Post #19,265
11/23/01 9:48:42 PM
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L'un de nos Auzzies goes Francais?
[link|http://www.mkm.fr/|Meerkats Multimedia dot Fr???]
Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
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Post #19,276
11/24/01 1:02:49 AM
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I'm sure he'll be delighted when he finds out.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #19,343
11/25/01 6:06:06 PM
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Oui, mate! Chuck another escargo on the barbie :)
On and on and on and on,
and on and on and on goes John.
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Post #19,357
11/25/01 8:38:10 PM
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Chuck another escargo on the barbie? :)
Well.. here in the Other Colonies (the ungrateful wretches One) - Barbie is a now Institutionalized doll which for years has served as a stick-figure for depressing young girls: if they don't look like Twiggy (and also have Big boobs) ie look boyish enough so's not to freak out the mouth-breathers of ~ age / with interesting curves they know nothing about - yer dead meat.
('Course in days of MTV n Snoopy Doggies - I suspect that Barbie's hegemony is about over for all practical purposes, even if the mouth-breathers are still with us.)
Anyway - your line conjured up for me, a Barbie doll bein slimed by a bunch o snails! Not altogether without a certain charm - that.
Ashton
who recalls a friend's daughter burning her Barbie - when she finally grokked the subliminal message. Free.. free at last! - to have hips.
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Post #19,359
11/25/01 8:55:32 PM
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Propel the snail onto the plastic doll.
Yup, alas, am all too aware of Barbie. The shocking pink Barbie colour is searing the retinas of people young and old throughout the nation. I was in a Toys'R'Us (but grammar and spelling aren't us) just the other day and, despite seeing the Barbie aisle, there were no Tour Guide Barbies and the like having a poolside party (like in Toy Story 2). Didn't see any Malibu Stacey dolls either.
But anyway, to meander, however slowly, to the point. "Throw another shrimp on the barbie" was a line from an ad used many years ago into persuading Americans to wander over to this side of the planet for a look around. The line in question was uttered by one of those deemed to be a Marketable Commodity (tm) - Paul Hogan, he of the Crocodile Dundee and a whole other bunch of very ordinary films.
I guess it's a mixing of national vocabularies that is the phrase's undoing. We don't have shrimps, you don't have barbies. Barbie, in this case, being short for barbecue. As it must be, for it seems to be the Australian way to abbreviate anything and everything. ie: "I chucked the barbie in the ute before I went to uni, then Narelle had to go see her gyney." Or something.
(/me gives small round of applause for Barbie burning...)
On and on and on and on,
and on and on and on goes John.
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Post #19,364
11/25/01 9:16:53 PM
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'Tis a language thing.
Abbreviation and accomodation are two of the classic tools in language development. Different cultures just achieve them with different methods (you should see what the Japanese do to English when a term becomes popular/useful).
Wade.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #19,392
11/26/01 10:15:28 AM
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Don't remind me.
*SHUDDER*
I still have PTSD from the way that the Japanese love to butcher the English language. It's even worse than the way the Yanks do. Oh, wait, I'm a Yank. Um.
Excuse me, I have to go remove my foot from my mouth.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #19,480
11/26/01 11:01:29 PM
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he he he he
I was really pointing out the unique way the nihonjin butcher eigo. Hell, they'll do it to any language - including their own! But you would already know that. :-)
Wade, who's started learning Kanji and unfortunately has a fair idea of the size of the mountain he's trying to climb.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #19,366
11/25/01 9:29:19 PM
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No shrimp?!?
or are they just called something else?
Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #19,368
11/25/01 9:40:21 PM
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They do exist, but are called prawns.
AFAIK they're the same thing - not much into seafood, me.
On and on and on and on,
and on and on and on goes John.
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Post #19,369
11/25/01 9:41:39 PM
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Okey Dokey Y'all..
Yeah I did get the barbecue part and the silliness with 'ie's (Recall the UK version of inanity in Ads - reminiscent of Dorothy Sayers' Murder Must Advertise. Lord Peter (Wimsey) works for the agency, to investigate. Oh The inHumanity)
What I saw was,
Drinka Pinta Milka Day on a bus in London.
I figured ol Crock Dundee was about as typ. Aussie as Mickey McMouse was a typical house rodent. (Now he's selling Subaru Outback cars here) - an actually decent vehicle as compared with the usual overdone UAVs that are marketed climbing Alps and other fantasy BS. He's at least funny sometimes.. Japanese car marketed by Aussie to Merkins! (Hey I Like flat-fours - good CG and engine balance)
Omigawd ya got R'Us invasion too.. Sheesh! soon you'll be talkin funny and all... with TLAs for Everything. Guess I can't imagine Oz Biz-speak: is it yet as appalling as our'n, with an insult to intelligence in every catchphrase?
No one's safe from depravity, even Under - shite flows downhill?
Ashton
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Post #19,371
11/25/01 9:56:34 PM
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Outbacks, bizspeak, talkin' funny
We too get the Outback, but thankfully sans Hoges. Many years ago we also had the Nissan Prairie, however there was no little house on it. But then, car names are a whole new bucket of silliness. Like, the Begin Funkybox, the Leopard J. Ferie, the Viewt, and so on, and on, and on, and on.
BTW, finally after all the other makers have mini-UAV'd their wagons - Suby Outback, Volvo Cross Country, Audi umm...Whatchimacallit, our 'local' carmakers, Ford and Holden, have finally decided they'll be doing the same thing, with 4wheel versions of their station wagons.
