Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

How a candle works.

Practically everything.

that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character.

DO you have a Mac?

The best things about macs is that making any character is stupid easy.

¢™
øºÖØ°

&¶¶¶¶¶¶

!

That (most) BMWs are named according to engine size (I was a car freak as a child but never knew this until being informed by a German flatmate while I was a PhD student).

i.e. 318 = 3 series 1.8 litre engine etc.

Didn't know that black and green olives are identical, just different stage of maturity, until a few months ago.

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago. Likewise Lipps Inc.

I've got a mac and I still don't know how to do any of, um, ^ those ^

I end up going to wikipedia and copy-and-pasting when I want unusual characters

The cows-and-bulls thing, plus Adam Ant, are the only things on this thread that I do know

how to cook an artichoke properly

(a julia child recipe steered me right)

How to tie my shoes (velcro, you see..)

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago.

^^^ this. Same with Sandy Shaw.

Fay Fife of the Rezillos.

(i.e. it's a pun on "I am from the town of Fife, my good fellow" in broad scots)

What's the Adam Ant pun? Adam Ant = adamant? If so... pretty lame pun.

That's it.

xpost Tell that to Lai Mpun, the lead singer of Bangkok's Phleng Chat.

I am 33 and didn't know any of these things. Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

Same with Sandy Shaw.

i don't know how to explain it but i used to think chickens had a really weird way of "mating", something to do with the rooster's legs. (!!?!?) :)

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

"that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character."

^^^Dude, you beat me by a month. Thanks!

I once spent a half hour trying to eject a cd from a Mac before someone finally told me there's an eject button on the keyboard. I was going through all these crazy menus and preferences...

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

― filthy dylan, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 5:30 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

loooool one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory.

I think I've done that Mac eject button thing too :(

Pronounced lapels like 'labels' for years until corrected but happily don't dress well enough to use it often

My girlfriend was shocked to learn, at the age of 33, that a 'Flea Circus' is actually a rather charming mechanical toy, and is in no way operated by any parasitic insects.

Ismael, at the age of 32, is shocked to learn the same thing. This thread is getting embarrassing

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory

no but seriously, what is this about?

i mean i can see that there's rarely anything to size them against in the big white antarctic, but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

u could still play tag w/it tho

But you could make the same assumption with ostriches in the big yellow desert (or wherever they live), and in that case you'd be right!

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

aw no-one said 'where babies come from'

I've had a lot of experiences in my adult life with mispronouncing words I understood as part of written text, but hadn't heard aurally in the context of conversation etc. For example, I was well into my twenties before I knew the word "vehement" wasn't pronounced veh-hee-ment. I wish others would politely correct you when you do that instead of letting you blindly sound like an idiot.

I'm a bit like that, but now I'm in the habit of saying works incorrectly, I can't get out of it. Canal is not pronounced can-el, but there's fuck all I can do about it now.

^ This happens to me all the time too - so much so that I actually now find it quite amusing when I realise, midway through a sentence, that a word I've never heard before is looming at the end. I suppose that people who talk a lot, rather than reading, must find the same with spelling. It only annoys me when some moron uses it as an opportunity to score cheap points (sadly fairly often)

I was going to start a thread like this, but it was going to be more about 'life lessons' that took you forever to learn, rather than trivia.

Anyway it's taken me this long to fully realize how unreliable first impressions can be when it comes to people.

but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

haha

TAL have an episode on this in the "best of" section on their wesite. people who thought unicorns were real, etc., lots of awkward silences at cocktail parties: good stuff.

i like to tag birds. (runs)

There's a penguin here and he wants to say "you didn't touch me ner ner ner"

I thought penguins went "weh weh weh"

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

― Huey in Bristol (Huey in Melbourne), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you couldnt get me in the same room as a ouija board

I was about 35 when I figured out Open Sesame = Open Says Me.

i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

I just figured out, like 2 days ago, that the lyrics are "highway to the danger zone"

(until then, thought they were "I went to to the danger zone")

ooh i like that

lol mandee those are even better

Nothing, as I'm not shockingly old.

Misheard lyrics are always better. The singer of my old band had this (intentionally) corny line that went "sleep all day til the telephone ring / head to the bar and shake that thing", the latter half of which I always thought was "head to the barber and shave that thing".

My friend always thought that Op Ivy song Take Warning went "skate boarding", which is way better.

Same with Sandy Shaw.

Ok I sounded this out several times in several different ways and I still don't get how this is a pun. Help?

I think that 'Shaw' is meant to sound like 'shore' - I don't hear it either

Sandy Shore.

Shaw is pronounced exactly the same as Shore, in England.

hows it pron in USA?

Well I guess it must be different, if people are having problems hearing it? Dunno.

I didn't even know it was her real name, tho.

wasn't, rather

I knew someone who, if my friend is to believed, is said to have uttered at age 18 "wait, you can't get pregnant if your clothes are on, right" while making out.

'Shore' rhymes with 'oar'. 'Shaw' is the same as the first three letters in 'shopping' xp

i'm loving this thread. so many discoveries!

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

― Øystein, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

http://www.noonco.com/flea/movie.htm

My flabber hasn't been gasted quite like this in a long time :-/

xp I only got that Sandie Shaw pun because I once attended a seminar about legal practice given by an English professor who made a big thing out of the difference between 'law' and 'lore'. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about

Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

I know, right?!!??!

i too only figured out lipps, inc. lately. also, fear's lee ving. it never occurred to me until i was driving in the car one day and bam.

I just now got Lipps, Inc. I say in my head "Lipps Incorporated" whenever I read that.

I was pretty close to thirty when I was told that "prevalent" is not pronounced pree-VAY-lent. I liked my version better. "The PREE-VAY-LENT opinion in this country is that Barack Obama will be a force of change."

I didn't realize until sometime in my sophomore year of high school that being forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson (Focus on the Family) every morning on the way to school was completely fucked up. My dad used to drive me to school everyday for years, and that shit was always on the radio.

"i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

― Cittaslow Mazza (blueski), Wednesday, 12 November 2008"

haha yes, i thought it must be turkish

I was pretty close to thirty when I was told that "prevalent" is not pronounced pree-VAY-lent.

probably some slippage with "prevailing" no?

I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, probably.

re HAZCHEM, we have HAZMAT around here, and i only figured it out in recent times

pleasant plains, ai lien has a coworker who is black and who claims that the black community calls it lipps incorporated. he was unmoved when she told him about the pun.

I probably would have "gotten" Lipps Inc sooner had I actually heard someone utter their name out loud. They tend not to be talked about a lot, shockingly.

(i never got it until right now)

that 'broadway' was shorthand for a bunch of separately owned theaters rather than a single entity like disneyland or something

that causal ≠ casual

I DID NOT KNOW THAT ABOUT OLIVES

omg

I mean, even Kids Incorporated was Kids Incorporated. Is Public Image, Ltd also some sort of pun I'm not getting?

there is quite a lot of stuff on here that i didn't know...

re mispronouncing words: this happens to me A LOT. i've always been a big reader, but rarely heard many of the 'big' words i encountered spoken out loud (eg. my mum would never even use the word 'prevalent'). it is quite embarrassing to discover you have been saying a word wrong forever!

i was probably in my late teens before i found out that not every adult has false teeth (i blame this on the fact that every adult member of my family had them).

I was pretty close to thirty when I was told that "prevalent" is not pronounced pree-VAY-lent.

Easily confused with "covalent", IMO.

