Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Same with Sandy Shaw.

i don't know how to explain it but i used to think chickens had a really weird way of "mating", something to do with the rooster's legs. (!!?!?) :)

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

"that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character."

^^^Dude, you beat me by a month. Thanks!

I once spent a half hour trying to eject a cd from a Mac before someone finally told me there's an eject button on the keyboard. I was going through all these crazy menus and preferences...

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

― filthy dylan, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 5:30 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

loooool one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory.

I think I've done that Mac eject button thing too :(

Pronounced lapels like 'labels' for years until corrected but happily don't dress well enough to use it often

My girlfriend was shocked to learn, at the age of 33, that a 'Flea Circus' is actually a rather charming mechanical toy, and is in no way operated by any parasitic insects.

Ismael, at the age of 32, is shocked to learn the same thing. This thread is getting embarrassing

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory

no but seriously, what is this about?

i mean i can see that there's rarely anything to size them against in the big white antarctic, but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

u could still play tag w/it tho

But you could make the same assumption with ostriches in the big yellow desert (or wherever they live), and in that case you'd be right!

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

aw no-one said 'where babies come from'

I've had a lot of experiences in my adult life with mispronouncing words I understood as part of written text, but hadn't heard aurally in the context of conversation etc. For example, I was well into my twenties before I knew the word "vehement" wasn't pronounced veh-hee-ment. I wish others would politely correct you when you do that instead of letting you blindly sound like an idiot.

I'm a bit like that, but now I'm in the habit of saying works incorrectly, I can't get out of it. Canal is not pronounced can-el, but there's fuck all I can do about it now.

^ This happens to me all the time too - so much so that I actually now find it quite amusing when I realise, midway through a sentence, that a word I've never heard before is looming at the end. I suppose that people who talk a lot, rather than reading, must find the same with spelling. It only annoys me when some moron uses it as an opportunity to score cheap points (sadly fairly often)

I was going to start a thread like this, but it was going to be more about 'life lessons' that took you forever to learn, rather than trivia.

Anyway it's taken me this long to fully realize how unreliable first impressions can be when it comes to people.

but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

haha

TAL have an episode on this in the "best of" section on their wesite. people who thought unicorns were real, etc., lots of awkward silences at cocktail parties: good stuff.

i like to tag birds. (runs)

There's a penguin here and he wants to say "you didn't touch me ner ner ner"

I thought penguins went "weh weh weh"

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

― Huey in Bristol (Huey in Melbourne), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you couldnt get me in the same room as a ouija board

I was about 35 when I figured out Open Sesame = Open Says Me.

i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

I just figured out, like 2 days ago, that the lyrics are "highway to the danger zone"

(until then, thought they were "I went to to the danger zone")

ooh i like that

lol mandee those are even better

Nothing, as I'm not shockingly old.

Misheard lyrics are always better. The singer of my old band had this (intentionally) corny line that went "sleep all day til the telephone ring / head to the bar and shake that thing", the latter half of which I always thought was "head to the barber and shave that thing".

My friend always thought that Op Ivy song Take Warning went "skate boarding", which is way better.

Same with Sandy Shaw.

Ok I sounded this out several times in several different ways and I still don't get how this is a pun. Help?

I think that 'Shaw' is meant to sound like 'shore' - I don't hear it either

Sandy Shore.

Shaw is pronounced exactly the same as Shore, in England.

hows it pron in USA?

Well I guess it must be different, if people are having problems hearing it? Dunno.

I didn't even know it was her real name, tho.

wasn't, rather

I knew someone who, if my friend is to believed, is said to have uttered at age 18 "wait, you can't get pregnant if your clothes are on, right" while making out.

'Shore' rhymes with 'oar'. 'Shaw' is the same as the first three letters in 'shopping' xp

i'm loving this thread. so many discoveries!

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

― Øystein, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

http://www.noonco.com/flea/movie.htm

My flabber hasn't been gasted quite like this in a long time :-/

xp I only got that Sandie Shaw pun because I once attended a seminar about legal practice given by an English professor who made a big thing out of the difference between 'law' and 'lore'. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about

Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

I know, right?!!??!

i too only figured out lipps, inc. lately. also, fear's lee ving. it never occurred to me until i was driving in the car one day and bam.