As for Oz-biz-speak, be very afraid. Or, just talk normally and put 'going forward' after every second sentence. Going forward.
And as for talking funny, it's only a matter of time. A little while ago the law saying * 'you can have no imported TV ads' was changed to 'Well, OK, you can have imported ads with Australian voices' to 'ah, heck, just copy em direct from the states, what do we care?'. And so, todays youngsters are being brought up on many American TV ads, instead of just the American TV shows. (Or, when it comes to the cartoons, spot the difference :)
Time for a breather. Why should this bother me when I watch next to no commercial TV anyway?
* I may have this completely wrong, but that's the way it seems to have gone.
On and on and on and on,
and on and on and on goes John.
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Post #19,376
11/25/01 11:47:18 PM
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But Skippy, the bush kangaroo, is authentic Aussie!? :)
Alex
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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Post #19,467
11/26/01 8:11:30 PM
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Well.... ish.
Based on the Skippy epsiodes I've seen (and all a very long time ago), your average real Kangaroo can't go 'click click click' and be interpreted by The Boy as 'What's that Skip? There's been a car accident? Someone's badly injured, and someone else has a broken arm, and they're all lying just beyond that ridge?'
But having not lived out in the bush, I might be wrong. :)
On and on and on and on,
and on and on and on goes John.
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Post #19,470
11/26/01 8:44:54 PM
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Indeed, a long time ago.
My kids used to watch it and one of them has a six year old. If it wasn't for the catchy jingle, Skippy would be long forgotten.
Alex
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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Post #19,497
11/27/01 8:50:29 AM
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For those not living in the U.S.
I should note that Skippy is a brand of peanut butter in the States. :=)
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
-- Donald Knuth
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Post #19,509
11/27/01 10:27:36 AM
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Nonetheless, the Skippy I refer to is a kangaroo.
Alex
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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Post #19,379
11/26/01 4:34:55 AM
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Get your teeth in it
Surreal moments. Immediately following the "I em" radio ad, was a dentifrice spot nicked straight from the US airwaves.
That was right up there with standing in an Epping grocery store (supermarket), listening to, IIRC, Bowie on the overhead speakers, while browsing the cereal aisle -- Kellogg's is in Australia, but the branding's all...slightly different. Which made me aware of just how brand-concious this here anti-consumption consumer is. I think there was an Asian influence as well, though I forget just what it was.
Point being that Oz is a really weird melange of US, UK, and Asian influences, plus its own mix of outback (think US SouthWest) and rather socialist / big brother government (at least that's how it struck me at the time). Weird mix.
The urban landscape was similarly bizarre. Cars the wrong side of the street, natch. A bit of Brit/Euro influence in design, but a sense of space like you get in the US. And only some parts of it -- say, the Midwest, the California Central Valley (but not the SF Bay Area, which is getting impacted, by US standards). Geology has an ancient feel to it -- this land ain't shaken or bumped into nothin' for a long time. Lots of stone construction, lending a very midwest feel. California's largely timber, after all we've got the wood, and it gives so much better when the ground starts dancing. Add to that a sense of being (depending on the locale) about 5 to 20 years back in time. And of course the sky was backwards, the sun in the wrong place, sunrise and sunset backwards, the moon upside down. The overall effect, and ultimately weird bit, was that everything had a very familiar sense to it...but was just slightly...off. Somewhat perpetual mindwarp the entire time I was there. And I didn't find out about the sheilas until I got back.
BTW, we've got prawns here too, John. Though they're frequently called "jumbo shrimp" for some oxymoronic reason.
--
Karsten M. Self [link|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com|kmself@ix.netcom.com]
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
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Post #19,466
11/26/01 8:08:46 PM
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A Kellogg's moment
I remember when I was in Hawaii way back in 1992, seeing 'Product 19' and thinking "What the hell? How much sense does that make?". Til I realised seconds later that our version of it, 'Special K' makes absolutely no sense either. :)
Thanks for posting that description, as I've not traveleld much I can't really compare .au to anywhere else. What you said was interesting.
And perhaps your Jumbo Shrimp prawns are our King Prawns. Geez, this is right up there with the whole cookies v. biscuits v. scones thing.
On and on and on and on,
and on and on and on goes John.
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Post #19,472
11/26/01 8:48:19 PM
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As Winston Churchill said,
Divided by a common language.
Incidentally, Special K was my wife breakfast cereal of choice before she got on the Atkins diet.
Alex
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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Post #19,380
11/26/01 5:20:19 AM
11/26/01 5:29:45 AM
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Going forward--> Izzat like, 'The future lies ahead!' ? :-\ufffd
Or as an Oz wag from the old IWE days observed,
(__O'Conner of the bot-running fame, 'Jerry _?_' of Nations Institute of Computing Excellence / had a Linux computer in his Porsche)
Look! in the road a head
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Post #19,434
11/26/01 4:20:38 PM
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Re: Going forward
Ashton, you don't watch cable TV, so you wouldn't ever be watching CNBC. All day, it's the New York Stock Exchange, AMEX, and the NASDAQ ticker tape and talking heads talking to company analysts or corporate management. "Going froward", is a very popular content-free "noise" phrase, or corporate-speak, if you like. It's been here in the US for quite a while.
It might have something to do with entropy, for all I know.
Alex
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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