posted
There is (was?) a sporting goods store in Toronto called "The Merchant of Tennis". I must have driven past there hundreds of times on my way to work before I realized it was a play on The Merchant of Venice.
Judy
ET fix grammatical error.
-------------------- In an avalanche, no individual snowflake feels responsible. Posts: 402 | From: Ontario, Canada | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:quote: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Anathema Device:
It took me until this year to get what Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley in Harry Potter actually mean... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It took me about 2 years to realise Diagon Alley was a joke...but add me to the 'didn't get Knockturn Alley' list. It's not that I couldn't get it, I just wasn't even looking for a pun there!
Okay...I know i'm naiive, but i've actually gotten most of the ones here. I guess I just don't get the harry potter references....(now that I think about it, I think I knew them at one time but forget ).
Also don't get the nuns with the cobblestone thing...i'm guessing it's something to do with "bikes" being "in the lane" *cough cough*
Chalk me up for one of the ones it took some serious thinking in high school to really figure out what 69 was. Even when I figured it out, I was like "wait, what's the big deal? If i'm right, then it's just a sexual position. Why does everyone make everything revolve around it?"
I guess I still don't get it.
ETA: WAIT WAIT!! diagonally! like....not horizontally, but diagonally! Ha! I can't believe i'm so stupid...I don't get it though...
ETA #2: *Sigh. Nocturnally. I'm dumb. Please ignore entire post.
-------------------- "I find them to be in contradiction of the basic principles of YOUR MOM!!!" -We've Got Mail Posts: 1361 | From: Muncie, IN | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DawnStorm: Some time ago, my fellow horse racing fans and myself (on a horse racing board of course!) we're alternately chuckling and gawping at the following names for horses:
Sofa Can Fast
Dixie Normas
Yes, the Jockey Club made the owners change the names!
There used to be a well known horse in British racing called Shy Talk.
And in another Pratchett reference - I didn't 'get' the name Vetenari until Pratchett himself mentioned it in an interview.
Continuing onwards (or rather downwards?) from the soap joke:- Overheard in a girls dormitory at night: Teacher: Candles out girls Schhluuppp pop!
Posts: 40 | From: Germany | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
There's a campaign for phones going on in the UK at the moment that's tied in to films. There's a full-page ad that simply reads "The Discount Of Monte Cristo".
Didn't get it until just now.
-------------------- seriously , everyone on here , just trys to give someone crap about something they do !! , its shitting me to tears. Posts: 16061 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by trollface: "The Discount Of Monte Cristo".
As opposed to Dat Count?
I'm sorry, it was irresistable.
Seaboo
-------------------- Education is not the filling of a hard drive, but the lighting of a bulb. -- Yeats via Esprise Me Posts: 5562 | From: Seattle, WA | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by blackroses19: Also don't get the nuns with the cobblestone thing...i'm guessing it's something to do with "bikes" being "in the lane" *cough cough*
Nun 1: I never came this way before. Nun 2: It's the cobblestones.
Think of the word "came" not as "travelled" but as "had an orgasm."
Ever ride a bike down a bumpy/rocky road? Some girls say that the bike seat tends to vibrate in all the right places.....
Hope that helps.
Posts: 22 | From: Mass. | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Okay, here's one I feel really really bad that I didn't get until I was at least 13. and one I heard my whole life, which makes it even dumber that I didn't get it. Warning: it's reallystupid.(that I didn't get it, and the joke itself.)
"Why did the chicken cross the road?" "To get to the other side."
I'm so ashamed right now.
-------------------- Resurrection of mankind to careen in silent pace. Feeling lonely. I am the dream that nobody dreams of, but will you dream of me, and dream of eternal desire? If you dream of me, will you live for me? Will you? Will you? Posts: 344 | From: Jacksonville, FL | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
What about the Chinese dish "Creme of Sum Yung Gai"?
