I was aware of the story last week, the Times is late to it

You could blame the Disney corporation for disrupting these 250 jobs; or you could blame the US Government's H1B Visa program which permitted it, and which has disrupted approximately 750,000 careers in this country, including mine.

This story is GRRRREAT!
 

Because tigers can often be found chillin' in a driveway in Grand Rapids. I suppose it could be Richard Parker.

http://wate.com/2015/06/03/officers-...stuffed-tiger/

Looks kinda real, if you squint.

I know an animal control officer who gets called out frequently for rubber snakes and reptiles.

Nope, Chuck Testa!

This just in from Buckinghamshire's premier journal of record, the Bucks Herald.

No doubt heads will roll at the New York Times because they missed this scoop. A poop scoop I suppose you could call it.

My parents will be glad to have missed that excitement.
I did have a good laugh at Mr Lucas taking his share of responsibility though :lol:

It really is 'parish pump' stuff, isn't it?
It's quite bizarre what is published in the BH on an almost weekly basis, but they've excelled themselves this time.

Our next door neighbour got in the Bucks Herald years back. She bought and paid for her shopping in Sainsbury's, but when she got home she realised she hadn't got her fishfingers. So she called the store, but no-one had alerted the lady at the checkout. It could only therefore be presumed that the next shopper had capitalised on Maureen's careless bag-packing and walked off with a free box of fishfingers.

She sent a letter for publication, but the Bucks Herald was so moved by her plight that they sent a reporter and photographer round. I seem to remember her posing with a similar item and a cross look on her face, but that might be a false memory from all the mock-ups my brother and I made up (and laughed ourselves quite weak about).

Slow news day maybe?

Fishfingers. I first saw that as 'fishfingerers'. WTH?

I'm assuming they're what we'd call fish sticks, and what I call fishdicks.

Google images for 'fish sticks' shows exactly what we call fish fingers.
Hit the nail on the head, Grav.
I wonder why the different names?

Speaking of names, I wandered into a supermarket in Torrington, Wyoming, looking for familiar sustenance and my gaze was drawn to what we know as fig rolls.
Amusingly, they were called 'Cobblers'. I say amusingly, because 'Cobblers'! is an expression which can be loosely translated as 'I do not agree with your hypothesis my good man. Kindly trouble me with it no further'.


Cobblers!

I'm totally stealing this. I can imagine many situations when this is perfectly applicable. I hope the subliminal message is received when the surface message is spoken.

Kindly trouble me with it no further.

Amusing indeed. :D

It's from cockney rhyming slang btw.
Cobblers' awls = balls.

Quite a few words we use have ruder meanings if you know their origins, although some are benign. For example barnet, meaning hairstyle, comes from Barnet Fair = hair.
Butchers, meaning to check something out, comes from Butcher's hook = look.
Bottle however, meaning courage or pluck, is from bottle and glass = arse. So if you say someone's lost their bottle, you're suggesting they pooped themselves in fright.

I'm not sure how well travelled even the contractions are outside of London.

Back to weird news (and local "news") it turns out that cats in Wharfedale now have opposable thumbs.

That so? Awesome. I had always just assumed it was the idea of courage found in a bottle - like dutch courage - so if you'd lost your bottle, you'd lost your nerve.

That's one of the things that always fascinates me with slang - often they have an actual meaning, a metaphor, or rhyme, well-understood by all at the time they came into currency, then that original meaning fell away yet we still understand the point. We just attach another likely meaning to arrive at the same place.

'tenter hooks' is the classic example, for me. I know we've talked about it before. We all instinctively know what we mean by tenter hooks despite that production process no longer being part of our landscape - most people wouldn't really know what tenter hooks were (or indeed tender hooks - which somehow conveys exactly the same sense ) but the image the word now conjures is just as effective in conveying the same meaning as the original.

I remember an awesome episode of Star Trek Next Gen, where they encountered a race that communicated entirely through metaphor and allegory. Fascinating really. So much of our day-to-day language and expression is indirect.

...... sorry ....bit of a tangent. Just smoked something marvellous.

Was it a kipper? Will you be back for breakfast?