Child's Play - an account of the dynamics of children's video rentals, focusing on beleaguered mothers, tyrannical toddlers and Disney's uncanny similarity to De Beers, from the vantage point of my decade as a video store clerk.
2 brief observations: Canada is awash(!) in repeated place names, with Trout Lakes, for example, “from coast to coast to coast”, as is said here.
As someone who worked for years in Toronto’s Public Library System, I had experience with VHS and music cassette collections (No Porn, of course!). The damaged tapes, the failure to honour the Please Rewind instruction, the long overdue tapes despite the then hefty fines.
I hear you. I once had someone return their videos in a bag that I can only assume had previously carried their rubbish, because it was full of maggots. Ah, the Trout Lakes and Beaver Creeks of Canada. But it also has its share of hilarious place names, of course - like Balls Creek, Witless Bay, etc. CBC did a post about it a while back (https://www.cbc.ca/television/stillstanding/the-most-hilarious-town-names-in-canada-1.5440187). And, of course, who can forget Regina's phonemic similarity to 'vagina'? (Yes, I'm the type of person who sniggers every time I leave Heathrow airport on the Piccadilly line to 'Cockfosters'.)
Yes, Newfoundland glories in some wonderful toponyme, but I think “funny” depends on the hearer, and knowledge of context.. As one who grew up in Québec I enjoy some of the places which combined French and English, such as St Gabriel de Brandon, and St Hilaire de Dorset, and the famous Newfoundland historic site L’Anse aux Meadows!
Guyana has a wealth of place names in a wealth of languages: Dutch, French, English and numerous Indigenous languages. My favourite “funny” one was Wash Clothes,
Mahaicony, but many of old colonial sugar estate names were equally evocative and had “stories” behind them: La Bonne Intention (known simply as LBI), La Penitence, Bachelor’s Adventure... .
2 brief observations: Canada is awash(!) in repeated place names, with Trout Lakes, for example, “from coast to coast to coast”, as is said here.
As someone who worked for years in Toronto’s Public Library System, I had experience with VHS and music cassette collections (No Porn, of course!). The damaged tapes, the failure to honour the Please Rewind instruction, the long overdue tapes despite the then hefty fines.
I hear you. I once had someone return their videos in a bag that I can only assume had previously carried their rubbish, because it was full of maggots. Ah, the Trout Lakes and Beaver Creeks of Canada. But it also has its share of hilarious place names, of course - like Balls Creek, Witless Bay, etc. CBC did a post about it a while back (https://www.cbc.ca/television/stillstanding/the-most-hilarious-town-names-in-canada-1.5440187). And, of course, who can forget Regina's phonemic similarity to 'vagina'? (Yes, I'm the type of person who sniggers every time I leave Heathrow airport on the Piccadilly line to 'Cockfosters'.)
Yes, Newfoundland glories in some wonderful toponyme, but I think “funny” depends on the hearer, and knowledge of context.. As one who grew up in Québec I enjoy some of the places which combined French and English, such as St Gabriel de Brandon, and St Hilaire de Dorset, and the famous Newfoundland historic site L’Anse aux Meadows!
Guyana has a wealth of place names in a wealth of languages: Dutch, French, English and numerous Indigenous languages. My favourite “funny” one was Wash Clothes,
Mahaicony, but many of old colonial sugar estate names were equally evocative and had “stories” behind them: La Bonne Intention (known simply as LBI), La Penitence, Bachelor’s Adventure... .