I was a young teen when I first heard it, and found it mildy amusing... but assume it had to do with cannibalism (cream of mushroom = mushroom in cream soup).
Then I made the mistake of joking about it to my mom, and my dad took me aside to say that that kind of joke wasn't really appropriate... Posts: 441 | From: Between Flint and Lansing, MI | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by KaiTheInvader: "Why did the chicken cross the road?" "To get to the other side."
Wait... are you serious? I never knew there was anything to "get" there. I thought it was just supposed to be some childish attempt at trickery, like, you expect it to be a funny joke, but it turns out to be something incredibly simple.
PLEASE tell me this isn't supposed to be, "the other side", as in, the chicken crosses the road so it gets hit by a car and passes into the afterlife? Surely no child could possibly understand this subtlety.
-birdman
Posts: 1104 | From: near Cleveland, Ohio | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Years ago I took Latin and my prof must have been very straight laced because I never learned the great pun that helps you remember the difference between ubi and ibi.
Later a friends asked “You took Latin what does “Semper ubi sub ubi.” mean. I didn’t know. One day I was driving down the road, I still remember the exact place, and I got it. Ubi means “where” in latin but it sounds like “wear”. I laughed so hard I nearly drove off the road. I was mostly laughing at myself.
Posts: 1168 | From: Missouri | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
My mom taught high school Latin, and there was a teacher who would occasionally pop into the room and say, "Remember students, semper ubi sub ubi!" The students would grab their Latin books and start looking up the words, confusedly trying to figure out what he meant, until my mom explained: "Always wear underwear." Some of them didn't make the connection and thought she was just giving a random bit of advice.
-birdman
Posts: 1104 | From: near Cleveland, Ohio | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I about died when I found out that the name of the band Butthole Surfers was much worse than previously thought. I thought they were implying that surfers were assholes or they were assholes themselves who happened to surf (in the ocean), but it turns out that it refers to sodomy! (If this is just a UL, please feel free to fish thwack me!)Their web page is NSFW, by the way!
-------------------- Your ultimate source of superfluous flummery. Posts: 595 | From: South Carolina | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DaBrudders: I didn't 'get' the name Vetenari until Pratchett himself mentioned it in an interview.
I don't 'get' the name Vetenari, please explain. Is it that it sounds a bit like veterinary?
Posts: 144 | From: Sweden | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I'm going to admit an embarrassing secret I've held since childhood.
quote:Originally posted by WildaBeast: I'm looking for Amanda Huggankiss!
I don't get it. I read that as "A man a hug and kiss." Brian "who had to think a while on that candles joke" B
-------------------- "Dear Big Foot Smellers: Please don't quote me on some of this information." John F. Winston Posts: 1707 | From: Camarillo, CA | Registered: Mar 2000
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-------------------- Education is not the filling of a hard drive, but the lighting of a bulb. -- Yeats via Esprise Me Posts: 5562 | From: Seattle, WA | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Seaboo Muffinchucker: Close--try "a man to hug and kiss."
Seaboo
Thanks Seaboo! Brian "slightly less embarrassed now" B
-------------------- "Dear Big Foot Smellers: Please don't quote me on some of this information." John F. Winston Posts: 1707 | From: Camarillo, CA | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Originally posted by BrianB: I'm looking for Amanda Huggankiss! ----- I don't get it. I read that as "A man a hug and kiss."
I believe it's "A man to hug and kiss"..
I just found another one - I was looking at a website that mentioned the Japanese band "Luna Sea"... I only just realized that it's a play on "lunacy" ..
ETA: Spanked on the Huggankiss!
-------------------- "...and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does." ~~Groucho Marx~~ Posts: 392 | From: Virginia | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
The band Reel Big Fish has a song called "Say Ten." I did not realize until it was pointed out to me that it sounds like Satan.
