How embarrassment

[red750]

Since I bought my new Samsung phone for under $250 when new iphones cost $1,000+ (some costing over $2000), I often don't carry it with me, it's a bit big and heavy compared to my old iphone. I rarely get calls, and when I do it's usually my daughter wanting me to pick up something at the shops.

 

However, yesterday I went to a funeral, and forgot to put it on "Do not disturb." 

 

Wouldn't you know, halfway through the eulogy, the bloody thing goes off loud enough to almost waken the dead. I pulled it out of my pocket and the caller ID on the lock screen said "Possible Fraud". I shut it off as quick as I could.

[facthunter]

If you'd  Woken the dead, you would have Made Big Headlines..  Nev

[Marty_d]

1 hour ago, red750 said:

Since I bought my new Samsung phone for under $250 when new iphones cost $1,000+ (some costing over $2000), I often don't carry it with me, it's a bit big and heavy compared to my old iphone. I rarely get calls, and when I do it's usually my daughter wanting me to pick up something at the shops.

 

However, yesterday I went to a funeral, and forgot to put it on "Do not disturb." 

 

Wouldn't you know, halfway through the eulogy, the bloody thing goes off loud enough to almost waken the dead. I pulled it out of my pocket and the caller ID on the lock screen said "Possible Fraud". I shut it off as quick as I could.

Could have been worse. Severe flatulence for example.

[old man emu]

I remember when the wife and I went to England, leaving my son at home to fend for himself. Typical smartarsed teenager, he had put a ringtone on my wife's phone that was the sound of police sirens. We were sitting in a cafe in the village in Yorkshire where they filmed the TV show Heartbeat when he phoned us. The place was filled with the sound of sirens and everyone was looking about for the emergency vehicle. Of course, it was the son. It was mid-morning in England, but getting on for dinner time in Sydney. The stupid bugger rang to ask his Mum how to cook some dish he wanted for dinner.

[facthunter]

I have no idea how to cook a dish, either..Nev

[facthunter]

The thread title gets ME .  How embarrassment. ?  Was it MEANT to be "Embarrassing". Please Explain!!  Nev

[red750]

10 minutes ago, facthunter said:

I have no idea how to cook a dish, either..Nev

[facthunter]

Now we have  (TWO) How Embarrassments . How did that Happen? Nev

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

Was it MEANT to be "Embarrassing". Please Explain!!

There was a TV show set in Melbourne with the actors satarised their being Greek. The show was called Acropolis Now. One of the characters was Effie, played by Mary Coustas. The character "Effie", was a stereotypical second-generation Greek Australian prone to malapropisms. A common one of hers was " how embarassment".

 

https://www.facebook.com/nickg1/videos/the-first-time-that-now-iconic-phrase-howembarrassment-was-heard-on-aussie-tv-on/2132406587584055/

[Marty_d]

They can be amusing sometimes.

I remember an old Croatian bloke telling me once, in all seriousness (although with a few shots of slivovitz on board) -

"My wife, ok, I get home a bit late, and my wife, he say to me, 'What in the hell have you been??'"

 

 

 

Edited Friday at 12:28 PM by Marty_d

[onetrack]

An old Slav prospector I knew used to say "I'm doubt", whenever he should have said, "I doubt it".

[willedoo]

Then there's Mario in The Wog Boy - "They say I know f*ck nothing. But I know f*ck all!"

[old man emu]

9 hours ago, willedoo said:

Then there's Mario in The Wog Boy - "They say I know f*ck nothing. But I know f*ck all!"

Very, very, very old. It has been attributed to a German POW camp Kommondant and I have also heard it attributed to a Japanese POW camp Commondant.

[facthunter]

It was attributed at one stage to a early Italian Immigrant who said "When I first come HERE I know fu#k NOTHING and Now I know fu#k ALL."  Nev

[onetrack]

The line was related to me in 1970 in South Vietnam, by a fellow soldier. He told me it was a story retold to him by a WW2 POW veteran. The Japanese camp commandant had lined up all the Aussies and was berating them in his best Japinglish.

 

He was told by the POW that the commandant came out with, "You Ostalians think Japanese stupid. You think Japanese know f**k-nothing! We soon show you, that Japanese know f**k-all!!"

 

Of course, the Australian POW's apparently broke out in fits of laughter, which only made the little Jap officer go apoplectic, and scream more abuse at them, and told guards to hand out beatings.

 

So the basic line goes back a long way, but I wouldn't imagine much more before WW2, as the F-word wasn't used a great deal back then, and it was regarded as a particularly vile word in the 1920's and 1930's.

