G's Engrish and Signs of Insanity

Called Neo but selling retro

Clothing store

I'm not believe it either, and God didn't even smile on me

That's pretty damn lucky

Okay, Yoda

I don't see it

Drown carefully, not recklessly

Basically a warning that the bathroom stinks

Call it uncivilized, but I prefer to urinate alone

You could call it that

You know what they say about men

What is this,1930's Chicago?

Straight from the dictionary

Yesssss! Only squat toilets for me! I think I saw the same graphic at the luge run.

I reckon this would be helluva lot more effective than a "No Trespassing" sign

Thanks, I almost got lost. No squat toilet in the men's though?

And we just call it a baguette

Dang, there go all my plans for today

Okay to cut down a few

Graffiti permitted if your penmanship is good

Some translations may be too accurate

Ditto

Dumpling?! You were on such a creative roll.

I'll pass on the explosives beans

I'll tell you after I try the food

Good, I hate palaces where snacking is mandatory

Nah, I prefer my ferment crabmeat full tight & big cage

Ha, somebody tried to correct "pishes." Talk about a lost cause.

Prok prok prok! Pork is perhaps the most frequently misspelled Chinese menu item.

More prok! One of the photos is upside-down too.

Chey can up anyching!

Sounds right, but your spelling is not A1

I was only stretching

Stairs for people with no limbs?

Those rare and hazardous bi-directional stairs

Kept me up all night, huh huh. Okay, no more cheap dick jokes, I promise.

Remember when I said no more cheap dick jokes? I lied.

I just like the look she's giving Uncle Ho as he fondles the unidentified phallic object

Any comments I thought of were too filthy for this website

No teen with a can of paint could resist

"...and AIDS." It's not so dreaded anymore.

Oh, Professor Haeberle! "Big jewel." You kill me!*

*I don't agree that "If you visit China only one place, here it is," but if you are in the area it's worth a visit -- "you will be no disappointed at all."

Oh, I'm bothered all right

I think I'll carefully by myself

THE area?

I'm prayin' they don't acupuncture my huiyin

These cocks not for sale

Keep it up, guys!

When I travel I'm always civilized and shop rationally. You're talking to a tourist whose every move's among the purest. (I had to shoehorn a Murray Head quote in here somewhere.)

Intriguing. I need to ask my dentist about getting one.

All this LGBTQ+ stuff is getting way too confusing for me

If at first you don't succeed...

Can't even spell their own store name

Who knows

Tony, dandyman and renvoator of tiny houses. And more.

I thought sages were wise

That's top-notch planning and execution

I love these "unrecycle" logos

Your spelling is garbage

I hope I don't need to ask for directions; it will be like Wales all over again

Obviously the nude beach

Full disclosure: I climbed it. I didn't know what fobid meant.

Funny how it usually works that way

I felt that way about Starbuck's prices

Uh, two milkshakes, and supersize me?

Nope, no fakes here

Agreed, except it's mo' mo' dogs, no no cattle

I'm not falling for that "Hundred Flowers" trick again, even if it's coming from Comrade Obama*

What is the sound of 'F.O.? Not sure -- I F'ing missed the show.**

*Or, as George W. Bush said, "Fool me once... shame on... shame on you. You fool me, can't get fooled again."

**As of writing, a Japanese website is still hosting a few Jamming Robbers songs apparently recorded at this event.

The Serve People Box, with medication and disposable undies

My anus treatment was "one thumb up" at Dong Da! Side note: I hope this schmuck was paid generously.

Infomercial script: (Scene: a man surrounded by a mess of tools throws up his hands with a look of exasperation, turns to camera, and yells, "There's got to be a better way!") How many times have you opened your... errr... inductive... distance... regulation thing, only to forget where the screws went back in? Well, say goodbye to that problem forever! Introducing.... Screw Place®! (Elevator music) (Testimonial) "I opened my... errr... inductive... distance... regulation thing, and I thought I was screwed, until I noticed Screw Place®. Thank you Screw Place®!"

His other cab was a Porche

Smoke these and you'll get ashima

Strange, I've never seen this brand yet it looks so familiar

Racism and fried chicken, both as American as apple pie. Large characters say "Little Red Fried Chicken."
 

A serious spelling mistake

Kinda wish I bought this

Odd surname

With that shirt, my friend, you are

Vive le 99%!

I feel like when I tried to read Ulysses

Holy crap! Cheech & Chong rolled that one.

It would have been good to double-check the English before carving in stone

Only PoohFOs here

Sanrio now says Hello Kitty is a girl, so this must be the real Hello Kitty

Official NAB, likely purchased from the "No Fake Shop"

Dudes! How?

