The B-Masters Cabal

Comment from Chad R.
Time: December 31, 2007, 9:10 am

Well, how is the year 2008? Is it everything we’re hoping for?

Comment from Matthew Fudge
Time: December 31, 2007, 12:01 pm

Man, I have another six hours of this stinking old year.

Comment from Ken Begg
Time: December 31, 2007, 1:43 pm

Since your country was founded by convicts, I’m not surprise the new year “steals” in a little earlier there.

Oi!

Comment from lyzard
Time: December 31, 2007, 3:46 pm

Watch it, seppo, or I’ll kick your arse!!

Comment from Matthew Fudge
Time: January 1, 2008, 4:06 am

and now I have a hangover and I’ve lost my mobile phone. Happy new year everyone.

Comment from The Rev. D.D.
Time: January 2, 2008, 7:54 am

What does “seppo” mean? I love learning slang from other languages.
That reminds me…now that I have a direct link to you, I need to find that list of “Aussie slang” I compiled from the “Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance” video game and bother you with it re: authenticity. I seem to recall it mostly being new and interesting ways of referring to gonads…
(If nothing else, I like that the late Trevor Goddard’s performance in the first MK movie was respected enough that they subtly changed Kano’s in-game appearance to look more like him, and gave him a definitive accent. Of course, before DA, his only vocalizations were yells and screams, so he could’ve been Australian all the time and I wouldn’t have known it.)

Happy New Year to everyone!

Comment from Ken Begg
Time: January 2, 2008, 8:40 am

That’s easy. Seppo was the fourth Marx Brother.

Comment from Matthew Fudge
Time: January 2, 2008, 8:58 am

Wiat Kano’s australian? Was he in neighbours?

Comment from PCachu
Time: January 2, 2008, 9:40 am

I thought Seppo was that thing Ulysses S. Grant was making in “The Day the Earth Froze”. Just a small one, of course. A “sampo” is short for a “sample seppo”. Or something.

Comment from The Rev. D.D.
Time: January 2, 2008, 11:06 am

Mr. Begg–I thought it was a brand of cigarette lighter.

M. Fudge–Like I said, they never really gave him a nationality until DA, when they pretty definitively made him an Australian. It seems obvious that it’s an homage to Mr. Goddard. And he certainly deserves one.

PCachu–Oddly enough, I first read it as “sampo” and wondered what the hell she was talking about. Then I realized it was “seppo.”
And then I still wondered what the hell she was talking about.
Those crazy foreign people and their crazy words! They’re totally tubular, bro-ham! For shizzle!

Comment from Blake Matthews
Time: January 2, 2008, 11:22 am

“They’re on the lifts and on the lorries and on the bandwizzas and all over the mulangagulachuck!”

Comment from lyzard
Time: January 2, 2008, 1:40 pm

“Seppo” isn’t the term I’d normally use; I was just being polite.

http://www.jabootu.com/views.htm

Comment from John Doe
Time: January 2, 2008, 6:00 pm

i believe “seppo” is short for septic tank, from the aussie rhyming slang for americans which goes something like ‘bloody yanks got a mouth like a septic tank’.

Comment from supersonic
Time: January 4, 2008, 9:42 am

I have been told that in Jolly Old, cockneys will grumble about United Statesians by going “bloody septics”, but as far as I know the “seppo” version is downundrical only. Assuming it exists at all. It’s possible that Lyz’s doubts on that point may simply mean that she is too much of a sheltered ladylike delicate flower to have been exposed to as full a range of abusive Ozic discourse as she assumes.

Rhyming slang is a fascinating subject to learn about… last time I studied somebody’s dictionary of currently active cockney slang, here’s what I ended up writing in my LJ:

It seems that certain authorities want to deprecate the popular idea that Eskimo (Inuit) languages have lots and lots of terms for snow. If we want to drop this as a factoid to draw comparisons against, I suggest replacing “snow” with “masturbation” and “Eskimos” with “the British”. I mean, they even use “wank spanner” as a slang term for hand.

Comment from The Rev. D.D.
Time: January 4, 2008, 4:20 pm

While I’m sure she’s once, twice, perhaps even three times a lady, considering her regular usage of more universal swear words in her reviews, I’m betting she’s got a pretty nice collection of local “color” going.

Comment from lyzard
Time: January 4, 2008, 4:52 pm

Well, yes, but it doesn’t necessarily travel, if you know what I mean. And then there’s the stuff that is actually more inocuous here than elsewhere. I once used the phrase “left me feeling like a shag on a rock” in a review, and then reconsidered on the grounds that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life explaining that’s not what it means here.

“Septic” is used here, although not all that commonly (most people prefer the classic simplicity of “Bloody Americans”). That JAG episode is the ONLY place I have ever heard “seppo”.

And while we can’t compete with “Eskimo” and “snow” - or perhaps even with “British” and “masturbation” - we are supposed to have more terms for “drunk” than anyone else.

Comment from The Rev. D.D.
Time: January 4, 2008, 9:58 pm

Even the Irish!? Wowzers.
*ponders his heritage*
Mom’s side probably has more terms to describe “sausage” than any other. Dad’s side is too mixed to really pick one. Either “masturbation” or “wine” and “cheese” I guess.
It may be a universal thing, but I feel like my culture’s slang doesn’t match up to other nations’. Great Britain’s and Australia’s in particular.

Comment from Matthew Fudge
Time: January 5, 2008, 9:15 am

God how I struggled to come up with some sentence written entirely in slang there, but I couldn’t…. not on a family site anyway.