Also, this just came up in convo recently: I was 22 or 23 before I was told that "passing" is an accepted term for a non-white person who can "pass" for white in public. I queried it in a manuscript as being insufficiently explained, and I was told, "Uh, no. That's, like...a thing. That everyone but you already knows." Ouch. Thanks, boss.

I learned about that phrase during an interview Ed Bradley conducted with Lena Horne.

that you can just lift the silverware thing right out of the dishwasher and carry it over to the silverware drawer

James Dobson raped me.

btw i'm pretty sure adam ant took his name from the british brand of urinals

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/28/49309263_4de15ee0ee.jpg?v=0

Lucky he didn't decide to call himself Armitage Shanks.

that international harvester was a brand of refrigerator and not just the name of a swedish prog band:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/96/234540591_d6ed366755.jpg

i still say preevaylent and hyperbowl

International Harvester of Sorrow

how to pronounce "synecdoche" (but i learned it well before the movie was even in development, nyeh nyeh)

oh come on, shouldn't this be more basic stuff people take for granted by the time they're adults? most people i know don't know how to pronounce synecdoche, or what it means.

the truth about santa claus. being a rapist that is.

that lamb and sheep are the same species

ok looking upthread i just realized my santa=rapist joke is like the second joke involving rape on this thread. gross.

Things you were shockingly old when you learned: i'm a douchebag

That "quantum" is also a noun

international harvester's main claim to fame is tractors:

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/media/machines0201.jpg

but i'd be all over an IH fridge

Nabisco: I shall offer to solace (transitive verb) you kindly upon your troubled realization.

He's lucky you didn't offer to thunderball it...

When comedians are guests on talk shows they are just doing their routines and not having funny conversations off the cuff

I can (and will) thunderball solace.

pronunciation: I thought "chitin" rhymed with "kitten" for most of my life.

not pronunciation: don't know an exact age for this one, but for several years after reaching sexual maturity, I was under the impression that the vagina and urethra were two basically identical, indistinguishable holes, with the hapless male forced to pick one at random and start plugging away. astute readers may be able to use this information to deduce something about my sexual activity during this time period.

international harvester's main claim to fame is tractors:

makes sense. you've heard of farm-to-table? this is tractor-to-fridge!

fiance = man
fiancee = woman

I didn't even notice that they were two different words

blond/blonde
divorce-with-accent-mark/divorcee

Shaw is pronounced exactly the same as Shore, in England.

Thanx, Poo! Whew! I wasn't praying there wasn't some sort of ridiculously common tool called a sandishaw.

(i.e. it's a pun on "I am from the town of Fife, my good fellow" in broad scots)

How shockingly old are you when you now learn that Fife isn't a town?

On the subject of pun-based singer names, Manda Rin dawned on me about six years after I first heard of her. I just thought it was a couple of words, it never occurred to me to say it out loud, or look at the actual two words written down in close proximity.

what about ari up?

^^ could not make sense of that one until JUST RIGHT NOW

Wait, what is the Ari Up pun?

hurry up?

Aye, in Cockney/estuary English. That's how I've always read it anyway.

I was about 30 before I realised Adam Ant was a pun, and about 36 before I realised Perry Farrell was also a pun.

Adam Ant I realised earlier this year, aged 23. Perry Farrell, I got... right now.

I've known about three of the things mentioned so far. I'm especially clueless when it comes to food. I learned what fondue was a couple of months ago when I didn't know how to draw it in a game of Cranium, which resulted in a lot of disbelieving laughter heading my way.

Perry Farrell ... holee shit. How did that ever escape my notice!?

I remember reading Liz Fraser of the Cocteaus saying she used to believe that goosebump/shiver sensation was her blood changing direction cause that's what someone told her as a kid. I think she believed it right into her teens.

Driving on the I-90 west near Albany a few years ago, I read one of the big green signs over the highway. I turned to my wife and said, "I love the name of that town: 'Sheh-neck-ta-dee'...."

She promptly clued me in to the correct pronunciation.

Shit, never realised about Perry Farrell. Or the fiance/fiancee thing---I thought they were jsut different attempts to Englishise the same French word without having to use an accent mark. I'm an editor, and have a sinking feeling I may have "corrected" this in other people's work more than once. Fuck.

It was only last year that I realised Iggy Pop was a pun! For someone who likes to make a lot of lame puns myself, it's pretty shameful.

Iggy Pop? I don't get it!

I was just kidding.

Sorry.

That Dr Dean Edell is a man...somehow I heard "Dina Dell" and pictured a woman.

That "La Cucaracha" is about cockroaches.

that you can just lift the silverware thing right out of the dishwasher and carry it over to the silverware drawer

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 9:58 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

lol, this was such a moment of truth for me.

I used to think that the "people who live in glass houses" expression meant that people who are in the public eye or who are easily seen shouldn't do disgraceful things. I had a big ah-ha moment when it dawned on me.

I mispronounced segue as "seeg" until about a year ago :/

In my defense, it *is* pronounced that way as a musical term (well, so I've heard anyway) but yeah. Whoops.

Oh also, I thought samhain was said how it's spelt. I dont actually know how it *is* said, I just recently read some ppl scoffing online "omg they said it wrong!" and I was all "errr... oh dear".

I thought Samhain was said how it's spelt too!

I looked it up, apparently it's 'sow-en'? That's the trouble with Gaelic, you just never know...

Until a couple of years ago I thought 'obtuse' meant abstruse or odd, and that 'fulsome praise' was enthusiastic praise.

i used to pronounce hyperbole as "hyper bowl" :( :( until i was in my 20s :( :( :( :(

I've heard misusing obtuse is a common one.

I got called obtuse by a very charming anonymous person on this very forum once (via livejournal), and I had to wonder wether they were trying to suggest that I was difficult, or stupid.

I'd much rather the former, obviously.

Apparently the correct pronunciation of syndrome is so that it rhymes with 'sing to me' - but you'd be a wanker if you pronounced it that way.

The way people use 'obtuse' and 'fulsome' these days indicates that the word itself is changing meaning. Sitll, it's a shock when you find out how these words are defined, and realise you've been insulting people for years unintentionally.

that you can just lift the silverware thing right out of the dishwasher and carry it over to the silverware drawer

*Slaps forehead*

That was news to me too - another useful tip from ILX, and a black eye to all who say this place is a waste of time.

I always thought 'enervated' meant excited...but it means tired. Which is not how it sounds...

it took me a while to figure out "pneumonia" a) was not pronounced "puh-new-monia" and b) was the same illness as "new-monia"

I listened to Fishbone's "Party at Ground Zero" for almost 20 years before I learned they were saying "and the world will turn to glowing pink vapor stew" in the chorus.

I just made hollandaise for the first time a few days ago does that count.

someone explain the perry farrell pun to me please

peripheral

didn't know what a blt was until age 26

after reading that thread that day, every time i've lifted the silverware thing out of the dishwasher and carried it over to the drawer for emptying i have given full credit to tracer hand.

well that does explains the handle. sheesh.

Step back for this one. Until this year - and for some 15-20 years prior to that - I believed that 'Hazmat' was the name of a company which specialised in the delivery of kosher goods to Islamic restaurants and delicatessens.

I am smugly proud now of my years of avoiding back strain as I always knew about the basket.

thanking u nick!

"I knew about the basket" should be a band name.