Now some more jokes from middle school:
What nationality are you on the way to the bathroom? A Russian (a-rushin')
What are you while you're in the bathroom? European (you're a peein')
-------------------- "Unseasonable is an odd word to begin with. It sounds like it's describing something that it's impossible to sprinkle pepper on." -- Nonny Posts: 5483 | From: Just south of Folsom Prison, CA | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Originally posted by KaiTheInvader: "Why did the chicken cross the road?" "To get to the other side."
snip
PLEASE tell me this isn't supposed to be, "the other side", as in, the chicken crosses the road so it gets hit by a car and passes into the afterlife? Surely no child could possibly understand this subtlety.
-birdman
Woah! no adult, either. You know, I never thought of it before, and now my brain is flipping out!!
-------------------- Windows cannot open this file. To open this file correctly, defenestrate, then try running the file again... Posts: 5383 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Originally posted by DaBrudders: I didn't 'get' the name Vetenari until Pratchett himself mentioned it in an interview.
I don't 'get' the name Vetenari, please explain. Is it that it sounds a bit like veterinary?
Yes but in that context it's a wordplay on the Medici family
Cool! I got the "veterinary" reference in "The Night Watch" when the character is referred to by some as "dog-botherer," but I never made the Medici connection. Leave it to Pratchett...
-------------------- [God said] "I'll just sit back in the shade while everyone gets laid; that's what I call intelligent design." - Chris Smither, "Origin of the Species" Posts: 411 | From: Fairfield, CT | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Another one of mine deals with my last user name, Urhines Kendall Icy Eight Special K, which I stole off some baby who's going to need therapy when they're older. I knew that "Urhines" can stand for "your highness," but I thought it was there in a royal sense, I never figured out it can refer to drugs. Considering they have "Special K" in the name, it can refer to drugs, and hell, anyone who name's their baby that has got to be smoking something.
I also thought that "Special K" can refer to the cereal, since the "Eight" before it can also be "ate" (ate Special K?)
or maybe I'm just looking into it to much. Poor child...
Edit: Oh wait, I found on another forum: "Ice is another name for meth. An 8-ball is an eighth of a gram bag. Special K is ketamine." Wow.
posted
There was a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon called "Pullet Suprise". I didn't even get the joke before I read a review that commented the cleverest thing about the cartoon was the title. The book [u]The Phantom Tollbooth[/u] also contained some wordplay it took me years to get. Most notably a sequence where the protagonists meet a birdlike monster named the Everpresent Wordsnatcher. Any attempted converstation with the Wordsnatcher goes nowhere because he plays with language and turns things all around:
MILO: We're looking for a place to spend the night.
WORDSNATCHER: What? The night's not yours to spend!
MILO: I didn't mean...
WS: Of course you are. Anyone who tries to spend what isn't thiers is very mean.
MILO: That makes no sense...
WORDSNATCHER: Dollars or cents. It's still not yours.
and so on. I always got that bit, but the next bit threw me for a while. Milo asks the Wordsnatcher where he comes from, to which the bird replies:
"I'm from a land very far away called Context. But it's such a nasty place I try to spend all my time out of it."
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quote:Originally posted by Are You Afraid of the DarkDan?: ...An 8-ball is an eighth of a gram bag. ...
Actually, it's an eighth of an ounce bag.
Or so I've heard...
-------------------- Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. Winston Churchill Posts: 821 | From: Delaware | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Menace of Mysterio: There was a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon called "Pullet Suprise". I didn't even get the joke before I read a review that commented the cleverest thing about the cartoon was the title. The book [u]The Phantom Tollbooth[/u] also contained some wordplay it took me years to get. Most notably a sequence where the protagonists meet a birdlike monster named the Everpresent Wordsnatcher. Any attempted converstation with the Wordsnatcher goes nowhere because he plays with language and turns things all around:
MILO: We're looking for a place to spend the night.
WORDSNATCHER: What? The night's not yours to spend!
MILO: I didn't mean...
WS: Of course you are. Anyone who tries to spend what isn't thiers is very mean.
MILO: That makes no sense...