I just now got Lipps, Inc. I say in my head "Lipps Incorporated" whenever I read that.

I was pretty close to thirty when I was told that "prevalent" is not pronounced pree-VAY-lent. I liked my version better. "The PREE-VAY-LENT opinion in this country is that Barack Obama will be a force of change."

I didn't realize until sometime in my sophomore year of high school that being forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson (Focus on the Family) every morning on the way to school was completely fucked up. My dad used to drive me to school everyday for years, and that shit was always on the radio.

"i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

― Cittaslow Mazza (blueski), Wednesday, 12 November 2008"

haha yes, i thought it must be turkish

Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express (1994) was influenced by Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood (1987).

WKW played homage to him in the Chinese title 重慶森林 (Chongqing Forest) playing off of the Chinese title 挪威的森林 (beautiful/powerful forest) of HM's Japanese book's title ノルウェイの森 (Norwegian Wood).

from https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/poet-time-wong-kar-wai-chungking-express

Several people have noticed a connection between Chungking Express and the novels of Haruki Murakami, and I notice that many of the music cues on the soundtrack CD have been given titles drawn from Murakami’s books.

I especially liked his early novel Pinball ‘73 and his short story A Girl, She is 100%. Now that he’s started worrying about the onset of middle age, I’ve kind of lost interest. But he and I are about the same age, and we had very similar formative experiences: we were both marked by what I call “Seventh Fleet culture” in those years between the Korean War and Vietnam. We both bought the music, the cigarettes, the lifestyle; seeing big foreigners on the streets made a strong impression on us. What I identified with in his books was the sense of being a certain age: of being not yet so far out of your twenties that you’ve forgotten them, but not yet feeling middle-aged.

oof please don’t do things that would make me lose respect for WKW. (i loathe HM’s writing)

Slow sure but there is no world in which "More More More" is a ballad!

"rust never sleeps" was a slogan for a rust preventing paint
https://kellyipblog.lexblogplatform.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/551/2018/03/RUST-2.jpg
mark mothersbaugh mentioned it to neil young who made it the album title
for some reason i thought of it is as "i am rust man, i am always awake" like he's tetsuo or something

for some reason i thought of it is as "i am rust man, i am always awake" like he's tetsuo or something

https://images.theconversation.com/files/44518/original/w7qjbkmw-1395629312.jpg

Just learned the phrase “Salad days” comes from Shakespeare and is not a modern American thing (I kind of thought it was a 60s california surfer thing)

I mean, sure — living in England in Shakespeare's time, the day you got to eat a salad was probably the best day of your entire life.

They preferred to go surfing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHuIpse1nM4

the day you got to eat a salad was probably the best day of your entire life.

lol. it's more likely derivation is the metaphoric connection between greenness and youth, but I liked yours better.

A green salad would have killed an Elizabethan child

not paired with a good stout, I bet

Until earlier today I assumed zebra crossings had been invented in the 1920s, when cars were relatively new. It seems like an obvious idea. But no, they were apparently invented in the late 1940s, and the name was coined by James Callaghan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_crossing

The first one was painted on Slough High Street. Until that point there were Belisha Beacons, and studs, but no zebra stripes. For a while crossings just looked like this:
https://i.imgur.com/j0VYbZl.jpeg

You learn something every day.

A green salad would have killed an Elizabethan child

cold roast parsnips and wild fennel with brown sauce, there you go

africa is the 2nd largest continent and larger than north america.

i just now realized that "electric guitar" is a riff on the old show "juke box jury"

(the talking heads song "electric guitar")

innocent is the opposite of nocent

^ I just learned a new word today ;-)

when you piss on someone's chips, you are pissing on their kindling, so it won't light. Not chips from the chippy.

Oh! Still, may as well piss on their chips from the chippy as well.

Yeah I guess once you've got going it's hard to stop

Does this mean the chips in Whizzer and Chips are also wood chips?

that would be a no

I wouldn't know, I was a whizz-kid (death death death to chip-ites)

Sorted out for chips and whizz

forever a Whizzkid!

The Spanish equivalent of "lefty loosey righty tighty" is "La derecha oprime, la izquierda libera" - "the right oppresses, the left liberates" (this may be a load of bollocks as it comes from some rando on the internet)