I was 14 when I learned to reply with , "What business is it of yours?" to comments about my clothes, my hair, the way I walked etc.

that has left me with an unfortunate impression of your wardrobe, appearance and carriage.

interesting response to compliments

When you're 14, no personal comment, no matter how kindly intended, is a compliment:

"You look nice."
"Oh, muu-uum!"

I was about 35 when I figured out Open Sesame = Open Says Me.

― Rotgutt, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 8:44 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark<br><br>no, it's not a pun. It's a translation of the phrase khulja sim sim from Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves

i wasn't 25 until I learned to not use html breaks on ILE

I'm 34 and just now learned it's not pronounced "sam hane".

Half these rock star puns passed me by until my 20s (mostly until a previous ILX thread on the subject), along with Ed Rush and Pat Smear.

I pronounced something I'd only ever read wrong last week, so it's still happening! When I was corrected I had a feeling of "oh shit, I knew that," but I wondered how many more are out there that I don't know about.

(Also didn't know Schenectady had a hard "ch", but since I've never been within 2000 miles of it, maybe it's not so bad. Even though I've always liked the name too. I don't know how to pronounce "Stuyvesant" either, while we're mispronouncing our way round NY.)

"that you can just lift the silverware thing right out of the dishwasher and carry it over to the silverware drawer"

I will do this every time from now on. You are changing lives for the better.

I was 14 when I learned to reply with , "What business is it of yours? FUCK YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!!!" to comments about my clothes, my hair, the way I walked etc.

Wait! What is an ox?

Oxen (singular ox) are large and heavyset breeds of Bos taurus cattle trained as draft animals. Often they are adult, castrated males. Usually an ox is over four years old due to the need for training and to allow it to grow to full size. [...]

An ox is nothing more than a mature bovine with an "education."

uppity cows then

So no animal is born an ox, they just have oxness thrust upon them?

I learned what fondue was a couple of months ago when I didn't know how to draw it in a game of Cranium, which resulted in a lot of disbelieving laughter heading my way.

I was about 14 or 15 when I learned how luggage gets across the ocean.

I mean I thought there was a giant series of tubes and things under the ocean that took luggage everywhere in the world from the airports. I blame all the kiddy tv shows that had scenes with confusing conveyor belts behind the scenes in airports.

There's a street in Exeter called Musgrave Row, but the road sign always had a bit of the 'R' missing so it looked like Musgrave Pow.

Only at the age of ~25, and only because the sign was replaced, did it occur to me that the street was not called Musgrave Pow.

i was probably 10 before i realized that when a song played on the radio the band hadn't actually come in to the studio, set up their stuff and played it. I had imagined a line of bands outside radio station buildings waiting to play their songs.

^^^ I had this notion, but with tv. I think I was younger when I learned better though.

Most of mine were to do with language. For instance, I heard people talking about this magical shop called WH Smith. where they seemed to go quite a lot, quite a lot that is, compared to the frequency with which I saw it, which was never.

I did however see a shop which I pronounced wsmiths. I really didn't connect the two for a very long time.

When very young I used to say 'WH Smith [properly this time] out!', whenever I meant LBW.

I didn't realise until I was well into my teens that I had been consistently misreading the word everyone said as halcyon as halycon, so in my mind there were two words for the same concept - one pronounced 'hal-see-on' and on 'halicon'. They must in some sense have occupied the same space and yet they didn't.

Also soap operas were so poperas in my head until a revelatory moment I can still remember, when I was sitting on the stairs at home. I realised it was nothing to do with the fact they were 'so popular'.

Gamaliel Ratsey - fuzzy thinker

I just learned what brussels sprouts taste like about three days ago. I am 32.

I just learned how to poach an egg the other day. But I fried one for a roommate a couple weeks ago, and he said "Wow, I think this is the first time I've ever had a fried egg. They're pretty good!"

yeah a lot of cooking i've only grasped in the past couple of years (i'm 35)

There are a lot of things I used to think suddenly fell into place when you became and adult, and it's a bit of a relief and a bit of a disappointment to realize that most of them are actually cumulative, like cooking skills.

I've been cooking for a long long time, but only learned how to properly hold a knife (thumb and forefinger on the blade near the handle, rest of palm and fingers on handle) a few years ago.

my sister likes to make fun of me for drawing a picture of a duck with four legs in my teens

that you have to park a car on the street so it faces the same way as if it were in traffic. 1st time I moved parents' car onto street after getting my license, family was all "lol u bozo u parked backwards" and I was likke "wha???"

I do this sometimes. I know you can get a ticket for it but if it's more convenient, then I still will.

That must be a local thing - it's commonplace practice here.

(right now, my own car and both of the ones parked either side of it are parked on the "wrong" side of the road)

Wasn't til I was about 18/19 that I learned one of my uncles wasn't my grandma's biological son.

never heard that about olives!

also, i had pronounced the word vapid with a long a sound until i was like 24 when i was corrected (and gently mocked). but then i found out via merriam webster that the long a sound is perfectly acceptable a couple of years ago (is that a british thing?). sorry that's all i can think of for now.

now that i'm in the US, if i say a word wrong i just pass it off as 'oh that's how we say it in new zealand...'. works every time!

British & Danish people made fun of me so much last summer for saying the word "buoy" as "boo-ee" instead of "boy" that I changed my pronunciation and felt stupid. Then when I was around Americans again I noticed that they all said "boo-ee" and wished I hadn't given in so quickly!

When I was 5 and describing story characters as "mischievious" the reaction was always, aww, cute, that's a big word, smart kid! And then aged 9 or 10 I said it and the teacher looked at me like I was terribly subnormal and made sarcastic remarks which my friends repeated all week, and the change of reaction seemed so bizarre (I've not only misread it all this time, but been patted on the head for it?!) that I refused to believe for ages that I was wrong.

I even thought dictionaries were just lying and that children's books used to spell it my way until some recent cult decided to change it to embarrass clever kids or something. (I was even older before I realised that hearing "smart kid" a lot doesn't mean you really are, especially if you haven't for several years, and that anyway it would be nicer not to be a pompous jerk thinking you were all day, yeah.)

Sadly, I'm still waiting for most of the cooking revelations. Some friends have suddenly got into inviting people for dinner, and I feel horribly guilty knowing I can't cook well enough to (want to) return the favour.

do you say buoyed and buoyant like boo-eed and boo-ee-ant in America

xposts I am in the UK and a) haven't heard "vay-pid", though I don't hear the word much, and b) am pretty sure that here you can park facing either way, as everyone does all the time. We were pretty confused visiting the US and having some guy come out of the store we'd parked outside to tell us we'd parked illegally and to turn it around. A sort of dawning realisation of "oh... yeah, everyone else IS facing the other way, aren't they?"

(Nice of him to tell us, though, I suppose.)

I've heard a lot of adults say "mischievious," it must be a very common mistake.

I say "buoyed" like "booyd" and "buoyant" like "boyant".

Can't remember exactly how old I was when I figured out that thunder is just the sound of lightning and not some seperate thing, but I was at least 10. I have a sneaking suspicion I was a lot older actually.

I did however see a shop which I pronounced wsmiths

I used to do that too. This thread makes me feel less alone.

mischievious

Yeah, I thought this for a long time, too. Like, I actually thought it was a UK/US thing for a while, and taught my spellchecker to keep it.

It wasn't until I moved back to the UK that I discovered, no, it was just wrong.

Yeah, I still think "mischievous" sounds British and formal/pretentious even though I know it's right. I think to the extent that I noticed the two pronunciations at all, I was sure they were alternates.

