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Capital of Nasty Vol. 02 Issue 31
Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine
Volume II, Issue 31, Year AD MCMXCVII
Monday, August 4th, 1997
ISSN 1482-0471
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<!> URGENT: Important Notice
Capital of Nasty is temporarely going down. The server on which
the magazine resides, Scriba Org, is being turned off on August 4th
and will be moved down to Atlanta. There it will be reconnected as
soon as possible to re-establish service.
Although mail will not be lost (you might just receive a notice of
a non-fatal transient error), (un)subscriptions will take four days
to be processed. The web-pages will be offline completely. If you
need to get in touch with us, alternate e-mail addresses are provided
as follows:
CoN Editorial --> con@ifront.com
Leandro A-N --> leandro@ifront.com
Colin B. --> tyrannis@ifront.com
Our server should be back into service by the next issue of CoN.
Thank you for your patience, and special thanks to Gard for his
excellent administration service,
CoN Staff
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Blamestorming: Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was
missed or a project failed and who was responsible.
Ohnosecond: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that
you've just made a huge, unrecoverable error.
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1. Readers' Letters
2. Why women are always late
3. Marketing slogans screw up
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This week's Golden Testicle Web Award goes to:
The Darwin Award: It's an annual honor given to the person who did
the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most
extraordinarily stupid way. A celebration of natural selection at work.
http://www.shsu.edu/~stdelr01/darwin/
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1. Readers' Letters
From: Brianne
Date sent: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 01:42:52 -0400 (EDT)
To: CoN Editorial
Subject: FaceOff
I liked your review of the movie because I completely agree with you. I
think the film SUCKED. We left the theatre laughing.
But, Cage's character's name is not Chester. It is Castor. I don't
really know why I am compelled to point this out to you.
I like your e-zine, though. It think it's pretty great.
Brianne
--[Editor's response]--
Dear Brianne,
I thought Face Off was pretty terrible myself, but I keep on hearing
people around me that it was great. It depends what you compare it
with I guess. "The Island of Dr. Mureau" is bad, and "Face Off" is
quite an amazing movie if compared to that. However if you really
need to set a standard for what a bad movie is, I suggest renting
out "Can't stop the music". If you love the village people, you find
that Bruce Jenner has a sex appeal, all whipped together with bad
disco music, you'll love this movie. Suddenly "Face Off" will win
an oscar. =)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 12:55:58 -0400
From: Lynwood@aol.com
To: Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro
Subject: Re: Capital of Nasty Errata Corrige II.29a
Please cancel!!! Do not send to me by e-mailor any other way!!!
I never subscribed to your alleged newsletter, or whatever you call
that waste of time, energy and cyberspace. Therefore since I haven't
subscribed, you should not be sending it out to me. DELETE MY E-MAIL
ADDRESS FROM YOUR MAILING LIST.
--[Editor's response]--
Dear Lynwood,
ahhh, I just love getting these type of e-mails. Net-morons
are the best, because they are dumb enough not to know how to use a
computer, yet have managed through some error in the evolutionary chain
(and some disfunctional gene) to evolve to a point where they know how
to type on the keyboard. They also seem to find a certain degree of
fascination for that upside down 'i' they use at the end of every
sentence (although sentences are a little longer then the above example
and better expressed).
What's an e-mailor? E-mailor Moon? Must be some sort of new
Japanimation E-Cartoon I wasn't aware of. Please, tell me more!
Listen up, primate: when you subscribed you got a file which
clearly listed the information on how to unsubscribe. Read it and
develop a culture. It's not that hard. So re-read carefully that file
and you'll be glad you did.
Have a totally bitchin' day, I hope they feed you well at the zoo.
Leandro+
p.s.
Don't throw turd at the tourists.
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2. Why women are always late
by Leandro+
Since my girlfriend promised me to write an article on "why
guys never call", I will write about the fact that girls are never
able to arrive in time.
It is true that guys are messy (my room is the living proof
of that), disorganized (ie. get ready for a trip 5 minutes before
they go) and to often lose things (keys, glasses, the floppy disk
my girlfriend gave me with the stories for CoN) but for sure we
are (almost) never late. In fact I think that since a guy just
puts on a pair of pants and a t-shirt that falls in the category
a) looks fine and b) smells fine, he doesn't have to waste so much
time in getting ready. Girls on the other hand first have to try
on several hundred dresses, be upset because the dress they wore in
their high school graduation is too small, and put unnecessary makeup
to cover for some faults we never see anyway. What's the point?
Guys can't tell the difference between two dresses or if her hair
is different than it was the day before.
A girl might say to a guy: "Meet me tomorrow morning at 9AM for
breakfast at Caracas, by the big oak tree".
