They wanted to have their cake and eat it

American couple Heath and Deborah Campbell might just have gotten away with naming their kid Adolf Hitler (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2008/dec/17/adolf-hitler-birthday-new-jersey), had they not made the mistake of going to their local ShopRite in New Jersey and asking for his name to be plastered over a birthday cake. For some reason, the staff thought the request somewhat inappropriate.

Why the unusal moniker? "No one else in the world would have that name," commented dad, when asked to justify the burden he had placed upon his three-year-old boy. Umm... I think if pops digs just a little further, he may find that someone did once share that name. But he was involved in genocide in Europe about 65 years ago, so there may not have been that much coverage in the Bayonne Bugle.

Hold on a second though. What's this? Adolf's siblings have unconventional names too? Say heil to JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Himler Jeannie. According to press reports, Honszlynn is an oblique reference to SS Chief Heinrich Himmler. One can only imagine that the parents didn't want anything too obvious which would have raised eyebrows in der Schule.

I am praying that this story is a spoof and that Mel Brooks will suddenly jump out of the birthday cake. "I said to Martin Bohrmann, I said Hey Marty, why don't we throw a little Nazi Party?"

Comments

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at

The race for bogus Olympic stats

Of all the dubious statistics thrown around in relation to the London Olympics, the claim that there are '47 tube journeys in central London that can easily be walked' is surely one of the most misleading. I suspect it is based on the relative proximity of one station to an adjacent one. Embankment is walking distance from Temple. Charing Cross is a stone's throw from Leicester Square. But what exactly is a 'tube journey'? As I've understood it - and I'm only going on three decades' experience of using the network - it is a journey that takes you from any one place with a tube station to another. My journey from Leicester Square might take me to Charing Cross, but it might also lead me up the line to Camden Town or down south to Morden. In fact, from any one tube station - thanks to the wonders of interconnections - there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of options available to me. Now, I don't claim to have a PhD in mathematics, but the number of p

WASHED AND READY TO EAT

Search This Blog