Paranoid Piggies, Redux

Over on my Facebook page, one of my friends responded to my Justifiably Paranoid Pigs post with this comment:

For the record, to my knowledge, we do not have that bacon wrapped donut anywhere in Canada. That's something the crazy Americans have thought up. There is a fine line between American food, and Canadian food. If you wanna see bacon, head to the states, where everything comes with a side order of grease.

While I do agree for the most part (as much as I can, given I've only been in the States once, for two months, and spent most of that time on a Girl Scout camp where we were fed all manner of turkey product), I suspect that the Canadians don't realise just how much the USicans have infiltrated their cuisine, as I spotted this little gem at a local town fair over the weekend:

Sweet, sweet piggy.

Aussie Etymology

Words fascinate me, and it worries me that a lot of the old Australianisms are dying out in the face of television and other media. I remember my Mum and Dad saying to me, "It's Zed, not Zee!" when I was watching Sesame Street, and "Don't use contractions, it makes you sound like a Yank*!"

Of course, I use contractions all the time now, but there are words that Australians know and use that the rest of the world just don't get (except perhaps the Brits, who we may had nicked some of them from), and I believe these should be celebrated. In fact, I named this blog after two of the more colourful sayings, "Don't come the raw prawn with me" and "Mad as a cut snake", but I'll explain those in time.

With no further ado, here's a quick glossary of some of the terms you may read (or more pointedly, not read) in this blog.

Raw Prawn - from "Don't come the raw prawn with me". It means, "don't try to fool me (I know what you're up to)". Apparently it was from World War One, where raw prawns were substituted for cooked ones as pranks. I chose this as part of my blog title as I didn't want to be bamboozled by North Americans. I'm on to you guys, and I'm chronicling it here.  ;-)

Cut Snakes - from "Mad as a cut snake". It means, "Insane, mental". When a snake's head is cut off, it can thrash around uncontrollably, like it had gone insane. I chose it as the second part of this blog title as, well, sometimes you North Americans seem a bit mental to we poor reserved Aussies.

Root - also "rooted", "rooting". It means "to have sex" or "the sexual act". So when you Northerners talk about "rooting for your team" or (for WoW players) "I just rooted him so he didn't move!", please excuse the smirks on the Aussies' faces. We're trying to quash the Debbie Does Dallas style images that just popped into our heads. The brand name of "Roots Canada" just makes us feel really tired, or like we want to cross our legs.

Note to Aussies - this is not a brothel.

Fanny - means "vagina". Sorry North Americans, particularly USicans, but when you talk about "fanny packs", most Aussies near you will laugh, as was witnessed 13 years ago at a certain Girl Scout Camp in Ohio where one Aussie counsellor was trying to find the fanny pack of their campsite over their walkie talkie and had both themselves and the two other Aussies on camp gasping in hysterical laughter. Of course, we call them "bum bags". "Fanny pack" sounds like some kind of feminine hygiene product.  For those ultra ultra heavy days!

Norgs - also "Naugs", "Nawgs" and "Norcs". It means "breasts". So, North American girlies, if some Bogan tells you to get your norgs out, you have my permission to either hit them or stalk off. Or get them out if you like the person. I've included this because of a conversation on Twitter where a US lassie was left a bit confused by an Aussie's reference to "norgs". That conversation was also the catalyst for this post. Apparently this term derived from an advertisement for Norcan Milk back in the 1950s, which had a cow with a rather large udder featured as its focal point.

Bloke - a man. Sometimes it means a particularly Australian man, exhibiting many of the stereotypes, but usually just to reference an adult of the male gender.

Shiela - a woman. This term is the female equivalent of bloke, but is falling out of favour now as it can also be a fairly derogatory term for an uncooth woman.

Bogan - I mostly addressed this in my last post, but these are essentially the equivalent of Rednecks or Chavs.

Berk - silly person, idiot. This one is probably derived from Burke of Burke and Wills fame - a pair of well known explorers who went up north trying to find the Gulf of Carpentaria, then got lost on the way back and didn't pay heed to how the natives prepared their seeds for eating. The poison in them nullified Vitamin B1, so the explorers contracted beriberi and died. Only one of their entire party made it back to Melbourne.

Dag - see berk. A dag is also the piece of faecal material stuck on the behind of a sheep; one of the worst jobs in a shearing shed was to be the dag man, or, the one left clipping off the dried lumps from the sheeps' bums. I have it on good authority that the phrase "To shake one's dags" means to leave - ie, the last thing they'll see of you is your bum, and they'll see your (metaphorical, hopefully!) dags shaking as you go.

Nicked - stolen. It can also mean "arrested by the police". It can be used in the forms of "nick off" (go away) or "get nicked" (a more vehement go away).

Divvy Van - Most famous for the chant of, "You're going home in the back of a divvy van! (clap, clap, clapclapclap, clapclapclapclap, clapclap)", it's a police transport vehicle most identified with taking drunks to the local police station for the night. It's short for "Divisional Van".