I didn't realise until I was well into my teens that I had been consistently misreading the word everyone said as halcyon as halycon

I had been doing this until maybe two years ago.

This is gonna sound pretty moronic, but...

I just figured out last night what those old-timey photographers were doing underneath those big black curtain hoods before taking a picture.

i know, isnt it gross

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

http://www.myfineartphotos.com/antiquecameraframed%20sm%20proportioned.jpg

^^ Not reviewing replay footage.

Thanks to a Xmas gift (2 days ago) explaining the origin of phrases, I now fully understand & appreciate the meaning of "Revenge is a dish best served cold" - always thought the cold designated a loss of passion, rather than the passage of time. I always thought that was a particularly irrelevent and counterintuitive idiom. Seems so obvious now!

aw no-one said 'where babies come from'

It's the "...and how they get there" part that's more pertinent

Myonga i think it's your old interp that was right - basically, "don't give them the pleasure of getting hot under the collar"

Only, like, 2 years ago did I learn that there is no north pole (i.e. a landmass), as well as that it's Sherbet, not Sherbert.

okay, i just learnt both of those things

there's not even a glacier at the northpole? how sad. santa must get awfully wet.

that <a href=;this</a> existed and that carole was quite so lovely

guh sorry, this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I35WA_BSi_w

Sty-vuh-sint.

I just figured out last night what those old-timey photographers were doing underneath those big black curtain hoods before taking a picture.

So what is it, I still don't know?

Setting up the photographic plate, so it didn't get exposed to light?

Ah, okay. That makes sense.

I guess I thought it had something to do with avoiding the glare of sunlight as the photographer got his subject into focus, but that only goes to show that I never really put any thought at all into why the hood was there in the first place.

I used to work at one of those Wal-Mart studios, and we'd have to change out the negatives by sticking the whole camera into a black bag and switching everything around blindly. I remember watching my boss do it the first time for me, and she got those dull shark eyes as she was focusing on something she couldn't see and my solitary thought at the moment was "Well, I bet that's the same look she gets when she's using the toilet paper."

Because I am shockingly old (for an ILXor), anything I learned recently or am likely to learn from now on qualifies.

Red, green, and yellow capsicums are all the same thing, at different stages.

PP's last graf is splendid!

It was YESTERDAY, watching A Christmas Story for the first time in many years, that I realised I've always pronounced Terre Haute, the Indiana town, incorrectly, at least if Jean Shepherd is any guide and I think he is. I always said "Terry Hot" but Shep says "Terrah Hote"!

I just remembered something. It was ages before I worked out what "watersports" meant, in a sexual sense. There used to be adverts in the back of newspapers for "watersports" videos, usually with the subheading "BUY NOW BEFORE THEY ARE BANNED!". And I used to think, "why would the government ban videos of people waterskiing and windsurfing?"

those italics make your thoughts sound like maxwell smart.

"why would someone throw a shoe at the President?"
http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2005/news/051010/dadams2.jpg

I only recently learned why football pundits always criticise strikers for not shooting into the far corner when coming in from the wing. Fifteen years of hearing that cliche, and Lee Dixon was the first pundit ever to explain it

"you couldnt get me in the same room as a ouija board"

I'm 35 and been on this board such a long time but only now discovered SS is a GIANT.

I only learned to drive a few months ago. :-(

Is it cause keepers always guard the near post?

(NB all I know about feet hockey was learned ages 5-12)

keeper more likely to deflect shot into play again if saved?

Yes, it's because if the keeper saves he's likely to parry it into the path of a fellow striker. I'd always found it easier to tuck it in at the near post myself - no team player, me

I just remembered something. It was ages before I worked out what "watersports" meant, in a sexual sense. There used to be adverts in the back of newspapers for "watersports" videos, usually with the subheading "BUY NOW BEFORE THEY ARE BANNED!".

Haw, I learnt that in 1987 through a teen girls' magazine's review of Alison Moyet's album Raindancing (I had older stepsisters, you see). According to the review, she had wanted it to be titled Watersports, but was DENIED by The Man at the record company because of ^^^.

Puns department: Johnny Marr is (roughly) 'I'm angry' in French.

Oh yeah! It's more like "I've had enough", but yeah.

I relate to a lot of these. I remember imagining racehorses inside the TV as a child.

i was shockingly old when i learned the smiths blew

nobody told me that beards were itchy!

only for some people...never had that problem.

your skin is obv too womanly.

apply conditioner

I didn't know that luggage went into airplane cargo holds until I was about 14. I just thought there was a massive series of underground tubes/conveyor belts that whisked luggage to other parts of the continent. I only questioned this when I first contemplated how luggage got over the ocean. I made the mistake of asking this aloud in front of some friends who looked at me like I was crazy/making a bad joke and then I finally learned how the great modern phenomenon of air travel truly works, the end.

salsa shark, are you familiar with the burrito tunnel?

why tits bounce

Also soap operas were so poperas in my head until a revelatory moment I can still remember, when I was sitting on the stairs at home. I realised it was nothing to do with the fact they were 'so popular'

This is awesome! I love it when someone's misconception is more logical than the truth.

Me, I learned last year (age 42) that ponies are not just really young horses.

i learned that ingmar and ingrid bergman were NOT brother and sister only a couple of years ago

Right. They're mother and son, of course.

no, they are the same person, before and after sex change. Surely everyone knows this?

nobody told me that beards were itchy!

― Bus to Yoker (dog latin), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 5:30 AM (7 hours ago)

there's that day and a half when stubbly turns to furry, and then after that it's ok

...unless you are not, in fact, a person with a beard, but rather a clean shaven-person who is kissing the person with the beard, in which case the only way to stop the itching and scratching is to grow a beard of your own so as to cushion yourself from the other person's beard. this works best if both of you are men.

or a dwarf woman

not all dwarf women have facial hair, coffeetripperspillerslyricmakeruppers (Latham Green).

Me, I learned last year (age 42) that ponies are not just really young horses.

Me too.

They can still be if you want them to be. Just like how rhinos are obese unicorns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarves_(Middle-earth)#cite_note-17

Despite having read the pony/horse thing here and in the previous thread, I still don't think my mind is willing to accept it.

A pony is a small horse (breed), and a young horse is generally also a small horse, so it's not that weird of a belief.

I on the other hand am a stallion

--I used to think death metal vocals could only be achieved using studio manipulation
--when I was like 10 years old I used to think those raspy high pitched hard rock singers a la Brian Johnson, the dude from Cinderella, Rob halford, et al, were demonic or were achieving those sounds due to some pact with the devil, so when I got the Wayne's World soundtrack Cinderella's "Hot and Bothered" scared me so I always skipped it.

I was also like 20 when I realized many live albums were overdubbed and it didn't provet hey really could pull it off live

Realized I was going around pronouncing "wolf" like "woof" when I was about 30 years old.

larry the cable guy is a racist turd

that alt-print screen allows screen capture of only the active window

Whaaaaaaat?!

36 years old; just learned that.

haha I had to send a bunch of screen prints of stuff at work recently, and the receivers would a) complain that they were too big (I have 2 monitors) and b) supervisors commented on how many IM windows I had open...then a friend who was on email group I was sending them to finally told me the alt-print secret

I learned Alt+Print at work too, but we use SnagIt so for the most part I don't need it...

Still can't tie my shoelaces properly. I mean I can tie them and everything but they come undone about 10/15 times per day. Found out a couple of my friends call it 'doing a Dan' when someone's shoelace comes undone.

http://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie_your_shoes.html

^ He has a trick to fix your problem.

