The other week, the Brotherhood was fortunate enough to induct a new member, Brother Carp. Why the name? It’s vaguely homonymic and eponymous and has nothing to do with introduced species that have become pests. Carp has not been fully inducted because he has not participated in the Martina Navratilova ceremony, however he has been given the dispensation to carry that out in his home state, Tasmania, or his place of employment, Antarctica! See this post.
Digression
This week was craptacular, with howling winds an generally unpleasant conditions, so Eel and I decided to have breakfast instead. Our various musings led Eel pontificate on the cultural cringe.
From this post you’ll remember that Eel drives a limo, the Holden Calais a true blue upmarket Aussie icon. Minor conundrum – why did they give it this name? Surely there are upmarket places in Australia. They could have called it the Holden Prahran, except that nobody would have been able to pronounce it correctly, or the Holden Hamilton Hill, a nice bit of alliteration there.
In fact Calais is a clapped out fishing town most notible for hordes of non-washing poms vying for duty free grog and fags. It is famous only for being part of England once, and has a rather macabre background:
King Edward III of England in 1347, after a siege of eleven months following the Battle of Crécy demanded reprisals against the town’s citizens for holding out for so long and ordered that the town’s population be killed en masse. He agreed to spare them on the condition that six of the principal citizens would come to him, bareheaded and barefooted and with ropes around their necks, and give themselves up to die.
What were the name designers at Holden thinking? The Holden Decapitator!
Conundrum - why don’t the French have a car model, the Citroen Port Kembla ? Or aren’t we good enough for them?
Filed under: Random Stuff