Thanks, Satan

Li Ruihuan: former mayor of Tianjin, former Communist Party Secretary of Tianjin, former member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP, former Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and... a slate head.

Good point. Whenever I defy the law, I do it for big profit.

Looks fair to me

...but needless' apostrophe's will

This brand name works in both English and Vietnamese

Is this some kind of escape room puzzle?

The much-anticipated sequel to No Progrom

Alas, some writers endeavor to feign erudition via sesquipedalian, prolix, lexiphanic, and grandiloquent lexis, yet too often err and use solecisms, malapropisms, and catachreses.*   Praedial: of, pertaining to, or attached to land. Prandial: of or pertaining to a meal.

*I probably used one of these highfalutin words incorrectly too, but you get my point

At least this magazine is honest about the source of its articles

Yes, a whole book about moving the decimal point

"Yo, A.Q., whatcha think?" A.Q.: "F*** this. We're getting the bomb."*

*From a pamphlet produced by the U.S. Information Agency, a billion-dollar propaganda machine that operated from 1953 to 1999. Pakistan got their start in nuclear technology in the 1950's through the U.S. "Atoms for Peace" program, which provided a $350,000 grant for training and a research reactor. Pakistan had a functioning nuclear weapon by 1998 with assistance from several other countries, some claiming to have innocent intentions while probably turning a blind eye, and some not (hi China). Honourable mention goes to Abdul Qadeer Khan, for fuel-enrichment centrifuge knowledge and plans taken from a Urenco subcontractor he worked for. A.Q. went on to set up a network sharing nuclear know-how, technology, and materials to countries including North Korea, Libya, and Iran -- sort of an "Atoms for War" program.
 
"Atoms for Peace" was also responsible for "Project Plowshare," which investigated using nuclear explosives for large-scale construction projects. Like need a new deep-water port? Boom, just drop a nuke in that spot and bring on the ships. Genius.

For some reason I'm not convinced this is for professional use only

Shla and Jim ar two f my favhrte actrs

Val Kilmer was so good in this I didn't even realize it was him in blackface.
Why didn't they cast an AA actor though? So racist!
 

Chinese is printed in mirror image of what is correct. Nice try, you white-boy supermarket amateurs!

Door of monster SUV

Come on, man. Everybody knows real bosses don't use tissues -- they use handkerchiefs.

How you know it's a sweatshop

I thought first class was roomy

Nooo! Didn't we just save her?

This might work in Japan where people are all ninjas. The step requires a level of agility and physical fitness that I think most Americans lack.

"When the fire takes place" is a little alarming

Mounted beside a reflecting pool

For party & ordinary

Where the hunky dudes get their portraits done

Shall we donce?

Rats, no shorty-short strutting for me today. Side note: my high school gym shorts looked like this.

I see many spelling errors in your future, Zoey. Maybe you're the one who needs help.

Thanks, I almost did that

Closed. Bummer. They had Star Wars wallpaper too. I wanted a Han[Solo]burger or wookie souvlaki.

Don't take this personally, but your spelling stinks

Fill-in-the-blank graffiti, a beauty idea

Classic defunct web page

Yup, the mostest bestest

That's some good hearing!

Old racist joke I heard in the grade school playground: "How many Chinese does it take to inseminate a panda?"

Taxidermy intern hack job? If pandas really looked like this they would be extinct.

Yes, kids, in the 1970's people used to break in and steal your "valuables" -- crappy CRT TVs with rabbit ears and Bob-Ross-esque log cabin paintings your parents got a 2-for-1 deal on at the "Starving Artists'" sale. At least the thieves had a work ethic though; it took some sweat to haul off all that booty. Nowadays a thief can just pocket an iPhone, or do a hack online without getting off their lazy arse. Sigh.

Oops. Challenger.* Columbia.**

* Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff due to failure of O-ring seals in a solid rocket booster. NASA and the solid rocket booster manufacturer were aware of O-ring seal issues, particularly in cold temperatures, but still went ahead with the launch on a record-cold day.
 
** Columbia was destroyed during Earth atmosphere re-entry due to a compromised thermal protection system, damaged during launch by a chunk of insulative foam, which fell off the external tank. NASA was aware of the possible damage but chose not to attempt a rescue / repair mission. There had also been many previous "foam strike events" but NASA apparently considered them an acceptable risk and it seems nothing was done to try to reduce them.

Just a sampling of many signs featured in the Hawaii pages

Sign posted at public roadside with no further guidance. Should I be ducking while I drive?

Body count Body count Body count

Are you saying I should enter?

I see two lessons here: plan ahead, and always read the fine print.

