Yank slams El Reg 'zio-fruitcake' Playmobil 'crap'
It's with heavy hearts that we report this crisp autumnal Friday that our world-beating Playmobil coverage has not gone down too well in one corner of the good old US of A. Specifically, one Yank has objected somewhat to this shock exposé of what happens if you try to get through security at Heathrow's T5 wearing a Transformers …
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Where’s the International Terrorism angle?
Oh wait.
Never mind.
Odd ending... be careful
This person seems to be in league, somehow, with the Prince of Darkness. I mean "go to Satan" would obviously be a suggestion to the reader. But "Go to, Satan" would be some sort of directive addressed to devil himself (along the lines of "Turn right, Ted" or "Fetch, Fido")
I wonder where it is Tom Lowe is ordering Satan to go?
Java????
WTF!!! Java!!!!, since it’s the 50th anniversary of COBOL
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. MOVDEVIL
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
10 WS-SATAN PIC X(5) VALUE 'SATAN.
10 WS-BEHIND-ME PIC X(5).
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
MOVE WS-SATAN TO WS-BEHIND-ME.
GOBACK.
Of course we could dispense with a programming language altogether and just code the JCL
//JOBSTEP EXEC PGM=IEBGENER
//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=*
//SYSIN DD DUMMY
//SYSUT1 DD DSN=SATAN, DISP=(OLD,DELETE,DELETE)
//SYSUT2 DD DSN=BEHIND.ME,DISP=(NEW,CATLG,CATLG),UNIT=HELL
<coat>
@mycho re. more than that
"you're also crypto-radishes and your mothers were nebulous firetrucks."
You leave my nebulous firetrucking mother out of this, ya hear me?!
@frank ly
Stop being a batracho-phreno-boo-cosmo-aardvark and I'll leave your mom to the milktruck. Deal?
Why has no-one pointed this out...
So many comments already an no-one has pointed out that a Zio-fruitcake *must* be made without being Leavened. Its an Unleavened fruitcake. It must be pretty thin dense stuff, the fruit equivalent of Kendle Mint Cake (which of course contains no cake!).
The benefit must be that there are none of those traditional problems of the fruit sinking to the bottom, this zio-fruitcake only has bottom!
That only leaves two things, 1. yes clearly a complete humour bypass, and 2. this comment came from America.... I'd have understood an Arabic name from (say) Persia but Tom from America. Either a mole has just blown their cover (and a gasket) or someone in America hates the Jews more than the Muslims. Wow...! Never expected that.
neither of which sounds particularly appetising
"neither of which sounds particularly appetising."
I can just hear Peter Jones reading that sentence in a HHG entry.
Talking of unappetising, since my arrival in Canada, I've read about these culinary delights.
The Heinz Tomato Sauce & Soup Cakes
http://www.canada.com/life/food/Would+like+ketchup+with+your+cake/1545648/story.html
http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/food-feeding-555/recipes-557/55352-tomato-soup-cake.html
I'll get me coat as there's no sick bucket icon.
Yeesh
The longer I live, the more other people seem like bit characters from The Goon Show.
p1ss poor job of whinging
On the other hand, the comments have been hilarious and I thank you one and all.
If you like fruitcake, and many don't (so you're all excused from class); mine are all made from scratch and then wrapped and soaked in brandy. I had one that was 20 years old at one time.
Playmobile. More Please!
scary
Maybe this is the guy that killed a census worker in rural Kentucky and carved 'FED' in his chest? All you furriners remember, America can be a wonderful place to visit as long as you don't go too deep in the forest. If you find yourself somewhere without wi-fi (or heaven forbid GSM signal), keep your eyes peeled for Tim driving a rusted pickup with Trucknutz.
@Anonymous Coward 18:43 GMT
..and where do you buy *your* scratch from?
Mmmm, zio-fruitcake.
Should go nicely with some zio-tea.
"More Zio-fruitcake Rabbi?"
Twit. Plus I love the "Go to, Satan" line, obviously a code-writer in his spare time.
Re: Zio
To slightly mishear a certain infamously direly translated videogame intro scene...
"All Your Playmobil Are Belong To Us...?".
Mine's the coat with the Decepticons Soundwave, & Frenzy (currently disguised as a MP3 player) in the pocket...
@mycho re. @frank ly
I need time to work that one out.............
I apologize
I honestly must apologize for my fellow country man's attitude towards the mighty and all powerful El Reg. It must be said that not all of us gun toting hicks view you as the evil source of the future anti-christ.
just the half that dont realize that there is a diferance between england and the UK.
paris for she might be able to shag some sence into poor Tom...unless he thinks that she is a zio-fruitcake and decides to eat her in a way she wouldnt like.
Welcome to heaven
Thus the Register achieves journalistic nirvana, being anathematised by both (all?) sides of the debate.
But wait......
Perhaps we have been too hasty.
