Entertainment desk
< July 15	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Entertainment Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 16

"Skin the cats"?

In several of Woody Guthrie's songs, he sings about "Warehouse guys and {teamsters/truckers} and guys that skin the cats/The men that run the steel mill(s), the furnace and the blast" -- my question is, who does the "skin the cats" phrase refer to? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:3C7F:2FF2:C7EB:86D8 (talk) 01:58, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Skin the cat" is a gymnastics technique -- but I doubt that is relevant: [1]. 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:A99B:8185:FE40:CECC (talk) 03:59, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Trappers and furriers were "manly men", at least before they got lazy. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:21, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This says they're tractor drivers. It does fit better with the industrial sort of industry theme. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:58, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cat.com. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:01, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! That makes sense -- "skin" (as in Mule skinner) the "cat"[erpillar]s. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:348A:CFF6:793C:9074 (talk) 10:56, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd thought skinning a machine meant covering it with your skin, but now I read mule skinners maybe got the name by whipping mules too hard. If you whip your tractor to drive it, you're doing it wrong. That's where I get lost on this analogy. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:42, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See also: Worshipful Company of Skinners, which might explain the linguistic transition from furrier to livery to teamster to driver.^WP:OR -- Which is totally not related to Skinner-Union (which should redirect to SU Carburetor -uhmmm- which also should redirect to SU Carburettor). --2606:A000:4C0C:E200:A99B:8185:FE40:CECC (talk) 17:37, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When I put those four words into the Googler, it spits out this list of old-timey jobs. Maybe not relevant to much (especially Principal Skinner), but fun to see how far we've come in leisure time since letting machines take the wheel. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:35, 17 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See Caterpillar Tractor. StuRat (talk) 17:42, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe cat-skinners are those who can do a job in more than one way. —Tamfang (talk) 20:43, 17 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's a song by "The Singing Logger" Buzz Martin called "Cat-Skinning Gypo Logger" that seems to suggest a cat-skinner is a type of logger. Unfortunately it's been removed from YouTube but the gist of the song as far as I can tell (and it's filled with near impenetrable logger slang) is that whatever it involved it was considered really difficult work even by others in the industry and that cat-skinners were widely admired by their peers as a result. Could be that Wood was talking about them. Keresaspa (talk) 19:54, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just saw this so thought I would add: In the short story by American humorist Seba Smith called “The Money Diggers” (around 1840) Seba wrote, “As it is said, 'There are more ways than one to skin a cat,' so are there more ways than one of digging for money.”. I don't know where it came from before that. Otr500 (talk) 13:06, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

remake spreading awareness

I saw on many entertainment news outlets, Wannabe (song) has been remade to spread awareness of women's and girls' rights. A video of the remake features young women from around the world. It was also said the video would be released to cinemas in July 2016. Well, this is the middle of July 2016. Could anyone identify anything as to what's going on, please? Thank you.2604:2000:7113:9D00:B81E:C008:E611:FADF (talk) 03:04, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how or why a song video would be "released to cinemas". Maybe as an ad? However, the messages generated in response to the video will be "presented to world leaders during the U.N. Sustainable Development Summit in September this year". See here. Rojomoke (talk) 10:39, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly WP:OR (and possibly WP:POV), but, as a "captive audience" cinema goers are more susceptible to propaganda. --2606:A000:4C0C:E200:A1FA:194E:E841:B585 (talk) 18:28, 17 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]