Monday, May 30, 2005

Anul Krap

When I was a kid, I had a habit of killing the long minutes that it took me to walk places - like, from school to home - by performing mental gymnastics with the names of streets, businesses, whatever.

Now, these weren't mental olympic gymnastics, or anything. Most of my amusement came from quite lame observations. For example, I might look at the "Emily's Bakery" sign and ponder anagrams that could be formed out of it ...  SLIMEY BAKERY! How amusing! Or I would look at a street called "Water St" and then walk a few blocks repeating incessantly in my childhood rain-man drawl "reTAW ... reTAW ... RE taw ... I live on reTAW street." Obviously this hobby wasn't particular easy or rewarding. Nonetheless, I still persist in doing it to some extent to this very day...

Which is why it amuses me so much that Luna Park could so naively have named their business as they did. They make my stupid little habit so easy! Now, not all of you are rain-men like me, so I'm going to make this one real obvious:

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It's one thing to choose a name that sounds funny backwards or provides an ironic commentary on the business. But how hard is it to pick from the 59 Million English words at your disposal, TWO that don't bring to mind defecation when read backwards? Anyway, I recently discovered the San Francisco health department's online restaurant health code violations, and it looks like Luna Park's name isn't the only dirty thing going for it. I'll stick to Puerto Alegre, with it's 100% no violations, and I can't think of any fecal jokes for its name...