WORDSNATCHER: Dollars or cents. It's still not yours.
and so on. I always got that bit, but the next bit threw me for a while. Milo asks the Wordsnatcher where he comes from, to which the bird replies:
"I'm from a land very far away called Context. But it's such a nasty place I try to spend all my time out of it."
That's so cute
It's been so long since i've read that.
-------------------- "I find them to be in contradiction of the basic principles of YOUR MOM!!!" -We've Got Mail Posts: 1361 | From: Muncie, IN | Registered: Sep 2005
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lilnizzie
The Red and the Green Stamps
posted
the episode of Friends when phoebe wanted to see Sting in concert, and was begging ross to ge the tickets...
"Ross Can!" "ross Can!"
It wasn't until recently I found out he had sung a song called Roxanne
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quote:Originally posted by DaBrudders: I didn't 'get' the name Vetenari until Pratchett himself mentioned it in an interview.
I don't 'get' the name Vetenari, please explain. Is it that it sounds a bit like veterinary?
Yes but in that context it's a wordplay on the Medici family
Related to this, did you also spot the subtle and cunning wordplay in some other Anhk-Morpork aristocratic names? I only got these recently -
The names of the two aristocratic Ankh-Morpork families Selachii and Venturis, who loathe each other with a passion. Two households, both alike in dignity, who hate each other... It might occur to you that they are a bit like Shakespeare's Capulets and Montagues from Romeo and Juliet...
Well now, the word 'Selachii' means "An order of elasmobranchs including the sharks and rays; the Plagiostomi" and the word 'Venturis' means "A constricted throat in the air passage of a carburetor, causing a reduction in pressure that results in fuel vapor being drawn out of the carburetor bowl". Broadly speaking then, the Selachii and the Venturis are "Sharks" and "Jets" respectively.... which as you know is the name of the two warring gangs in the musical West Side Story, which is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet .
-------------------- Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Posts: 2372 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jul 2002
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Richard W
Ding Dong! Merrily on High Definition TV
posted
quote:Danvers said: Broadly speaking then, the Selachii and the Venturis are "Sharks" and "Jets" respectively....
D'oh! You're right, it's so obvious now you've pointed it out...
I did get Vetinari though. I thought I was doing well just for that one.
Posts: 8725 | From: Ipswich - the UK's 9th Best Place to Sleep! | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Danvers Carew: Well now, the word 'Selachii' means "An order of elasmobranchs including the sharks and rays; the Plagiostomi" and the word 'Venturis' means "A constricted throat in the air passage of a carburetor, causing a reduction in pressure that results in fuel vapor being drawn out of the carburetor bowl". Broadly speaking then, the Selachii and the Venturis are "Sharks" and "Jets" respectively.... which as you know is the name of the two warring gangs in the musical West Side Story, which is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet . [/QB]
Darn but that's a deep one. Not that the depth would make any difference, I've been reading Pratchett books for a looong time and I only realised last year that Rincewind's hat has WIZZARD on it because he can't 'spell'.
Posts: 40 | From: Germany | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Danvers Carew: Broadly speaking then, the Selachii and the Venturis are "Sharks" and "Jets" respectively.... which as you know is the name of the two warring gangs in the musical West Side Story, which is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet .
There is no way I would have got that by myself.
quote:Originally posted by DaBrudders: Rincewind's hat has WIZZARD on it because he can't 'spell'.
quote:Originally posted by lilnizzie: the episode of Friends when phoebe wanted to see Sting in concert, and was begging ross to ge the tickets...
"Ross Can!" "ross Can!"
It wasn't until recently I found out he had sung a song called Roxanne
Speaking of Friends, I didn't get the Central Perk pun until the episode where Phoebe is standing in front of the coffee shop and says, "I just got that"!
-------------------- Infinite goodness is creating a being you know, in advance, is going to complain. Captain Billy Cutshaw Posts: 582 | From: Germany | Registered: Oct 2002
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