I suppose that's one way to sell men's shoes.
The company's founder, Mr. Darius Mmonk-Pubes, resents the implication.
How sad. Even after turning off SafeSearch the 1st page of pictures is G rated.
"Nunn Bush" seems to belong to that category of monikers-or-brands that are so obviously ridiculous that they have this force-field of invisibility, somehow hiding in plain sight for year after year. As though they're such low-hanging fruit that to swipe at them is to admit you're a dirty quadroped instead of an upstanding biped.
Can't think of other brand names this unfortunate, though. Seems to be more common with people: Dicks Armey, Trickle and Pound, Cokie Roberts, Butch Otter, et cetera.
low-hanging fruit ...
Cummins Onan has always felt a bit dirty. OK, a lot.
Note that the Nunn Bush has been discontinued.
The sensible, no-nonsense styles of Nunn Bush have gone out of fashion.
I don't get it.
Honestly, Ned, would you buy a shoe named "Arthur"?
Wow, I guess this is what happens to political bloggers. I was wondering what the big deal was about a retired Georgia Democratic Senator and the previous president.
Can't think of other brand names this unfortunate, though
The web has opened up whole new opportunities for unfortunate branding. Pen Island and Mole Station probably being the most famous examples. The latter has since changed its URL.
12: But he might buy it's brother shoe, the "Maury".
There's a convenience store chain called Kum & Go.
14: Sadly, I had to google "Mole Station" before getting that one. Oh. Oh, my. Oh, duh.
14: I have wondered how "Dick's Sporting Goods" has made it in the Internet era.
Can't think of other brand names this unfortunate, though
There's a local auto parts store, Dyke. Their main location, on a prominent road, features the name in huge lettering on the side of the building. I assume the local teens titter, but I've never heard an adult joke* about it.
* For instance: They only sell parts for Jeeps and Subarus.
18: I have a friend who the other day offered the helpful facebook status something like, "If you're looking up Dick's Sporting Goods from a work computer, you should not assume that it's dicks dot com."
But overall, I think I'm with Ned in 8 on this; I was puzzled whether it was "he said 'Nunn-Bush' heh unhh heh" or the "Arthur" or the combination of those, or something else. Direct me to the poster's blog if appropriate. I mean what's next, "UPS asks what 'brown can do for you?'"*.
*Although I *would* have liked have been a fly on the wall when they had the initial discussion with UPS management on that one.
To quote myself from an old thread:
There's a funny way that decreased standards of prudery has made the language more prudish. "Dick" has been a synonym for penis for quite awhile, but it's only become unusable as a name recentlly -- back in the '60s, even though if you'd asked anyone with a normal command of obscenity what "dick" meant, they would have known, "Dick Nixon" didn't inspire a Beavis and Butthead "heh heh heh" everytime anyone heard it, because for most people it was so inappropriate that it just didn't come to mind.
24: This probably relates to the standardization of usage. As "dick" has come to be the go-to synonym for penis, it becomes more and more obscene, while other words that used to have similar synonym status (peter, willy, john thomas) are losing that association entirely.
Think about all those poor guys named "Prince Albert."
25: Friends of mine really wanted to name their son "Peter" for family reasons but agonized for days over it (this would be in the late '80s). In the end, that is the name they chose, and I do think that it has become even less stigmatized in the intervening years. (No guarantee though that kid did not suffer some schoolyard taunting.)
25: I don't think that's it. There's a passage from a WWII era English novel by Angela Thirkell that comes to mind in this context, where a bunch of teenagers are a ta fair with rides, including a merry-go-round with different animals, and there's a page and a half discussion of how much Lydia loves riding on the cock. She just can't get enough cock, all she thinks about is cock. And it's blatantly apparent to a modern reader that the writer is kidding around, but that she wasn't expecting her contemporary readers to get it, mostly, or at least to admit to themselves that they got it.
It's not about standardization, it's about the expected levels of dirtymindedness in the audience.
The Andrews Sisters claimed that it didn't occur to them that the lyrics to Rum and Coca Cola are about prostitution.
Years later, Maxine Andrews recalled, "The rhythm was what attracted the Andrews Sisters to 'Rum and Coca-Cola'. We never thought of the lyric. The lyric was there, it was cute, but we didn't think of what it meant; but at that time, nobody else would think of it either, because we weren't as morally open as we are today and so, a lot of stuff -- really, no excuses -- just went over our heads."
The whole language could be unsafe from the creep of potty humor! A cow-orker recently tried to tell a group of us about some skeet shooting he'd done over the weekend. Muffled giggles soon gave way to outright chuckling and an instruction for said cow-orker to visit Urban Dictionary for an explanation.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, -Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!
