g., "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?" - Shakespeare's King John, Act II, Scene I) and in modern colloquial American English survives as a barely gentler synonym for "white trash".

While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past larval stage is expected to have outgrown the desire to do so except for immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if it's necessary to get around some security in order to get some work done).

Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than the mundane reader misled by sensationalistic journalism might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to describe themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life.

Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than breaking into someone else's has to be pretty losing. Some other reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on cracking and phreaking. See also samurai, dark-side hacker, and hacker ethic. For a portrait of the typical teenage cracker, see warez d00dz.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

Cracker's eponymous first album. One of my favorite albums, cause it just makes me happy. Starts off with the radio-endorsed
Teen Angst, (what the world needs now, is another folk singer, like I need a hole in my head) then moves along nicely with
Happy Birthday to Me, and then
This is Cracker Soul.
I See the Light comes next, a song that reminds me of the summer after graduating high school, and then
St. Cajetan. The somewhat humorous
Mr. Wrong occupies the next track, which may be the last song on the side, the CD doesn't mention such things, but I think it's more likely
Someday, cause then side two would start with
Can I Take My Gun To Heaven?, which seems like a fun song to start with. After that comes
Satisfy You, a song I can take or leave, and then
Another Song About the Rain, a song I'd much rather take, sad though it is.
Don't Fuck Me Up(With Peace and Love) comes next, and the whole thing finishes off with
Dr. Bernice, an excellent song, slow but tuneful, and providing that oh-so-essential essence of Cracker, the wistful guitar tucked in between the boistrous, smiling songs.

Cracker is a slang term with innumerable meanings. Today it is most often used as a more technical term for a malevolent hacker, but in the past is was used as slang for a bean (1900), a dollar (1933), a remarkable person (1863), or most frequently, as a derogatory term for a white person. The first recorded use of these sense was in 1766, when it was used to refer to the lawless backwoodsmen of the American frontier.

"I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode."

-- From a letter dated June 27, 1766 from Captain Gavin Cochrane to the Earl of Dartmouth.

This usage probably comes from the use of crack from the 1500s onward to mean a boast, the same meaning that gave us the phrase 'not what it's cracked up to be' and the word 'wisecrack'. It continued to be used to refer to a particularly unsavory country bumpkin until at least the 1980s, and may well still be used in this sense today, although I have not heard it used so myself. It has much the same meaning as redneck or perhaps white trash, and implies that one is loud, uncouth, unhygienic, untrustworthy, poor, and has a strong back-country accent.

In the early 1920s it became common for cracker to refer instead to a white racist (that is, a white person who was racist against blacks) by African-American writers during the Harlem Renaissance. By the late 1960s, the term was widely recognized as one of the more offensive terms specifically, and for the most part, exclusively, used by black persons to insult a white person. (Honkey was also popular during this time.) This sense largely faded out by the 1980s, although it is still used in this sense today. These days it is generally not seen as too terribly offensive, and has lost some of the overtones of calling someone a racist. It is, however, still rude.

---

While cracker has been used at varies times and places in America to mean something good, nice, or impressive, including the famous crackerjack, this usage has fallen out of popularity. Wertperch informs me that it is still used in the positive sense in the UK. "'Cracker' is used in parts of the UK for something really good, or an attractive woman. 'That's a cracker!' means a superlative; 'She's a cracker!' means she's just gorgeous."

Crack"er (kr?k"?r), n.

1.

One who, or that which, cracks.

2.

A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.

[Obs.]

What cracker is this same that deafs our ears? Shak.

3.

A small firework, consisting of a little powder inclossed in a thick paper cylinder with a fuse, and exploding with a sharp noise; -- often called firecracker.

4.

A thin, dry biscuit, often hard or crisp; as, a Boston cracker; a Graham cracker; a soda cracker; an oyster cracker.

5.

A nickname to designate a poor white in some parts of the Southern United States.

Bartlett.

6. Zool.

The pintail duck.

7. pl. Mach.

A pair of fluted rolls for grinding caoutchouc.

Knight.

 

© Webster 1913.