11 November 2010

Weird, Sometimes Interesting

I have witnessed many more outlandish T-shirt inscriptions in Russia than I did in the US.  Lack of fluency with English leads to some weird, at times interesting T-shirt statements, many of which must be inadvertent.

Of course, there was the infamous f--- you T-shirt that I wrote about in April, stating:

F--- you
You f---ing f---.

Regrettably, no English letters were omitted.  Fortunately, the sheer vulgarity of the message was lost on nearly most Russian bystandars.

About a year ago, when the H1N1 flu was creating a global scare, I saw the following T-shirt message:

Pigs Flew?
Oh, Pigs' Flu!

This, of course, is a reference to H1N1's original name, the swine flu.  Swine flu was renamed to H1N1 at the behest of the fat pig executives in the pork industry to prevent a collapse in the bacon market.  Notice that in English it is the "swine flu" and not "swine's flu."  I imagine that when swine flu was first translated to Russian, it came across as something like "the flu that belongs to pigs" and was retranslated to English as "pigs' flu" for the purpose of making what someone construed as a clever T-shirt.
Yet Another Variation

The most melancholic award goes to the man sporting this inscription on his T-shirt:

I Will Never
Fall In Love Again

This unloving message stands in direct contrast to highly amorous one that I witnessed today:

Are You
Interested In
Polygamy?

A the risk of racial profiling, the fellow that wore the T-shirt looked like he was from a part of the world where men's answer is universally "yes," but I did not have the heart to ask him about his origins or his T-shirt.  

In most of the world, polygamy (having more than one spouse at a time) is taboo and illegal.  Practically, it is a headache. Financially, it is a disaster. So, I am not sure what interest anyone would reasonably have ... then again, even polite company chuckles desirously at whispered ménage à trois jokes.


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