I learned stupidly late that the Nazis were the first to send a rocket to space & that Sputnik was really just the first orbiting satellite. they didn't teach me about V-2's in grade school, although there was plenty of talk about local (central Massachusetts) rocketeer Robert Goddard, who never made it to space and wasn't a Nazi.

I just showed my 44 year old wife CTRL Z. But she doesn't post here so I'm having to tell you.

I only learned that FDR sent Japanese-Americans to concentration camps about five years ago; never heard this in high school.

Now apparently it's ALL high schoolers know about WWII.

Gah, I hate it when that happens.

Wait though, what other kinds of satellites are there?

Well, there's the moon...

pretty much everything after wwii i had to learn on my own. i don't remember a single history class that actually made it past that point. way to schedule, school district.

that's true for me, too. odd, huh?

lol OTM

basically, everything I know about the Korean War I learned from "M*A*S*H"

Haha xps, no-one's convincing me that Sputnik's place in history is as the second satellite.

(yes I know there might be a couple of others, and anyway for that matter isn't the moon an orbiting satellite too?!)

hello?

the best was that in 11th or 12th grade we took a "current events" course (called something else) (this would have been around 1994-1996) and it was like WHAT ABOUT THE 50 YEARS IN BETWEEN.

basically, everything I know about the Korean War I learned from "M*A*S*H"

^rejected Odgen Nash manuscript

I took a class my senior year in HS -- this would have been 1986-87 -- called "20th Century America," which basically covered the Depression up to about Watergate.

That's not including most of the last verse of Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire" then.

I think if I were teaching US history I would start with a 1- or 2-day "state of the union" address and close it with "how did we get here? starting tomorrow we'll back up 300 years and work it all out."

^^^ That's how I've always thought US history should be taught!

i would love to sit in on a history class now, actually

I think I would have been a good teacher.

I for one demand the teachings of the rock and roller cola wars.

if i was a teacher i'm pretty sure i'd be saying "i can't take it anymore" on a daily basis

Ha!

/Mrs Crabapple

people have told me i'd be a good teacher too but i'd be afraid i'd turn into either r. lee ermey in full metal jacket or the guy from beavis and butthead who just wants to sit down and rap with y'all a while

bah, I worded (or really just italicized) the Sputnik thing badly. Sputnik was the first man-made satellite to orbit the earth. some German V-2 rocket was the first man-made object to reach space, but it wasn't a satellite because it didn't go into orbit. point is, for a long time I thought Sputnik was the first man-made object to reach space when it was preceded by various German and American lower-altitude rockets.

that alt-print screen allows screen capture of only the active window

my years of loafing on ILX have suddenly paid for themselves.

... that Michael Jackson wrote "Do the Bartman" for the Simpsons.

The neckbone of a turkey isn't a penis bone. Yes, my own father told me that the neckbone was the turkey's cock when I was 5 or 6 just to fuck with me, and I believed it until my early '20s when i was corrected on this matter, which was kind of embarrasing.

That's amazing!!!

Michael Jackson wrote "Do the Bartman" for the Simpsons.

Well shit, I never knew that.

That "Just a Gigolo" and "I Ain't Got Nobody" are completely separate songs that were just glued together by Louis Prima several decades after they were written.

snot is not in fact dead brain cells. i think i was about 24?

snot is not in fact dead brain cells. i think i was about 24?

!

Guess it actually is

Love this thread.

Just learned from this thread that a rosary isn't a rose garden (I'm 29).

Loads of punning names I didn't get, even some porn names.

Until my late teens I couldn't make sense of the sayings "old habits die hard" and "what goes around comes around".

Also in my late teens I learned that when people were playing soccer and shouted "Aussie rules" that they weren't saying "Ozzy rules!"

In my early 20s I learned that Madagascar is not a place in England. I didn't think there was a place in England like Madagascar, I just somehow thought it sounded like the name of an English town or city. I could have swore I've heard the name said in a cockney accent lots of times.

When I was very young and saw John Major talking on the tv news, I assumed newsreading was his second job.

Madagascarborough

When I was very young and saw John Major talking on the tv news, I assumed newsreading was his second job.

This is brilliant.

I recently had a flashback to watching the news as an eight year old, and believing that Gorbachev and Bush Sr were extremely good, benign people; like the best and most intelligent people in charge of the Earth or something...

Madaga's Car

Just learned that Talulah Gosh is not a massive pop star of the moment, but actually an old indie band.

Similarly, it took me until a good six months after their rise to fame to realise that Alt-J is not a rapper.

That international harvester was a brand of refrigerator and not just the name of a swedish prog band:

― nelson algreen (get bent), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 6:18 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought it was more significantly the name of the type of school bus hippies were turning into mobile homes in the late 60s and probably even more significantly the type of bus that Ken Kesey and the Pranksters' Furthur was a model of

i had no idea that "brown sugar" was about slavery until like a year or two ago. i just never knew the lyrics. i knew the chorus.

The rolling stones song? I thought it was abt sex..

i know, right? it's a good time party anthem.

Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in a market down in New Orleans
Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright
Hear him whip the women just around midnight

Brown sugar how come you taste so good?
Brown sugar just like a young girl should

Drums beating, cold English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin' where it's gonna stop
House boy knows that he's doing alright
You shoulda heard him just around midnight

Brown sugar how come you taste so good, now?
Brown sugar just like a young girl should, now

Ah, get along, brown sugar how come you taste so good, baby?
Ah, got me feelin' now, brown sugar just like a black girl should

I bet your mama was a tent show queen
And all her boyfriends were sweet sixteen
I'm no schoolboy but I know what I like
You shoulda heard me just around midnight

Brown sugar how come you taste so good, baby?
Ah, brown sugar just like a young girl should, yeah

I said yeah, yeah, yeah, woo
How come you... how come you taste so good?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, woo
Just like a... just like a black girl should
Yeah, yeah, yeah, woo

turns out its a feel good party anthem about raping underage slaves. who knew?

the rolling stones may have forgotten themselves by now

I certainly learned something today... I guess you can't really party to it then?

Yeesh, it disturbs me that I've heard that song a million times but never understood wtf mick was babbling about there, like I was pretty sure he was using actual English words but I sure couldn't tell.

Isn't is also about heroin?

(the 'brown sugar' being the heroin cooked up in a spoon)

I thought it was about former Prime Minister Gordon Brown

No, that was The Stranglers' 'Golden Brown'.

I had never heard of the Ten Commandments until 6th grade.

I've never heard that Rolling Stones song, but I'm sure they came up with a garbage melody and garbage performance to complement their garbage lyrics. they haven't disappointed me yet.

Uncle Acid is a play on antacid. lol

No, that was The Stranglers' 'Golden Brown'.

― Does anyone know the Klingon for T'ai Chi? (snoball), Monday, November 9, 2015 9:34 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes that was the joek

How to properly pronounce at least a third of the English language, apparently (ongoing)

I'm not sure it counts if nobody ever hears the words idk

I ony learned about a month ago that Alt+D puts the cursor into the address bar. This is awesome because now I don't need to get my hands off the keyboard and grab my mouse every time I want to go to a different site.

i love the rolling stones, but they were disgusting and indefensible in many ways

i love the rolling stones art, but they were it is disgusting and indefensible in many ways

i only learned that "cruise control" was a thing you could do with your car a few years ago

http://www.vulture.com/2015/04/brown-sugar-still-tastes-good.html

I was about 23 when I learned that ponies aren't kid horses.

ponies aren't kid horses???

