Real Life/Radar


 * We're told that an animal's energy resources go into four activities that start with the letter F: feeding, fighting, fleeing and propagating the species or in some text, sexual reproduction. We all know what the last F means.
 * Yes, fornicating.
 * Well, that is the polite way of putting it...
 * Longwood Gardens features a large pipe instrument. So what do they call it? "The Longwood Organ", of course. There's no way that wasn't intentional. If you ever visit, you may see a plaque proudly stating that the pipe organ's lowest note is produced by a 36 foot long, 32 inches wide wooden pipe, and that playing it causes "earthquake-like vibrations." Ohhh yeah.
 * The Jockey Club has fairly strict standards of decency when it comes to the registered names of Thoroughbred horses. Nevertheless, some dandies get through by virtue of looking innocent in print.
 * Hoof Hearted (say it out loud, emphasis on the 'hoo' part)
 * Cunning Stunt
 * Hardawn
 * Pistol Knight
 * Piston Broke
 * Testa Lavorro (which roughly translates from Italian as headjob)
 * Rhythm Method
 * There's so much crap you can get past the DMV when you want a vanity license plate....
 * The official mascot of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo is a five-foot long wrench known as "The Ridgid Tool".
 * For those wondering the Tool is a 60" triple-plated chrome pipe wrench. It's quite a sight to behold.
 * Jeepers Media on YouTube features crap getting past the toy company radar. And oh my god, how it flies past.
 * After the London 2012 Olympics logo was revealed, the BBC invited viewers to send their own logo designs in. One such submission was a thinly-veiled parody of Goatse (More or less safe for work).
 * During the USS Pueblo incident at the height of the Cold War, where a naval reconnaissance ship and its crew were captured by North Korea, Commander Lloyd M. Bucher was tortured and mock-executed in an effort to get him to confess to wrongdoing. Eventually, when they threatened his crew, Bucher wrote a confession and, since they had no one fluent in English, they could only translate individual words to make sure what he was writing was a confession. He wrote "We paean the North Korean state. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung." The North Koreans missed the urination pun.
 * On that note, there's the Hawaiian Good Luck Sign...which just goes to show what lack of knowledge of the POW's culture can do.
 * William L. Shirer gave broadcasts from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940. He tried several methods to decoy the censor board; he used Americanisms, because the censors only knew British English, he spoke ironically, or put things to his manuscripts that he expected to be censored, but he hoped that maybe they allow something else in exchange.
 * There's a stream in Arizona named Wet Beaver Creek. Yes, really. Was the Department of the Interior asleep, do you think?
 * Surprisingly common when it comes to geographic names. Ask the folks of Beaver Lick, Kentucky. In the Canadian territory of Nunavut, there is a remote location where prospectors named two hills the Twin Jugs.
 * Dildo, Newfoundland. It was named after a captain who was prominent there. However, according to myth though, he had a pet squid.
 * Big Bone Lick in Kentucky.
 * Knob Lick, Kentucky.
 * Climax, North Carolina and Climax, Saskatchewan, AND Climax, Michigan.
 * Suggested city motto for all of them: "From start to finish, we're at a climax!"
 * The tiny town of Climax, Minnesota made the news in 2004 when it adopted "More than just a feeling" as a tourism slogan, and the local high school principal refused to allow students to wear the new official town sweatshirts and T-shirts. By all accounts, the choice of motto was entirely intentional.
 * And Climax in Greene County, New York. Three near by towns are Freehold, Gayhead and Surprise.
 * Grand Teton: The big tit mountain. You might not see The Tetons and the Snake River the same way again.
 * There is a pair of mountains in Puerto Rico called Las Tetas de Cayey (the Cayey Tits).
 * Lake Titicaca, which the Animaniacs did a song about. It's between Bolivia and Peru.
 * Wankers Corners, Oregon.
 * Cumming, Georgia. The local elementary school is Cumming Elementary whose mascot is the cougar.
 * A Hilarious in Hindsight example: A town in Australia is named Eromanga.
 * Lancaster County in Pennsylvania contains the towns of Bird-In-Hand, Bule Ball, Intercourse and Paradise.
 * There is in fact a whole book dedicated to this happening with English town names. Scunthorpe being (arguably) the most Egregious example.
 * That's nothing compared to Twatt and Shitterton.
