The Official Unofficial British Stupid Shit Thread

[CGYMike]

Oh yes I did

[LizLemon85]

[CGYMike]

:) lol....We are off and running

[ErikB]

Not exactly stupid shit, but entertaining shit with some good humor in it. I think I might have posted a part of this particular video somewhere else, but I don't remember. The whole video is worth watching, though, as are others on their channel. Not only do I love the Pythonesque "proper survey" in the video, but their impression of Americans at the end as they advertise their VPN sponsor is kinda cute. Their channel is at https://www.youtube.com/c/JayForeman/videos.

phpBB [media]

I don't remember how I came across this video, but it is the one that attracted me to their channel. It might be because I looked up the town of Grimsby, which they use as an example here. The reason I cared about Grimsby is because it is the home town of Lawrence Brown, a semi-amusing guy who has had a fascination with America since childhood. He moved here after he married an American. He has a YouTube channel focusing on the differences between the two countries.

Here is an example video:

phpBB [media]

His Youtube channel is here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/LostinthePond/videos

[Hornylady9]

Funny and interesting things for this thread! Haha!

Zany

[rokkerr]

This is the best thread EVER...

[rokkerr]

Stupid or true?

[rokkerr]

Truth

[CGYMike]

Hahahaha!!! yea baby yea

British road repair :)

[ErikB]

On an electronics channel I watch, Big Clive is unhappy that the wire he buys has a special "cancer and reproductive harm" sticker just for California residents. So, he made one just for Scotland (where he lives).

big_clive_sends_a_message_to_the_safety_nannies_in_california.jpg (52.68 KiB) Viewed 564 times

He has only posted the video to his Odyssey channel, and not his YouTube channel. The title is "In your face, California".

https://odysee.com/@bigclivedotcom:0d/i ... ifornia!:0

[CGYMike]

[CGYMike]

Not only are British people unattractive (according to a recent online poll), but they are angry too :)

[CGYMike]

Shouldn't it just be Goat Butter??

[ErikB]

Shouldn't it just be Goat Butter??

I fell down a little bit of a rabbit hole with this one. The first things I thought of were the British vs. American terms "maths" and "math". I found this website called "Grammarist" that explained the difference and why either one was acceptable:


https://grammarist.com/spelling/math-maths/

I also went on a Grammarist side trip learning about nouns: https://grammarist.com/grammar/nouns/#C ... mass_nouns


Now, I had tried to economize on my search by combining maths-math with goats-goat. It turns out there is a famous "goat" problem in mathematics where you imagine tying a goat to the inside of a circular acre of land. What length of rope is long enough for the goat to be able to reach exactly half an acre? Apparently it was quite some time before someone was able to come up with an exact answer. According to one of the websites, being given a length of rope and finding out how much grass the goat can reach is a lot easier than figuring out what the length of rope should be to cover a specified amount. All of the solutions up until this one mathematician figured it out had to use approximations. One of the articles stated that a couple of centuries had passed between the original proposal of the problem and the discovery of the exact solution. And apparently the exact solution is still considered ungainly. Anyway, I thought it was funny that there was a goat math problem.

So, getting back to "goats butte" vs "goat butter", I found this British manufacturer of "Goats Butter" that is a different brand than the one in your photo:

https://www.delameredairy.co.uk/product ... ts-butter/

The thing is, they use the 's' but no plural or possessive apostrophe in the title "Goats Butter" but they DO use it in the information on the package where they say the butter is churned from fresh "goats' cream". When we think of milk (accidentally typed "milf" there before fixing it - oops), do we think of "cow milk" or "cow's milk"? For me it is the second, but I note that I made it the possessive of a presumably-single cow. I found this neat page on possessives of singular and plural nouns (with special exceptions for names from classical mythology and the Bible) from Merriam-Webster:


https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... possessive


That page explains that the single trailing apostrophe is correct for more than one owner (a car that belongs to the entire Jones family is the Jones' car).
So, I would have expected either "goat's milk" (which I think is turning the noun "cow" into an adjective describing the type of milk) or "goats' milk" (milk from more than one goat, just the way they used "goats' cream" for cream from more than one goat). "Goats milk" is probably just a British convention like "maths".

Now that I think about it a little more, though, maybe "goat milk" turns "goat" into an adjective describing the milk and "goat's milk" is part of an incomplete sentence describing milk that still belongs to the goat and not to the goatherd?

Anyway, I like having the 's' in this case because it makes it sound closer to "ghost buster" so the joke sign works better.

[CGYMike]

Eric...Thank you
This might perhaps may be with the exception of Walt explaining the meaning of life, be possibly the best response to a question in the history of the Forum. I had to read it twice to absorb all of the information, and come to the same conclusion as yourself Eric. Looks like it might be up for interpretation and spirited debate.
You have indeed got me thinking....Goats' milk (with the tailing apostrophe) might be the correct way to describe the contents of this packaging.
Thanks for putting your post together..it was a fun read indeed :)

[ErikB]

Thanks! I am glad you enjoyed it. I wish I had read it an extra couple of times myself. I spotted two errors right off the bat while reading your reply.

In the sentence where I said [So, I would have expected either "goat's milk" (which I think is turning the noun "cow" into an adjective describing the type of milk)] apparently putting the apostrophe before the 's' instead of after it also has the power of turning a goat into a cow! I must have still had cows on the brain from the previous paragraph.

The funnier gaffe is accidentally leaving the 'r' off of "butter" in [So, getting back to "goats butte" vs "goat butter", ... ]. I already knew that a butte (pronounced something like 'byoot") is a hill with a flat top sticking up from a larger bit of flat land. If the length of the top part of the hill is smaller than the height of the hill above the surrounding area, it is a "butte". Otherwise, if the length of the flat top is larger than the height of the hill, it is a "table". Anyway, I didn't know if there was a "goats butte", so I looked it up. There is a "goat butte" in the state of Washington, but apparently no "goats butte". Darn! So close! It makes sense, though. "Goat pasture" or "cow pasture" vs "goats pasture" or "cows pasture".

goat_butte.jpg (41.98 KiB) Viewed 518 times

Well, at least I got the 'e' on the end there. Otherwise the discussion would have been about which picture to use:


"goat butt" (type of butt) or "goat's butt" (possessive?)

goat_butt.jpg (52.76 KiB) Viewed 518 times

or


"goats butt"

goat_butts.jpg (77.4 KiB) Viewed 518 times

Although, in the second picture, the case of "butt" (singular) wouldn't match the case of "goats" (plural). So, it would be wrong, at least in American English. I think.


There was a short clip about the English language in the English Place-names video I posted: https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4?t=173
I have a DVD box set on the history of the English language. I think I got it off a clearance table at Barnes and Noble. I never got around to watching it, though, as my DVD player failed before I was in the mood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOryJvTAGs

tin_roof_rusted.jpg (38.59 KiB) Viewed 518 times

[ErikB]

Funny that this thread gets created and suddenly two sources of amusement that I check every day happen to provide something that I can post here.

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sheldon_221115_the_english_language_panel_3.jpg (89.18 KiB) Viewed 513 times

[ErikB]

The clocks at the Ministry Of Silly Walks all look like this:

clock_from_the_ministry_of_silly_walks.jpg (72.85 KiB) Viewed 504 times

[CGYMike]

OK

[greggl]

Another fine Monty Python product



this was actually a pretty good beer. A couple of places in town carried it. Reminded me of Newcastle ale. I still have a bottle I bought just to display on a shelf.