No, turns out they're just a smaller breed. Like horse chihuahuas or something.

wow... I was 27 when I realized this

wonder which shocking fact will get relearned the most times in this thread. the pony one is pretty good.

I ony learned about a month ago that Alt+D puts the cursor into the address bar.

whoa! thank you that is super useful!

i had a similar revelation when someone told me that clicking the mouse wheel opens links in a new tab.

As Laurel can probably attest to, I was well into my 30s before I found out that pickles were once cucumbers.

huh, I didn't know about Alt+D but then I use F6 for that

I'm a keyboard shortcut dummy so most things in that arena are revelations to me.

there is some family moment where ppl where shaking their heads when my cousins learned that coleslaw is made from cabbage

Sauerkraut is cabbage, too. I didn't know that until I was about 20.

I've never sent anyone a dick pic or been sent a dick pic, so perhaps I have an excuse for not realising this earlier, but I've only just figured out that when someone sends a dick pic, they send a pic of their erect dick. It's still messed up to do that, but suddenly it makes sense, there's actually a weird logic to doing that.

Because of the talk of keyboard shortcuts upthread I've just this second realised that the band Alt J (of which I know next to nothing) are actually named ∆

That a lot of soap, maybe most, is still made with animal fat

when i was a teenager i had a friend who referred to macaroni and cheese as "mac and cheese" and it took me several years to realize that this was a thing everybody said and not just a weird quirk of my friend

<3 the dick pic enlightenment that just happened

• i'm not sure how i never made the connection that ben savage is fred savage's brother

that the purpose of shaking a cocktail is to cool the drink without needing ice cubes in your glass (since they'll water it down eventually)

That doesn't seem like the kind of thing a young person would think about, though.

yeah i don't think that's something that the majority of people would know (i didn't so thanks!).

So if you're going to bake a frozen pizza right on the oven rack, you can use the cardboard circle as a little peel paddle.

Wombat poop is cube shaped.

That its "hang glider" not "hand glider."

That space rockets didn't land on the moon the way they did in Destination Moon

Yeah, I only learned that a few years ago, when I visited the space museum in Washington.

Thank God, I thought that one was only me

I always knew there were three people on the first moon flight, but I hadn't realized before that the third guy never even got to moonwalk instead of just waiting in the orbital module. He must've felt cheated.

Also, I just learned from the documentary about the last guy to have walked on moon (it's on Netflix) that before Apollo 11 there were two fully manned flights where they simply went around the moon and back, but never got to land there. Those guys must've felt really cheated! (Except for the subject of the documentary and one other astronaut, who both eventually got to walk on moon on later Apollo flights.)

Maybe Neil and Buzz were just blah blah blah we're gonna land on the moon are we there yet lol for the whole flight up there, and Collins was more than happy to have a few hours floating around by himself for a little while. He'd been to the Grand Canyon in '52, he pretty much had the general idea of what he was "missing" it's ok.

i think being a spaceman is p much a swell deal all the way around, plus you dont have to sign as many autographs

u get to punch skeptics too

in tuomas' defense, that's only if you get to walk on the moon though.

If you don't, you just get called out for being a space pussy for the rest of your life.

Also, I just learned from the documentary about the last guy to have walked on moon

and even there, for those of us occasionally engaged in trivia/quizzing contests, is a rub: The last guy to walk on to the moon is not the last to walk on the moon, since the guys on Apollo 17 went for an ABBA on-to/off-of pattern, rather than the ABAB which would have made such questions unambiguous.

used to cry over what i imagined to be collins' loneliness as a little kid. he was prob too stressed to notice.

aw it's ok, he made it eventually.

http://i.imgur.com/We0jA8B.jpg

look, see? they even took the family on vacations to the moon.

http://i.imgur.com/V4tdJJO.jpg

how "awry" is pronounced

oh that one... yeah me too. it took me a while to understand that 'misled' was 'miss-led' not 'mizzled' or even 'mild'

I got clowned hard for pronouncing it "aw-ree" beck in high school.

feel fortunate that I came across the correct pronounciation somewhere online before goofing irl

so is wry something other than cunning.
is a-wry the semantic root of the word or something.

Since when did wry ever mean cunning?

Wry Fox

Merriam Webster has this as the 2nd simple definition

2 wry
adjective
Simple Definition of wry

: humorous in a clever and often ironic way

I thought that extended beyond humour which would then be close to synonymous with cunning I would think.

Looks like the etymology is more based on toward the twisted

As Laurel can probably attest to, I was well into my 30s before I found out that pickles were once cucumbers.

― UYD: Oxys, Percs, Vics, Addys, Rit-Dogs and Xannys (sunny successor), Tuesday, November 10, 2015 3:21 PM (ten months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3 <3 <3 <3

That a Twix is Millionaire's Shortbread in chocolate coated stick form.

it took me way too long to realise that when you get into this cooking game don't struggle with a shitty little blunt knife, get a big fucking sharp knife and a blade sharpener and a mortar and pestle. Tools that make cooking easier and quicker

Yeah my top cooking tips:
Sharp knife
HOT pan
Stop moving the food around the pan all the time

HOT pans are good for searing, if that's what you're after, but high heat makes protein very tough, so it's a shitty approach to, for example, frying an egg. otoh, it can caramelize sugars, so high heat can be nice for root vegetables.

pansplaining

I only eat steak and burnt eggs

(I do actually fry an egg from cold oil after someone tipped me off)

I should add that my helpful tips are brought to you after far too long using shitty blunt or serrated knives and medium warm pans because I didn't want to burn stuff

xp spécialité de le maison

What is this cold oil thing?

It took me until after my 35th birthday to work out why the popular anti-dandruff shampoo was called "Head & Shoulders"

Bc when u use it, u get head, then u brush your shoulders off bc ur a player

I've just this minute found out (because I looked it up) that GOP is a nickname for the Republican Party rather than some kind of government department like I thought it was.

I'm British, by the way

Took me a while to realize what POTUS stood for too.

feel fortunate that I came across the correct pronounciation somewhere online before goofing irl

Up until a couple years ago, I pronounced "pronunciation" as "pro-noun-ci-a-shun" instead of the correct "pro-nun-ci-a-shun" - fucking English, how does it work? etc.

He he, I see...

Is there a head and shoulders pun?

Lord Mountbatten's dandruff?
Royal family member found in pieces post explosion.

Or the naming itself. It's a dandruff shampoo i.e. For the head and preventing white flakes from covering the shoulders.
Which surpasses others by standing 'head and shoulders' above them.

roger that

that Spain isn't anywhere near Mexico

I'm serious

Took me a while to realize what POTUS stood for too.

Me too, at first I thought it was some kind of latin term, like hippopotamus.

olives and ponies still blowing my mind.

that Spain isn't anywhere near Mexico

this makes sense on the level of US ethnic & racial logic but raises a lot of questions about yr previous understanding of colonialism/the atlantic ocean. v curious what sort of image of spanish history you had

Presumably until the US grabbed the massive amount of the West that was Mexico as shown in the last but one Adam Ruins Everything, that territory would have been thought to have been a distant part of Spain. I don't think it had gained Independence before that.

& don't they speak Latin in Latin America?

Mexico became independent 25 years before the Mexican-American war.

Yeah just saw that. Hadn't thought it was independent that early. But 300 years as a Spanish colony is probably enough.

