Poo tickets

Posted by Masakim on November 09, 2001

In Reply to: Poo tickets posted by ESC on November 09, 2001

: : Does anyone know the origin of the saying Pack of Poo Ticket meaning, something of poor quality, not very good, a mess etc ?

: : Would appreciate your help. thank you.

: From another site: "It's regional, and I've found very few expositions for Australian slang. Y'all would actually be the resource I'd turn to for this, but, what I've found is that a 'pack of poo tickets Eis a roll of toilet paper. Why 'tickets? E'Cause it's funny and finishes the phrase with fricatives, but particularly due to the imagery of a slip of paper. I can only try to rationalize the association with disarray with an implied sense of used toilet paper [or a spent pack of poo tickets (soiled, wadded up, etc.)]. 'Bathroom tissue, Eby it's very nature, has a negative connotation, but that wouldn't seem sufficient to relate disorder in itself. E

like a pakapoo/pakapu ticket phr. [1950+] (Aus.) said of anything untidy, complex, incomprehensible. ... [Chinese pidgin _puk-ah-pu ticket_, a form of betting slip used by Chinese gamblers; properly known as _pai-ke-p'iao_, lit. 'white pigeon ticket', it was a small square of paper marked with 80 Chinese characters; the gambler chose some of these, usu. 10, and, depending on how many matched that day's winning combination, would make a small profit for their sixpenny stake]
From Cassell's by Jonathon Green

He had come down early to mark a pak-ah-pu ticket at the Chinaman's in Hay Street. (Louis Stone, _Jonah_, 1911)

Henry opened Dooley's pay-book, the pages of which showed liberal sprinklings of the red ink in which fines and convictions were entered. "What a pay-book!" he sighed. Dooley grinned. "Like a pak-a-poo ticket," he agreed. (Eric Lambert, _The Twenty Thousand Thieves_, 1951)