 * Bald Knob, Arkansas. Also part of the Allegheny Mountains.
 * The beautiful twin mountains in Margarita island, Venezuela, known as las tetas de Maria Guevara (Maria Guevara's Tits). So famous, they are even mentioned in a song praising the charms of the island!
 * What about Fucking, Austria?
 * It's pronounced "focc-ing" (rhyming with locking), so the joke name goes quickly.
 * They're also changing their name, being sick of tourists stealing the town's welcome signs.
 * There's an Irish town called Muff. It has a diving club.
 * Seattle Washington incorporates Lake Union. There is a trolley service for both the north and south ends of the lake. The official name of the trolley for the southern end is "South Lake Union Streetcar", but most people refer to it as "South Lake Union Trolley". There are signs everywhere encouraging you to "Ride the S.L.U.T.". http://www.seattlepi.com/local/332081_slut18.html
 * South Lake Union is a neighborhood, located south of Lake Union. The S.L.U.T. runs from SLU to Downtown.
 * The Wgasa Bush Line monorail at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, which got its name from an acronym standing for "who gives a shit anyway?"
 * See 8:43 in this video. Take me for a ride, indeed...
 * The chemical symbol for plutonium, Pu, was intended as a joke. It was added to the Periodic Table of Elements without question.
 * On the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Magic Kingdom, Disney World, there is a section of the ride which features a bunch of suggestively-posing wenches, pirates leering at them, and a sign which says "Take a Wench for a Bride!". Also, when the ride vehicle passes by the main pirate, he says "I want SIX! SIX! I want SIX now!" Many people do not hear "six," initially.
 * The Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. An entire book named Never before in this country's history was edited with all his GCPTR moments.
 * In an unfortunate (for them anyways) circumstance, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front always gets giggles out of people.
 * In rural, conservative Currituck County, North Carolina, there is a billboard in plain view of the main highway that reads "TRY MY NUTS" in big red letters. This is to advertise peanuts down at the beach. The radar must have been asleep to have had that sign put up anywhere in Currituck County.
 * Try My Nuts is a gourmet nut company based on the Outer Banks with some questionable merchandise. The Banks are also home to Dirty Dick's Crab House, whose slogan happens to be "I got my crabs from Dirty Dicks."
 * The student's union of the Universidad de Buenos Aires Social Sciences school is called Centro de Estudiantes de Ciencias sociales. Of course, the acronym is CECSo, which is pronounced "sexo". You don't need to be fluent in Spanish to get it, really. Of course, the name is hardly ever spoken aloud (it's just "El Centro", ie. "The Union")
 * Then there's the Australian National University Students' Association, ANUSA. Theoretically, pronounced A-noo-sa...
 * Dutch example of crap getting caught right on time: the city of Tilburg has got his own catholic university. Now bear the following in mind: Catholic is spelled Katholiek in the Netherlands. At some point they had the bright idea to have a contest for renaming the university. Many entries came in for "Katholieke Universiteit Tilburg", the acronym being KUT. They quickly decided to keep the name Universiteit Tilburg because of the rather... Unfortunate Implications
 * KUT being the Dutch equivalent of 'cunt' or 'pussy'. While also being used as a word to describe something that is of poor quality. Apparently students do not think much of their university.
 * Tired Gay succumbs to Dix in 200 meters
 * There is a cookbook called Two Dudes one Dish.
 * Alice Cooper designed a 22-inch long hot dog for his restaurant ("Cooperstown"), and thanks to his love of sports in general and the Arizona Diamondbacks in particular, named it "the big unit" (after pitcher Randy Johnson, because like him, it was very big). (Surprisingly, there are few to no references to a certain Arlo Guthrie album.)
 * Culver City Meat Company. You Can't Beat Our Meat
 * The male sports reporter on Ten News Australia has probably learned to stop commenting about small things after this report.
 * And, at the other end of the "spectrum", the hosts of Australia's Today show get into a rather funny (and, for the men, possibly embarrassing) conversation that got past the radar so much, it's on the show's YouTube channel. What started it? Karl Stefanovic's long stabby thing.
 * When Swedish sculptor Carl Milles tried to make a statue of Poseidon for the town of Goteborg, he was prevented from making it anatomically correct. He got around this issue by cleverly placing the fish in Poseidon's hand, so that when you look at it from the right angle...