Which surpasses others by standing 'head and shoulders' above them.

Well this part I just caught.

Blimey, Heathrow Airport is massive isn't it? Just looked at the thing on Google Earth and it's just... enormous?!

here is a treat for you:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/30479/10-largest-airports-world-seen-above

Seems about normal-sized for an airport.

http://i.imgur.com/WalAFzY.png

http://i.imgur.com/Xai7gU6.png

http://i.imgur.com/UvIQI4t.png

Bigger than my airport though.

http://i.imgur.com/V434GV5.png

If that Mountbatten joke from the other day wasn't as well known as it once was.
It went
How did they know that Lord Mountbatten had dandruff?
Because they found his head and shoulders on the beach.

I think it was pretty widely known at one point. Not sure if it's commuted to any other explosives victim since then. Has it?

i first heard it re challenger explosion

horrible 80s jokes I have heard

need another seven astronauts

That snowshoes don't actually look like tennis rackets - it's just a visual shorthand used in cartoons and as a joke in 70s UK sitcoms.

?

The "teardrop" snowshoes worn by lumberjacks are about 40 inches (1.0 m) long and broad in proportion, while the tracker's shoe is over 5 feet (1.5 m) long and very narrow. This form, the stereotypical snowshoe, resembles a tennis racquet, and indeed the French term is raquette de neige.

http://www.planet-science.com/media/24073/woman%20wearing%20old%20fashioned%20snowshoes_100391027_363x242.jpg

democracy doesn't work

snowshoeing rules

I was well into adulthood when I realized that there was no such thing as unprepared ham. I thought ham and pork were two different cuts of pig meat, and while it seemed odd to me that I only ever saw the cured/smoked stuff in supermarkets, I figured you could buy raw cuts of ham at the butcher shop if you were so inclined.

I know this is a year too late but:

Also in my late teens I learned that when people were playing soccer and shouted "Aussie rules" that they weren't saying "Ozzy rules!"

Erm? who does this, what? You know Aussie Rules isnt soccer, right?

Well kids did it all the time when playing soccer.

Another one, but I wasn't shockingly old but it carried on much longer than made sense: I used to assume that Robin Williams sung in "Once In A Lifetime" by Talking Heads.

What do you think they did mean, if not "Ozzy rules!"?

Australian rules

Kids at my school shouted 'Aussie rules' too. I think it was just a hokey way of saying that hard tackles were allowed.

It was a joke, like if someone handballed or picked up the ball in the playground, they'd shout Aussie rules

the bad guys usually win

weird that this was a nationwide phenomenon but we also did the aussie rules shout for violence/picking up the ball. and if somehow we ended up using rugby posts as goals, kicking over the bar counting double was also aussie rules.

are canadians as confused about the classic schoolkid phrase "uh I have a girlfriend, she's in canada"

I could have swore I heard kids saying it before a game to establish that more stuff is allowed.

yeah, I mean that it's a nonsense phrase that's a thing in the UK but not in Australia

Girlfriend in Canada isn't a nonsense phrase though, it has a clear context

"My girlfriend lives in Canada!"

*picks up soccer ball, throws laterally*

assuming australians are ruffians who tackle-each other inappropriately seems based in a cultural context

Kinda based on having seen Australian Rules Football tbh.

otm

let alone the fucking international compromise rules

an irishman who isn't fond of compromise eh?

to me, aussie rules = dudes in white coats doing that pointing thing

xp its u and tom d that know how to hurt us most ime

That "scallops" in chip shops are not made of seafood.

I used to eat them when I was a kid but didn't really know what was in them, never had a seafood scallop until I was much older and my wife introduced me to them, asked me if I'd had them before I said yeah, battered from the chippy, they used to be really cheap, like 12p each, so I used to get them for snacks. She was confused by the cheapness because scallops are usually expensive. Not the same thing! I just found this out now. I'm 40.

I've never heard or seen scallops in a chip shop? What are those?

Battered potato. Maybe they don't have them down south which would explain why I haven't eaten one in 20 years.

"Potato scallops originate from central England and are common in fish and chip shops there."

There you go then. I also originate from central England.

They have scallops in my (Scottish) chip shop that are definitely scallops (the expensive kind).

(potato) scallops have different names regionally so ppl might have encountered them in a different guise. at home in cov a scallop batch was a personal favourite. when i was in lancashire the same thing was called a dab teacake.

Getcher fried challops here!

Though it sounds like a bit like rarebit/rabbit and truffles, where there's two or more levels of meaning that have conflated. This cheese thing is a Welsh rarebit, which someone turns into a bad ethnic joke about the Welsh being so poor they'll eat cheese and call it rabbit, so you start hearing "welsh rabbit."

Ditto someone comes up with the bad folk etymology that "asparagus" once was "sparrowgrass," except that in Greek "asparagos" means "vegetable shoot," etc. Somebody makes a chocolate candy shaped a bit like a truffle, calls it a "chocolate truffle," then after a while the modifier "chocolate" wears off and hey presto you have two totally different things both called truffles.

Somebody in a chip shop makes a scallop-sized or scallop-shaped fried potato, calls it a potato scallop, which gets shortened to scallop, then someone turns round and says ha ha, lolz English, trying to pass off a common potato as if it were fine seafood, etc.

I am also from central England and was incredibly confused about scallops until I was in my late 20s. I mean, I figured out that most people meant the seafood and the other thing was regional but I didn't know what the other thing actually *was*.

Never heard of potato scallops. Don't think our chippies had anything like those. I would eat them.

I think of scalloped potatoes as a casserole dish. I knew of that for many years before I learned about the seafood.

(although way the hell before age 40)

xposts! Scalloped potatoes are a thing in the US and I never understood the nomenclature, not sure what relation (if any) there is to UK potato scallops:

Gratin (French pronunciation: ​[ɡʁatɛ̃]) is a widespread culinary technique in which an ingredient is topped with a browned crust, often using breadcrumbs, grated cheese, egg and/or butter.[1][2][3] Gratin originated in French cuisine and is usually prepared in a shallow dish of some kind. A gratin is baked or cooked under an overhead grill or broiler to form a golden crust on top and is traditionally served in its baking dish.

...

Potatoes gratiné is one of the most common of gratins and is known by various names including "gratin potatoes" and "Gratin de pommes de terre". Slices of boiled potato are put in a buttered fireproof dish, sprinkled with cheese and browned in the oven or under the grill.[8] In North America, the dish is referred to variously as scalloped potatoes, potatoes au gratin, or au gratin potatoes. (Note that the term scalloped originally referred to a style of seafood dish rather than to one specifically based on the scallop.)[9] In French-speaking Canada, the dish is referred to as patates au gratin. Australians and New Zealanders refer to it as scalloped potatoes or potato bake.

Challops.

What are *they* made of, you midlands people?

Scalloped potatoes are called that because the layers of sliced potato end up looking scalloplike. That's different from the chip shop product.

Compare "hush puppies," which are not made from actual puppies (in my experience).

Pretty sure "Welsh rabbit" is the original name. It's like Bombay Duck or Birmingham Screwdriver; "rarebit" is a later affectation.

Don't think that's the same thing. The thing I used to get from the chip shop was a round bit of batter a couple of inches diameter, I know what potato gratin is and it's not that.

It might seem unfeasible that I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between battered potato and battered seafood, but it was over a decade later when I first ate seafood scallops and it seemed reasonable to assume there was a tiny bit of seafood in amongst all the batter in the mysterious scallops of my youth.

