The phrase repeatedly and desperately sung by
Jack Skellington when he arrived in
Christmastown and saw foreign things like snow and
merry holiday cheer for the first time ever.
I first watched that amazingly
fucked up flick with one Erik Clark,
the biggest meth-head of all time. When Jack first picked up a huge pile of powdery snow and demanded to know, "what is this?!", it had a huge effect on my vampire buddy. From then on, he would get this crazy look on his eye and yell "What is this!?" every time he played around with a huge pile of powdery meth in my presence. It was like, his little attempt to have an
inside joke of some kind with me. It got old pretty quick, like most things he did.
Once, when I walked into his room and found him eating a huge plate of
mashed potatoes, I jokingly responded with "What is this?!" (anyone who is fortunate enough to know a
vampire meth addict probably knows that its a rare thing to witness them stuffing
food in their face as opposed to their precious white powder.)
But when I entered his room one day and found him beating the shit out of his
little meth ho for spilling some onto the carpet, I couldn't bring myself to say it, although for some sick reason that little joking phrase was the first thing that popped into my head. Instead, I decided to get my big football playing buddy to come drag him off of her. When he stormed into the room, Erik looked up and demanded to know, 'what is this?!' although not in the same joking manner and Jack Skellington-esque inflection with which he usually asked me that question.
It was quite
ironic, actually.