 * I give you Parking Lot PP next to the Comcast Center at the University of Maryland College Park. Some landscape designer sure had a lot of fun with this one.
 * Astronomers are, indeed, intending to investigate further the seventh planet of our solar system.
 * After President Obama's 2011 State Of The Union address, which contained what he termed "Win The Future" moments, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin took the acronym and stated that the address sure did have a number of "WTF" moments. But she didn't mean "Win The Future."
 * A Catholic school banned the display of rainbows during an anti-homophobia event. The students' solution: bake the rainbows into the cupcakes.
 * This furniture store.
 * At Acadia University, in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, top teachers are given the 'Community Leadership in Teaching' Awards. The acronym is not a coincidence - the students who designed the award were just devious.
 * The phonetic alphabet is good for this. "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?" is a common expression of incredulity, while someone who leaves his teammates in the lurch is referred to as a "Bravo Foxtrot" or "Blue Falcon", both of which are acronymic expressions for "Buddy F*cker".
 * A situation involving large amounts of personnel or equipment that is not going according to plan is sometimes humorously referred to as a "Charlie Foxtrot", the letters CF referring to the term "Cluster F*ck".
 * Truckticles, for when you really, really want to make it obvious you're very insecure.
 * The University of Toronto recently tried to combine its language programs into one big department, called Studies of Languages and Literature University of Toronto. SLLUT, anyone?
 * Averted at the last minute by a re-think, but the Canberra University of New Technologies.
 * There are two species of the prehistoric bird Jeholornis - J. prima and J. palmapenis. Yes, I'm serious about the second one.
 * Other extinct taxa worth mentioning are Erectopus superbus, "Scrotum humanum" (I know it's an old taxon, but still...) and Homo erectus.
 * Scientific names are supposed to be kept boring, but scientists do like slipping things past the radar. There's a dragonfly called Pachydiplax longipennis. "pennis" is Greek for "wing", so the name just means "long winged". Except it isn't. The wings aren't long at all. Indeed, many dragonfly names seem to use "pennis" far more than seems appropriate.
 * Mosasaurus copeanus was named by a fossil collector named Marsh who was in a collecting war with a competitor named Cope. "anus" means ring in Latin. Sure, that's what it means here, too!
 * The group that controls the scientific names of animals frowns on any attempt to incorporate insults into names, but they can miss some of the more subtle ones. Agathidium bushi, A. cheneyi and A. rumsfeldi are named in honor of the former President, vice president and his defense secretary. They're slime-mold beetles. You're welcome to judge whether this is an "honor" or an insult.
 * Worthy-minded students at one of Britain's most prestigious universities, concerned at the need for preservation of old buildings and historical sites, once tried to start a Cambridge University National Trust Society. The joke was spoilt when a kindly old don, more worldly-wise than the well-brought up students, took them to one side and explained why the University Council was unlikely to advance funding, worthy though the cause was...
 * The genus in the fossa's scientific name, Cryptoprocta ferox, translates to "hidden anus".
 * The Delaware seafood joint, Crabby Dicks has menu and merchandise loaded with Double Entendre. For instance, one of their shirts depicts a Chinese-themed crab named "Hung-Lo Dick".
 * It's not entirely clear whether the writer who put together this headline knew what they were writing, given the popular definition of Santorum, but it seems hard to believe otherwise.
 * Kiss London, a radio station based in London, UK not London, Ontario had this. Going Up to Eleven due to the Obfuscating Stupidity of Amy Childs, one of the UK's most controversial figures.
 * Paul Krugman, the sometimes controversial economist and columnist, occasionally refers to "words one cannot use in a New York Times Blog." After a series of TV interviews pushing his newest book, Krugman published the text-to-speech transcript of a voice mail he recieved, unaware what "falcon liar" and "fall issue" meant. Hilarity Ensued.
 * The Ypsilanti Water Tower is phallic enough to have it's own wikipedia page. It even has two large, spherical trees (which are now much larger than they are in the wiki picture).
 * The Norwegian newspaper VG managed that in regards to Niklas Lidstrom. Apparently Detroit is located in Chicago and Joe Louis-arena lays smack dab in Chicago. Nice job. Bonus points for being Norway's largest newspaper with over 1 million readers.