Perhaps this mysterious injunction is actually a cipher of some kind.....perhaps....
"GOP tycoon proliferates zealous taboo aura?! "
Wow
And they say most of rural american can't get even 200kbs "Broadband."
This 'ol boy must live at the *rich* end of the trailer park.
No no no
To aid in clearing up the obvious cross-cultural confusion, please, allow me to interpret my fellow American's letter.
First of all, you are making the assumption the writer is at least slightly sane. If one abandons this thesis (and would anyone not do so immediately?), it becomes clear Mr. Lowe is speaking to the Playmobil people themselves, not to the Reg. This realization should instantly make the missive more coherent. (He is correct, of course, that the Playmobils have nothing to do with real news reportage, but since they have never claimed to be anything more than a small, synopsized representation of an op-ed piece, this is an unnecessary point.)
Zio is Italian for "uncle". In the US (perhaps also in the UK?) yelling "Uncle!" means to give up, so in this context "zio" means "cowardly."
"You people are zio-fruitcakes..." therefore can be translated as the writer calling the Playmobil characters cowardly fruitcakes. Following the prevailing logic, we must take "fruitcakes" literally as well, meaning the writer is aware of the little-known fact that Playmobil toys are actually MADE of fruitcake. That is why they are practically indestructible.
Note in the last paragraph the writer uses "ye" instead of "you." UK readers may not find this significant, since Great Britain is full of accents and dialects, many of which employ such usage. In the US, however, there is only one group that speaks this way: the Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends), known for their unwavering pacifism and their "silent meeting" worship services.
So here we have a pacifist, who does not find weapons - particularly of mass destruction - funny (a "stupid joke" he says), who believes Playmobil characters can hear him, a man obviously driven mad by repression, forbidden by his religion to speak for interminable hours and then deprived of any cathartic outlet by the ban on violence. "All about zio-prop..." he says, achieving in his madness a triple pun: a Playmobil as a cowardly prop (on some level he obviously realizes they are inanimate), the WMD sign as cowardly propaganda, and the alternate more literal translation, Uncle prop, or Uncle Propaganda, which can only be a sly reference to Uncle Sam.
His anger at the entire US and UK boiling over, he suddenly finds a solution that keeps him from personally violating his pacifist vow. "Of course!" he writes, unaware he has written out loud.
"Go to, Satan."
Understood properly, that final sentence has nothing to do with religion. Various commenters have assumed it is a reference to, "Get thee behind me, Satan," and I have greatly enjoyed the coding samples related thereto. But the true explanation is simple and consistent.
Mr. Lowe's brain twists words and facts into new and different shapes, so we must assume he has not neglected his own name. Thomas Lowe can be rearranged to spell, "Lowe Hot Sam," and where else is it low, hot, and occupied by Sam - obviously a substitution word from the Pink Floyd song "Lucifer Sam"?
Identifying himself covertly with the Prince of Darkness (a real no-no for a Quaker), and remembering an obscure song about a pet, Mr. Lowe abruptly lights on a means of destroying the enemy that does not require any violence on his part. But in his nealarmstrongian overexcitement, Mr. Lowe writes "Go to, Satan," accidentally omitting the word that would make sense of his command.
"Go to it, Satan," is what he meant to write. If nothing else, he is a kind master. He may be employing his beloved pet to destroy the enemy by proxy...but a host of chewy fruitcake Playmobils makes a lovely treat for a Doberman Pinscher.
American humour
Think his comments prove that a certain proportion of yanks have no idea what humour is.
After all, how can you explain Friends?
Crawl back under your stone my friend as you will never understand how side splittingly funny these reconstructions are.
Mixing news with humour while winding up the staff by asking where the IT angle is constitutes the very essence of the site which is why I visit every day as it gives me a good laugh.
Don't like ti? There are plenty of other sites to spend your time on so off you go.
Keep up the stirling work Lester
@cordwainer 1 & @pctechxp
::bows to the master or mistress yclept[1] cordwainer 1::
Awesome, dude or dudette. Much better than my poor attempt :-)
pctechxp: I think you'll find that certain populations of most enclaves of humanity have no idea what humor is. It's a sad human condition, which should have been bred out of the species tens of centuries ago, given how daft sex is (when done right, that is ;-)
[1] STR
@ cordwainer 1
Intelligently thought out, insightful and hilarious.
Truly one of the finest comments I've ever seen on The Reg.
Bravo, Sir!
*doffs cap*
@pctechxp
Friends is plot to brain wash humor and intelligence out of the public. I'm sure there are some shows like that in UK .
Ps this yank finds most America sitcoms in funny. Perhaps I don't have the magic smoke
@cordwainer 1 09:50 GMT
You, my friend, have earned the esteemed position of american english to english english translator to educate us brits on some of the more unfathomable american minorities. Hence forth you shall be required to translate all the bizaare comments that the rest of us can't understand, keep up for the good work!
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