[quote=“ed”]Just in case you weren’t feeling old enough today, this will certainly change things. Each year the staff at Beloit College in Wisconsin puts together a list to try to give the faculty a sense of the mindset of this year’s incoming freshmen.
Here’s this year’s list:
[ol]
[li]They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up.[/li][/ol][/quote]
Must be last year’s list. 
[quote=“blueface666”]UK electric company PowerGen has opened a branch in Italy. Their new website?
powergenitalia.com/[/quote]
OK, now you’re DEFINITELY yanking our chains. This simply HAS to be a hoax! I can’t wait to see their logo. 
[quote=“sandman”][quote=“blueface666”]UK electric company PowerGen has opened a branch in Italy. Their new website?
powergenitalia.com/[/quote]
OK, now you’re DEFINITELY yanking our chains. This simply HAS to be a hoax! I can’t wait to see their logo. [/quote]
PowerGen has denied the website is theirs but this is the logo of their Italian office.
Very silly stuff. Turn your computer’s speakers on before starting.
svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage … stekor.swf
[flash width=450 height=300 loop=false]http://svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage_site/Kor/hestekor.swf[/flash]
A Rhose, by Any Other Name
By Matthew Sutherland from The Observer, 2000
“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches” – Proverbs 22:1
WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since. The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am glad to say, to lose them.
The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly cutesy for anyone over about five. “Fifty-five-year-olds with names that sound like five-year-olds”, as one colleague put it. Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes, Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech. Here, however, no one bats an eyelid.
Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call “door-bell names”. These are nicknames that sound like - well, door-bells. There are millions of them. Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be, and frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even our newly-appointed chief of police has a doorbell name - Ping.
None of these door-bell names exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my untutored foreign ear. Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called Bing, replied “because my brother is called Bong”. Faultless logic. Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come from “dong” is a slang word for… well, perhaps “talong” is the best Tagalog equivalent.
Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let, Mai-Mai, or Ning-Ning. The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one: Leck-Leck. Such names are then frequently further refined by using the “squared” symbol, as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while.
Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy. More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of assonance or rhyme, as in Biboy, Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse the more kids there are – best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy). Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts (Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip). The main advantage of such combinations is that they look great painted across your trunk if you’re a cab driver. That’s another thing I’d never seen before coming to Manila
Washington state has Humptulips (pronounced exactly as it is written). I guess it got awfully lonely out here during the pioneer days. :mrgreen:
These are some actual place names from the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania:
Beaver, Beverly Hills, Big Beaver, Bird-in-Hand, Blue Ball, California, Climax, Corner Store, Desire, Drab, Eighty Four, Experiment, Fear Not,
Forty Fort, Gravity, Hershey, Home, Indiana, Intercourse, Jersey Shore,
King of Prussia, Loyalsockville, Mars, Moon, Moscow, Nanty Glo, New Beaver, Ono, Panic, Paradise, Peach Bottom, Pillow, Porkey, Possum Hollow, Quiggleville, Scalp Level, Slate Lick, Slippery Rock, Transfer, Telescope, Torpedo, Uno and Virginville
This too is true: Driving on the PA Turnpike (the first turnpike in the USA), in order to get to Paradise, one must go through Intercourse and Climax.
This link is kind of fun (click on the top to start)
[flash width=600 height=499 loop=false]http://www.freshsensation.com/samorost.swf[/flash]
CREATIVE ADVERTISING
You gotta love the people who think these things up!
Sign over a gynecologist’s office:
“Dr. Jones, at your cervix.”
At a proctologist’s door:
“To expedite your visit please back in.”
On a plumber’s truck:
“We repair what your husband fixed.”
On another plumber’s truck:
“Don’t sleep with a drip. Call your plumber”
Pizza shop slogan:
“Seven days without pizza makes one weak.”
At a tire shop in Milwaukee:
“Invite us to your next blowout.”
On a plastic surgeon’s office door:
“Hello. Can we pick your nose?”
At a towing company:
“We don’t charge an arm and a leg. We want tows.”
In a non-smoking area:
“If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action.”
On a maternity room door:
“Push. Push. Push.”
At an optometrist’s office:
“If you don’t see what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.”
On a taxidermist’s window:
“We really know our stuff.”
In a podiatrist’s office:
“Time wounds all heels.”
On a fence:
“Salesmen welcome! Dog food is expensive.”
At a car dealership:
“The best way to get back on your feet – miss a car payment.”
Outside a muffler shop:
“No appointment necessary. We hear you coming.”
In a veterinarian’s waiting room:
“Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!”
At an electric company:
“We would be delighted if you sent in your payment. However, if you don’t, you will be.”
In a restaurant window:
“Don’t stand there and be hungry. Come on in and get fed up.”
In the front yard of a funeral home:
“Drive carefully. We’ll wait.”
At a propane filling station,
“Tank heaven for little grills.”
And don’t forget the sign at a Chicago radiator shop:
“Best place in town to take a leak.”
Very old joke. It wasn’t funny then and it certainly is not funny now.
Recycled racist jokes never are.
[quote=“way2go”]
Very old joke. It wasn’t funny then and it certainly is not funny now.
Recycled racist jokes never are.
[/quote]
I didn’t think it was funny either… but why do you think the joke is “racist”?
Yeah, the depiction is a little reminiscent of Al Jolson in blackface. Not funny. Maybe in Germany. 
But then again, if it were German, the artist probably would have drawn die Schwarzen with bones in their noses.
[quote=“way2go!”]
Very old joke. It wasn’t funny then and it certainly is not funny now.
Recycled racist jokes never are.
[/quote]
Must be something wrong with me, I thought it was HIGHlarious.
[quote=“miltownkid”]Must be something wrong with me, I thought it was HIGHlarious.
[/quote]
I laughed out loud too (ahem, of course I felt guilty about it right afterwards :shock: ) – and I thought for a moment this could be a Filipino joke.