You can be your left testicle (the right one is reserved for some
special purposes which I am still investigating) that the guy will be
waiting there for at 8:45AM if not earlier (there is a chance that he
might completely forget about the appointment, in which case he should
use the "deny all" technique, but that's another story).
The girl will arrive at least half an hour late, smile, say "sorry,
I'm late" (nooooo? really?) and before the guy can say anything,
she will show him all the great things she bought at this amazing
deal, while the poor guy couldn't care less about new shoes for women,
or that dress. What does the girl expect us to say anyway?
"Oh my gosh, those shoes are great! That dress is fabulous! Quick,
where did you buy it?" and after finding out, we'd run there and try
on the dress to make sure it fits us.
If a guy is late, say by 2 minutes, and by golly, she happens to
be there already, a guy has to be reminded a million times that she
was there waiting for him (probably a whole 30 seconds, since she
probably had just arrived there herself).
She had to wait a while 120 seconds for you, and you better obtain
your forgiveness somehow!
Eventually the woman will giggle and smile and forgive you, since
this can easily go for the time (out of the many) that she was late.
"Now we're even" she'll say, while you are probably wondering how can
16 of her lates equal one of yours.
The explanation is both cultural and genetic.
Culturally since the bride always arrives late and everyone takes this
as normal. The bride can arrive 2 hours late, and not a person
wonders what happened or why she made everyone and the groom stand so
long in the church. But what if the groom was late? I don't think
the reaction would've been quite the same.
Genetically males are built in being first. When I was born I
decided to see the world before the due date, and I plopped out of my
mom in an hurry. My sister on the other hand put my mother in a long
awaited delay, until finally she decided to come out.
My girlfriend asked me one day to wait for her at the subway station
of Greenwood. After I had waited for one hour and a half, and decided
to go home. I open the door of my house and I see her shoes at the
entrance. I am greeted with a "geez, where were you?"
"At the subway station waiting for you as you had asked" I snarled.
"Oh, oops" she smiled "well, you should've called!"
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3. Marketing slogans screw up
courtesy of Lizzy Maxine
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la.
Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of
signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or
"female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then
researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic
equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness
in the mouth."
In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi
Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the
dead."
Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan "finger-lickin' good"
came out as "eat your fingers off."
The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, "Salem - Feeling Free," got
translated in the Japanese market into "When smoking Salem, you feel so
refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty."
When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was
apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't go." After the company
figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its
Spanish markets to the Caribe.
Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The company
found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for "tiny male genitals". Ford
pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel, which means horse.
When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed
to say "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." However, the
company mistakenly thought the spanish word "embarazar" meant embarrass.
Instead the ads said that "It wont leak in your pocket and make you
pregnant "
An American t-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the spanish market
which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the desired "I Saw the Pope"
in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed "I Saw the Potato."
Chicken-man Frank Perdue's slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender
chicken," got terribly mangled in another Spanish translation. A photo
of Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all over Mexico
with a caption that explained "It takes a hard man to make a chicken
aroused."
Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos
before finding out that the phrase, in slang, means "big breasts." In
this case, however, the name problem did not have a noticeable effect on
sales.
Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a
notorious porno mag.
In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into
Schweppes Toilet Water.
Japan's second-largest tourist agency was mystified when it entered
English-speaking markets and began receiving requests for unusual sex
tours.
Upon finding out why, the owners of Kinki Nippon Tourist Company
changed its name.
In an effort to boost orange juice sales in predominantly continental
breakfast eating England, a campaign was devised to extoll the drink's
eye-opening, pick-me-up qualities. Hence the slogan, "Orange juice.
It gets your pecker up."
[Please keep Lizzy Maxine in your prayers tonight. She is fighting
bravely against cancer. This however has not stopped her yet from
laughing. -Ed.]
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Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine "media you can abuse"
In memory of Father Ross "Padre" Legere.
Published every monday (or Tuesday)
Disclaimer: unintentionally offensive.
Comments and Queries welcomed.
http://www.capnasty.org/capnasty - ISSN 1482-0471
CoN is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are
available at no cost electronically.
CoN is available on Usenet newsgroups: alt.zines, alt.ezines
Or, to subscribe, send a message to join@capnasty.org
Brought to you by C.C.C.P. (Collective Communist Computing Proletariat)
Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro Colin Barrett
<leandro@capnasty.org> <tyrannis@capnasty.org>
Special thanks to Summer Scarbough for the Nasty Acclamations.
ZimID 708EC8D1 1994/09/14 EC B0 97 59 1D FE 7C 32 7E 04 2C 66 47 41 FB 7D
