Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Left out in the cold

Someone else in teh team apart from me must've missed gay t-shirt Friday because today he came in wearing the loudest jumper: a cashmere v-neck pullover with 4-inch horizontal stripes of pastel grey and pink.

All I did was take one look at him and he said, "Don't say anything, I don't care what I look like. I've been ill and this is snuggly".

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Single Wet

When you work in a team you make teas and coffees for each other.

One of the greatest evils in the working world is "the single wet" where you go to the coffee machine and get yourself a drink without asking anyone else if they want one.

Monday, February 21, 2005

A Pain in the Neck

OK, so we get homework from French class. No-one does it, right! It's a rule.

Guess what? The new guy has not only done his homework but it turns out he has covered his house in Pink and Yellow Post-it® Notes for feminine and masculine objects to help him remember which is which.

Oh yeah. We were learning parts of the body and "the neck " is "le cou" which sounds to me like "coo". If you get the pronunciation a little wrong you say "le cul" which sounds to me like "cue" since you don't pronounce the final "l". So a pain in the neck is "une douleur dans le cou" but "une douleur dans le cul" is a pain in the arse. How funny is that?

Friday, February 18, 2005

Gay T-Shirt FRIDAY!

Apparently today is gay t-shirt Friday and no-one told me. About 5 guys at the office have all (independently) arrived in some of the most flamboyant t-shirts I've seen for a while.

Bumblee Bee man is wearing a midnight blue number with random silver horizontal strike-throughs.
There are a number of pink numbers in evidence which were "bought that way" and not a laundry accident.

Our hero is wearing the BRIGHTEST ORANGE I have ever seen and someone is wearing a T with the words "Badger Bash" emblazoned across the front. He says it's not a euphemism for anything but was the name of a party he went to. When pressed he was very coy about what went on at the "party", however, the badger bash site has this picture. If that's not phallic I'm a Dutchman.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

The Pot and the Kettle

Apparently I have a gay ringtone and my colleagues are complaining. What's wrong with the opening bars of Shania Twain's "Man I Feel Like a Woman"? In deference to hordes of miserable gits I intend to change it.

Can anyone lend me a sample from Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive"; or possibly, The Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men"; or C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)"; or finally and at a push, the Village People's "Y.M.C.A."

Monday, February 14, 2005

My Funny Valentine

Today, "mon collègue"  joined my French class for the first time and one of the things we do at the start of each class is discuss, in French, what we have been doing since the last lesson.

Today being Valentines day we were talking about cards and flowers.

The newbie claims not to have given or received any since he does not have "un ami". I think he meant "une amie" (or more accurately "une petite amie" [meaning girlfriend]) but that's not what he said and when questioned about it he blushed furiously. Maybe he's gender confused or maybe he's still got a lot to learn in French; who knows? It was still funny.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Zoo tempts gay penguins to go straight

OK, so it's nothing to do with our normal subject but I couldn't resist this snippet from Ananova. Thanks to Grom for bringing it to my attention.

What's the French for "arse"?

The company I work for provides French Language classes for its employees and "mon collègue" has been taking classes for a few months. This week he decided that he wanted to join my (slightly more advanced [but only because we've been doing it for longer] class).

He gave some cock-and-bull story about getting the wrong gender on a French word and shocking our teacher by saying "arse" when he meant "queue". He claims the two words are pronounced the same but with "La" for one and "Le" for the other.

A little research shows that "le queue" (meaning queue) is pronounced to rhyme with "deux" (meaning two) and "la cul" (meaning arse) is pronounced like "coo" or "kuh" and is supposed to be particularly offensive.

The French for "the elbow" is le coude which is another similar sound. I wonder if that's where our phrase "He couldn't tell his arse from his elbow" comes from.

The French are laughing at all the people in the UK who think they're posh because they live in a cul-de-sac; it literally mean the arse end of a bag.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Vikings

OK, so, in our weekly team meeting this morning one of the guys mentioned that he was taking his kids to the Jorvik Viking Festival and one guy just happened to mention that if anyone was interested he could tell them which pub to go in so they could drink with Real Vikings afterwards.

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