Oops xpost to Old Lunch

Hush puppies used to be fried dough balls loaded with dog tranquilizer, iirc?

Welsh rabbit is the original, mahb is right. Which reminds me that all of these falsely-named foodstuffs confused the fuck out of me. How am I supposed to know Bombay duck isn't duck?!?!?!

Bombay duck isn't duck?!?!?!

Well that's 2 things I'm shockingly old to have learned today.

I don't think I've ever eaten that though.

Mince pies seem pretty straightforward, right? Like, a steak and ale pie has steak and ale in it. So a mince pie has mince in it. WRONG. (tbf I learned this one when I was a kid and not when I was "shockingly old" but still - whyyyyy?)

I only recently learned that the E Street Band is named after a street called E Street. I always thought it was an abbreviation for East Street Band, bolstered by hearing live recordings in which Bruce says the name and I thought he was saying East not E.

news flash: Sweetbreads are not bread, and sweetmeats are not meat.

Sweet Sweetback's song is not baadaaaaaaass

A mince pie did used to have mince in though (and still does in our house) because it uses raw mince rotted down to provide some of the sweetness in the mincemeat.

http://oakden.co.uk/mince-pies-1861-recipe/

I am told you can't buy Bombay Duck in the UK any more (certainly all our local takeaways stopped doing it) because of import health & safety laws or something.

Which was disappointing to my Dad, as was the time he, yes, bought "scallops" in a fish&chip shop, ordering several bags full as he couldn't believe how cheap they were. They're not a common thing round here but there must be at least one place in Wiltshire that did them 30+ years ago as I've heard the tale many times.

I'd always imagined they must be puffy and ridged like a scallop shell, but a quick image-google suggests they are p. much just discs of potato. Would still eat them.

yeah if the name does come from some supposed visually similarity that was a prodigious feat of imagination.

I think I was as old as 18 when someone had to tell me that Pub Landlord wasn't a real guy. Embarrassing.

that my fellow Americans are not really that committed to good government and democracy

http://i.imgur.com/nqIhP2z.jpg

- "I don't know why you keep calling them scallops. They're clearly potatoes."

- "Maybe you're right."

apparently in american football you can substitute players pretty much nonstop??

as soon as one gets a brain injury, yes

the strokes had a fifth album

that only boy dogs lift a leg to piss, because girl dogs just squat

sorry, i never had a dog

apparently in american football you can substitute players pretty much nonstop??

― jason waterfalls (gbx), Wednesday, November 30, 2016 11:23 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

p much a substitution every play

Girl dogs do lift a leg sometimes, depending what they want to piss on.

I have a girl dog who lifts her leg to pee, although it looks more like that Karate Kid pose.

Scallops is a contentious word down here too - theyre called scallops in NSW/QLD, and potato cakes in VIC.

Which always made me wonder, how to they differentiate potato scallops from actual ones, given those are also a thing in many chip shops (well, any where seafood's cheap and fresh anyway)

I love potato caaaakes

http://northeasthub.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/scallops.jpg

I just read that whenever you eat a fig, you're eating either a dead wasp or wasp larvae! I love figs and feel conflicted about eating them from now on.

^^ Debunked!

I've learned to stop worrying and love dates as much as I do, even though the occasional date I eat contains a (visible) small worm or larvae of some sort. Iranian dates are my fave, and I've seen it, but life's too short etc.

hmm, chance of either eggs and larvae or decomposed wasp, yeah feel a lot better about figs after that debunking

the female fig produces an enzyme that digests this wasp completely
I never knew figs were so interesting!
I was reading this http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/06/08/the-disturbing-truth-about-figs/

Scallops (chip shop potato ones, not seafood) are called fritters up here.

that Ghetto Superstar interpolates a Rogers/Parton smash

armadillos carry leprosy

well, duh. how do you think people get leprosy in the first place?

Leprosy always seemed like an unfair tradeoff for people who are clever enough to have figured out how to fuck an armadillo.

I was a teenager when I found out that Ku Klux Klan were not a cartoon or a band but something more serious. My first guess would have been a cartoon about chickens. Clue Clucks Clan: Chicken Detectives.

I seen 3 Women a few weeks ago and its shockingly late to learn that Shelley Duvall is really beautiful.

platypuses have venom

That window seats on planes are preferable to aisle seats. Going against habit I got a window seat on a whim recently and realized how nice it is not to be constantly bumped or brushed against by aisle traffic

That Grandmaster Flash didn't have anything to do with White Lines or The Message.

+ can look out of the window. At the age of 37, after around 100 flights, the novelty of WE'RE IN THE FUCKING SKY hasn't worn off.

xp

I have a weak bladder, so I always prefer aisle seats, it's awkward to wake up some random person who's trying to sleep so I can pee.

if you pee on them they will prob wake up too

F

I thought 10cc was either a punk band or krautrock until like 3 months ago

I used to think if you had an acoustic guitar,

John belushi would smash it

and i would applaud him

That time Colin Hay was on Scrubs

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view7/2945187/dr-cox-pulls-a-belushi-o.gif

I learned very recently that Vancouver is all the way out west... I just thought it was close to Toronto or something. idk fuck

And the weird part is that you live in Etobicoke.

i learned that "Toonrot" is an anagram for Toronto

Vancouver is Canadian Seattle. Or vice versa

Only figured out upon hearing it today (probably because I never paid anything but peripheral attention to the song before) that Adam Duritz is the second voice on '6th Avenue Heartache'.

Yeah, I don't really care, either.

now I hate the song twice as much, thanks

Vancouver is Canadian San Diego, if you think about it.

I learned two months ago that peanuts aren't nuts.

I learned very recently that Vancouver is all the way out west... I just thought it was close to Toronto or something. idk fuck
― flappy bird, Tuesday, January 17, 2017 7:03 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't know Vancouver was on the Pacific til I was 27.

Vancouver is undoubtedly canadian seattle

I heard about it as Vancouver being Canadian San Francisco as in arty bohemian magnet some years ago. I think reflected in music scene etc.
But not sure who from there beyond My Indole Ring and Subhumans during different eras.

at least we're all agreeing it's like some other west coast city

It's like the Joplin, Mo. of British Columbia.

I just now found out that Mickey and Minnie are boyfriend and girlfriend, not brother and sister

they're both

fuckin mice mannnn

theyre also postsexual btw

i can't remember the last time i saw an actual mickey mouse cartoon. when was the last one made? *goes to wiki*

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

There was one of those 3-D computer-generated shows starring the Mouse. Soundtrack by They Might Be Giants

Annnoyed me at :59 how fast the characters disappeared from them leaving the gate to when the camera pans to its wide shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xGHrjXH9Gk

That the power on/off symbols '|' and 'O' come from the binary system, 1 and 0. This knowledge helps enormously to keep the two apart.

It took me ages to learn which is which. I think this is because I have a memory of shutting down a television set when I was young, you'd see this fading flash that, in our case, resembled '|'. So I always thought that meant 'off', and O seemed logical to me to mean 'on', in an open circuit kind of way.

It never even occurred to me. I just thought it was a cool symbol.

a lot of these symbols that are just 'symbols' on the surface are actually quite logical. Like the divide-by sign (a dot, above a line, above a dot - can't find it on a modern keyboard) is just a representation of what you'd do with long division.

That makes sense. But to me '|' feels way more like 'closed', or off, than O which feels open or on. But it's the other way around.