Clampers
From Plastic Tub
clampers n. 1. Term used to describe AA sympathizers who either never fully participated in the movement or contemporary artists and thinkers who have only reluctantly acknowledged its influence. In the former category belong Stan Lee, Alfred Bester and Nathanael West, who carried on a lively correspondence with a young Addisson from 1938 until his untimely death in 1940. In the latter category belong Steve Malkmus, Beck Hansen, Matt T and Michael Baldwin. 2. Persons who move with fashionable trends, vacuous hipsters, hanger-ons. 3. A popular Southern Journal catering ultimately to cultural guerillas and Spray-Paint Mathematicians; known in Texas as a vehicle for The New York Invasion.
Extrapolation
The word was once believed to derive from one Ernest C. Clamper: Dandy, aide-de-camp to Ulysses S. Grant, on-and-off sexual partner of Walt Whitman. He never admitted how much of his political discourse was in reality re-hashed Whig-ism and he clung to Grant's coat-tails as if he would slip into an abyss without them. His "Priapic Promes" were derivative, dime-store Whitman.
However, this is fiction. Addisson himself came out with the word when, at the nadir of their relations, he saw Balthazar Buehb almost genuflecting before Stimso Adid.
Addisson: "I first thought of a leech, then a moray eel, jaw about to clamp down on the fish and then retreat down into the hole. One, big clamping mouth. That's about what's it's like to be taken by the arm by a clamper. Ho ho! Write that down!"
Ernest C. Clamper was an extended member of the Slippers family, and thus some kind of distant cousin to Stimes Addisson. Stimes Addisson's father Solomon is originally from Clamper Mountain, West Virginia.
Usage
"What the fuck's with all the clampers?", William Flintrock in the ear of Wilhemina Forkes, overheard at the Second AA International Conference.