As "dick" has come to be the go-to synonym for penis, it becomes more and more obscene, while other words that used to have similar synonym status (peter, willy, john thomas) are losing that association entirely
What about rod, or johnson, in the parlance of our times?
30.last: And sent me there as well.
"When correctly viewed, everything is lewd" -- Tom Lehrer.
re: 29
I didn't know that tune. It's great. Thanks.
@30: What are these cow orkers of which you speak?
I haven't found the 'dick' sort of stuff funny since my early teens, but I do admit to tittering at the way certain things come out in other languages. E.g. the Czech car brand 'Skoda' means 'too bad/schade' in Polish, or the fact that drink stands in Croatia are labeled 'tasty pussies'.
If you haven't spent much time with the Andrews Sisters, they'll reward you for looking further.
re: 39
I know quite a bit of their stuff, I listen to a lot of 30s and 40s music,* but I didn't know that particular song.
* I have a very moderate obsession with small group swing just before it turned into bebop.
Oooh, Ella Mae Morse, Cow Cow Boogie and Blacksmith Blues? Both on the Youtube.
40: Is it still an obsession if it is very moderate?
re: 42
I don't know - probably not. It's just a period that gets ignored, I suppose, and my liking it [particularly guitar playing of that period] is a minor foible.
Heh heh, he said "period". Twice. Heh heh heh.
6: I had been eating the Holy Land Deli's "Garlicky Homos" (widely distributed to co-ops & Whole Foods hereabouts) for over a decade before a friend pointed out the low-hanging fruit aspect of the variant spelling. Now they changed the recipe and it's not as good. Oh well.
19: The recent vogue for reclaiming the word "tranny" among younger folx in the trans community has run smack into its totally unironic use in the marketing of automobile transmission repair specialists, as several FB photos of friends attest.
And finally, pace Dick Nixon, everyone here is surely aware that "Spiro Agnew" is an anagram of "Grow A Penis", right?
Why no, Anal Pet Minion, I did not know that.
Jeepers. I, being high-minded, never think of these things. Even the "Nunn Bush" line of, apparently, shoes, would just have struck me as pretentious and shrug-worthy: just look at the shoes themselves and see whether they seem stupid or not.
Failure of imagination!
Though Jon Stewart did show last night a short clip of something called the Vibrating Weight (?) which featured three barechested men -- Jon pointed out that they were hairless -- who were holding upright before their bellies a 1-foot-long hand weight that was vibrating rapidly up and down. Uh. !! I ... agree that that's ... quite something.
Stephen Colbert shortly thereafter did an interview with a political representative from Delaware that was pretty fucking brilliant -- apparently Delaware is the home of the fighting cocks, or some such, the "blue hens" state. Good work, Colbert.
52: My MIL just asked me if I knew what q____m might denote in the context of a vulgar rhyme (relating to the can-can, incidentally) in which it plainly referred to a leaky, well, you know.
I demurred.
49: I would go with that as a handle, except LB would complain since I just changed over a little while ago.
My real name anagrams to "Imp, heckle a trotting zebra!" Among other things.
Have you already rejected Man Pantie Loin?
Czech car brand 'Skoda' means 'too bad/schade' in Polish
Means the same thing in Czech. A cross-language joke there is the Polish phrase for "I am looking for a brush," which means "I am banging a hooker" in Czech.
Andrews sisters favorite of mine Anita O'Day is pretty good too.
Clearly inferior to Man-Lion Pantie.
q____m
Quorum? I've never heard it used naughtily.
Quorum?
Don't be silly. Quod erat demonstrandum.
The whole language could be unsafe from the creep of potty humor!
Sarah Palin: "The Pelosi Bill Was Rammed Through on Saturday, But Sunday's Coming."
I cannot believe how many of you are all "I don't even own a potty humor". Have you considered commenting at the Washington Monthly?
It's potty-related? I thought it was to do with the word "Bush" somehow, the president or the hair or whatever.
"To that end, some students -- Murray did not say how many -- were suspended, but there were additional factors involved in their suspension unrelated to simply saying 'meep'."
58 szukam means to fuck in czech? I know the czech word for 'love' can mean 'cane', 'girl' or 'blowjob' in Polish depending on how slangy you're being. In intrapolish giggle fodder, the word for ice cream has come to be a slang term for blowjob. So if you see a personal ad by a Pole who is emphasizing their love of ice cream, that does not mean they're looking for some good gelato. Same occasionally goes for a love of certain sports e.g. basketball or volleyball which became codewords to evade prudish mainstream dating site censors.
"Why are you Czecking out my Pole?" being, of course, the canonical response to "Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?"
"Orange you glad I didn't say 'Silesia? I hardly even know ya!'"
