Footnotes to the TV series
JESS: I’m going enough. I’ve been picking up some extra shifts here and there, but I’m fine. It’s Mickey Mouse stuff anyway. What it takes the others hours to learn, it takes me minutes.
Mickey Mouse, informal English meaning “minor, trivial, petty, insignificant”. In use since the 1950s, possibly because of cheap watches featuring the cartoon character.
LORELAI: Oh, I’m a Bedouin. I’m homeless!
The Bedouin, nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. Originating in the Syrian Desert and Arabian Desert, they spread across the rest of the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa after the spread of Islam. The English word Bedouin comes from the Arabic badawī, meaning “desert dweller”.
LORELAI: I’m a nomad … I am the lonely wanderer.
A nomad is someone without a settled home who regularly moves from place to place. Examples of nomads include hunter-gatherers, pastoral herders, tinkers, traders, and itinerants.
Lorelai is possibly referring to the 1963 country song by Slim Whitman, “(I’m a) Lonely Wanderer”. I’m mostly basing this on the fact that she immediately references another country singer.
RORY: So you’ve been incommunicado lately.
Incommunicado, not able to communicate with others, either by choice or circumstances. From Latin, adopted into English via Spanish.
BABETTE: Hey Michel, I just hit F4 and the num lock key and the one with the little apple on it and it’s freaking out like it’s on acid or something.
MICHEL: Oy vey.
On acid, slang for taking the hallucinogenic drug LSD. (Babette seems to have hit the dashboard, the number lock, and the command key all at once, so the screen starts scrolling).
Oy vey, interjection used to express dismay, frustration, or grief. It is borrowed from Yiddish, loosely meaning “Oh woe is me”.
KIRK: Say, how can I have a career as a Poe?
POE 2: It’s not a career, this is just an event that we do. I write technical manuals for a living.
Technical manual, also known as an instruction manual or instruction book, user guide, user manual, or how-to guide. The book of instructions which comes with a product, service, or application.
LORELAI: [reads] “Faux Poes foes.”
RORY: Very clever, Kirk.
KIRK: It was an inspiration. But they’re not selling much better than the “Babette ate oatmeal” shirts.
In North American English, “oatmeal” is used to mean “porridge” – rolled oats boiled in water, usually eaten for breakfast.
[Kirk holds a tee shirt up]
LORELAI: [reads] “Faux Poes foes.”
Faux is French for “false”. It is often used in English, to mean “artificial, imitation”, such as “faux pearls”. It is a homonym of the English word “foe”.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 