 

This article on the origins of the F-word is quite interesting. The word has been in use for centuries, but almost never in publications, as it was deemed obscene when in print.

 

https://bigthink.com/the-past/history-of-the-f-word/

 

Edited yesterday at 04:52 AM by onetrack

[old man emu]

It's hard to know the origin to the line. One wonders if it came into being at some RSLClub late in the afternoon of one ANZAC Day in the 1950s.

 

It's hard to pin down its origin.  The earliest attested appearance of current spelling is 1535 ("Bischops ... may fuck thair fill and be vnmaryit" [Sir David Lyndesay, "Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits"]). https://www.etymonline.com/word/fuck

[pmccarthy]

I think the Jap story was in  a book You'll die in Singapore.

[willedoo]

4 hours ago, old man emu said:

It's hard to know the origin to the line. One wonders if it came into being at some RSLClub late in the afternoon of one ANZAC Day in the 1950s.

ome, in those days I reckon they wouldn't have had to wait until late afternoon to come up with a story like that. One of my earliest memories of the RSL is going to a dawn service with my dad when I was about seven years old. They were as full as a Cribb Island bus by eight thirty in the morning, and playing up like second hand lawnmowers. I just sat there quite bemused by it all. I think a fair bit of rum was involved. They were singing and cooeeing and one digger was playing the drums using butter knives on those old tin chairs they used to have back in those days.

[onetrack]

Larrikinism was rife amongst the Diggers, in both WW1 and WW2. The WW2 army magazine, "Salt" provides a good insight into the WW2 outlook and vernacular - but it never published unacceptable swear words. Everything in it was sanitised and censored for "general use". I think I've got every copy of the Salt magazine, it provides some interesting reading.

 

Edited 19 hours ago by onetrack
fixing the 'Merican spelling that crept up on me....

[old man emu]

You have to remember that when we Boomers were growing up, our fathers were still relatively young men who had experinced many horrors and these had been shared with other young men. After the war the bonds formed in military units were stretched as these young men  drifrted apart from old mates and tried to make a life for themselves. ANZAC Day was a day on which those bonds could be reformed. In the years 1946 to about 1966 Australia had a different culture than it has now. Excessive drinking was the norm at celebrations. My Dad was heavily involved with his local RSL Sub-branch, organising the Dawn Service amongst other things. Mum, my sister and I would attend the local Dawn Service and bid farewell to Dad, not expecting to see him until late that evening, and showing the effects of a glass or two.

 

In 1958 a play, The One Day of the Year, contested attitudes to Anzac Day. The play was inspired by an article in the University of Sydney newspaper Honi Soit criticising Anzac Day and the author's own observations of how ex-servicemen behaved on that day. You can imagine how controversial it was. Its production was banned by the Adelaide Festival of Arts Board of Governors in 1960. The author and cast received death threats. 

 

I read this play in high school. Typically the mass media did not understand the play, and concentrated on the initial aims of the Boomer, Hughie.  Hughie and his girlfriend Jan, university students, plan to document Anzac Day for the university newspaper, focusing on the drinking on Anzac Day. For the first time in his life Hughie refuses to attend the dawn service with his Dad, Alf. When he watches the march on television at home with his mother and Wacka, a WWI returned man, living with the family, he is torn between outrage at the display and love for his father. Wacka then explains to Hughie that for the returned, ANZAC Day reunions are for reforming those bonds formed in the horrors of war. Alcohol is the balm that soothes terrifying memories and releases memories of the good times, and the larrikin acts that relieved tension. At the end of the story, Hughie has a more sympathetic view of what ANZAC Day means to his Dad. The mass media and "intellctuals" missed that point.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Day_of_the_Year

[facthunter]

Isn't a BOOMER a Kangaroo? A lot of People were against celebrating Anzac day as they said it Eulegises WAR.  Nev

[red750]

Boomers, or baby boomers, are the generation born between 1946 and 1964, after WWII. Baby boomers are the demographic cohort preceded by the Silent Generation and followed by Generation X. 

[pmccarthy]

Six white boomers are no longer allowed on the radio. And kangaroos are no longer tied down. 

[facthunter]

That's Rolf Harris and He's out of favour.   A tied down Kangaroo, or a dead one  is the Only Safe  Skippy. (The Bush Kangaroo).   Nev

[old man emu]

Is there some sort of euphemism  or secret code in Dot and the Kangaroo?

 

Different reference : Has anyone ever told you that they were a freind of Dorothy?