 
Special Bonus Material - G's Sign & Design Improvements

(Some of the less offensive of many useless things I have wasted time on)
 
 

Yurp, I did it, but off-season and with chalk. I'm an ethical vandal.

For a while there was a serial toilet clogger at my workplace. Environmental Services posted signs in the stalls hoping to influence Jack the Clogger's behaviour. Feeling especially cheeky one night, I posted an addendum: "Also, please limit the diameter of your excrement to one inch. Fecal matter of larger diameter may clog the drain."

I can't be the only one who thinks Baby On Board signs on cars are stupid. They have inexplicably made another strong comeback. "Oh no, I've lost control and I'm about to crash, but wait, that car has a Baby On Board sign so I will avoid it." As a lifetime member of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, I could have less understanding than most, but I'd say the truth is nobody cares about your baby except you. Besides that, everybody's life matters just as much as your baby's -- even somebody like my mother with advanced dementia. This version is currently in my car but I made a bunch of other ones. Demented Mom On Board. Why not?

A sticker I got at a childhood dentist visit. The illustrator (who must have been a guy) gave the woman unusually well-defined breasts, which made me think about how many young lads must have had a thing for their dentist or dental hygienist, especially since they are always leaning over and sometimes brushing up against the patients.

An airline emergency instruction card illustration. This was begging for a 1970's action movie makeover. And the poor guy needed a crotch. I don't have the resources to print up new cards and sneak them into airlines like they did in Fight Club though.

Michael Phelps' contract with Kellogg was not renewed after a photo of him apparently smoking cannabis was published in 2009. I scored a couple of the discontinued boxes cheap at an outlet store. The Archivist dumped them when I was out of town for only ten years. Dude! At least I took a photo.
 

Drake's album Views, cropped to show more detail. I took Drake out and added my cat in several positions. The text was modified from other Views album art -- I made the font "eyes" look more like those of cats. Kitty, PBUH, while already a much-exaggerated size, still won't show up well unless I print this up in large format. In the original, Drake was scaled much larger than he would be in real life for the same reason. Somebody online estimated his height in the image is about twelve feet (that's seated), so the kitties in my version might be about average human height. Fun fact: the photographer, Caitlin Cronenberg, is David Cronenberg's daughter.
 

Jokes are never funny when you have to explain them, but I'm going to do it anyway. I grow hot peppers, which I make sauce from, and I wanted a label, so in the Chinese entrepreneurial spirit I ripped off another brand.* Chinese is a tonal language, so the same phonetics may have completely different meanings when spoken in different tones. Individual written characters can also have several meanings. The brand is "Old Godmother" but the characters could also be read as "Old Dry Mother." Even better, if you pronounce it with just one incorrect tone in Mandarin you could be heard as saying, in the most polite way I can put it, "always having sex with mother." (Aspiring speakers of Chinese, you have been warned.) Based on "Old Dry Mother" I named my product "Young Wet Father." The company founder, Tao Huabi, is pictured on the label with her signature on the apron. My apron says "grass mud horse." In Mandarin "grass mud horse" is phonetically the same as "screw your mother" but spoken with different tones. (Aspiring speakers of Chinese, you have been twice warned.) "Grass mud horse" was a big Chinese Internet meme, but your average Westerner might have only heard of it from Ai Wei Wei's artwork. There is a long tradition in China of using homophonous words to avoid censorship, and the Internet has made the phenomenon even more common. Characters down the left say "flavour is the ox's vagina." In Mandarin, "ox's vagina" is somewhat crude slang for "really good." This particular character for vagina seems to be considered so filthy it's usually just written as "X" and is not included in most freebie Chinese font sets, so I had to create it myself, only to re-censor it here. Characters down the right say "hot going in, burns coming out."
 
*According to several online biographies, before the government finally accepted Tao's first trademark application, there were more than 50 copycat Laoganma products on the market. Even now, with 46 registered trademarks and a legal team, they say it's difficult to protect their IP and compete in "a market plagued by rampant counterfeiting."

I saw this coconut milk featuring actress Xudongdong and thought maybe Taohuabi could spice up her advertising too

In my university days I accompanied a DJ friend to a hole-in-the-wall record store downtown a couple times. A guy working there, Golam, would play us samples of albums he recommended while grabbing his crotch to show approval for what he called "heavy sh*t." How could we not be sold? I thought crotch grabs would make a good online rating system. Years later my friend admitted he got burned on a bunch of the albums he bought there. I can't blame Golam though -- that was quality salesmanship! Also, in that era it was common to buy an album after hearing one song on the radio, only to find out after listening that the band had no other good songs. Plus the album cost you $20+ while you were earning $7 hourly at your part-time job. And the music industry wondered why we pirated songs.

 
THE END?

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