Thong - other places in the world seem to call these "flip-flops", and are a kind of strapless sandal. Thongs are for wearing on your feet in Australia, not up your bum crack. Those very thin panties are called "G-strings".

If there's any I've missed, or anything you are curious about or would like defined, just leave a message in the comments and I'll make another post another time.

* My apologies to my Southerner readership, but my parents were older people who lived (and fought, in my Dad's case) through World War II. All the American GIs were refered to as Yanks, no matter where they came from. This has tended to stick in the Aussie consciousness, not to mention my own. One day I might even post about the rhyming slang that made "Yank" even worse.

Ugg!

Where I come from, Ugg boots are considered gauche by many. "Uggies" and "moccas/moccies" (that's "mocassins" to those of you who don't read Aussie Short Form) are often associated with a particular kind of Western Suburbs denizen, the Bogan. Also known as the Westie, the Bogan is considered rough around the edges, and the worst of the working class. Stereotypically they are known for being unemployed, is usually uneducated, hard drinking, sometimes drug addled, have high rates of single motherhood and are given to spates of violence. I think that to the English the term for these people would be "Chav". The closest term I can find for a North American to best understand would be "Redneck".

Their winter dress code consists of a t-shirt (often AC/DC or some heavy metal band) with a flannelette shirt thrown over the top of it, incredibly distressed jeans (often skin tight) or "trakky dacks" (tracksuit/sweat pants), and as I noted above, the Uggs - sheepskin cuff turned down and showing over your pants, of course!

There's something about Uggs that make one who is trying to escape the stereotypes of the West cringe. They're so quintessentially low class that despite their quality construction and beautiful materials, they are just to be avoided at all costs unless you want to be considered One Of Them. The boots themselves are rather big and clunky, and even in the context of a typical Melbourne winter, bloody stupid to wear unless you like walking in pools of your own sweat.

I was a young thing when I swore I would never buy a pair of Uggs. I was, like all my family, encouraged to aspire to more than we were, and to never, ever dress like a slob. Well, I may not have achieved that last goal, but at least I never wore Uggies while I lived in Australia.

That being said, I know you're now waiting for the other boot to drop (see what I did there?).

We were at Kingsford Smith Airport in Sydney, waiting for our connecting flight to Vancouver. I was feeling nostalgic because I was going to be leaving the country of my birth; for all intents and purposes, forever. Everything was seen through this weird glow (dressing for the wintery country you're going to whilst in the summery country you're about to leave will make the blood pressure rise), and you may understand that I was more than a little teary.

In this haze I set eyes on the Merino store in the Duty Free shopping area.

I haven't mentioned before how much I love sheep. Not in the Kiwi way, of course, but there's something so very Australian about seeing sheep on a hillside or in a paddock that it often makes me smile or declare, "Sheepies!" while flailing like a dickhead at said flock. It's a good thing that I married a bloke who feels the same way, as this tendancy of mine to gesticulate wildly at random animals might have been a deal breaker.

So here I was, teary, hazy and not entirely wanting to leave, and before me looms the Merino store. Out the front there was a massive display of the dreaded Uggs.

"Hey, it's cold in Canada" the little voice in the back of my head whispers. "Reeeeeeally cold in Canada. And you want a bit of Australia to take with you, right? Why not a lovely warm pair of Ugg boots, made in Australia with real Australian sheepskin?"

"But Uggs?" I counter, feeling the cringe. "I'm not a Bogan!"

"Bah!" says the voice in my head. "You don't have to buy a tan pair; look, they come in black! Also, don't fold the cuff down, and you can wear them beneath your pants! No one will ever be the wiser!"

I walked out of that store with my first ever pair of Uggies. However, I made the Husband carry them, coz there's still a certain standard to uphold, you know?

I have to say, though, that here in snowy Canada my Uggs have been a godsend. Here, away from the sun blasted streets of West Melbourne, Uggs make sense. They belong here. They make walking through snow drifts (and even sinking kneedeep into same) so much easier. In them my toes are snug and warm, and I am much less prone to slipping over on ninja ice patches as I am when wearing regular shoes.

But I still won't turn the cuff down. And I'm not wearing them over my pants. There are certain standards to uphold, you know?

Footing the Footy.

So tonight in North America there was some big football game on or something; this attracted about as much attention from me as the Grand Final did when I lived back in Victoria. In commemoration (or perhaps in distraction) I played a new World of Warcraft alt (dwarf enhancement shamans, represent! \o/) and watched geeky stuff on TV. Star Trek movie marathon? Make it so!

Sport isn't my thing, but it amazes me the different permutations of activities the word "football" gets added to. So here it is, an Outsider's View of Footy.

Aussie Rules: A bunch of guys get together and jump on one another's heads, trying to kick a vaguely elliptical ball through four sticks at opposing ends of a grassy oval. Blood flies, balls bounce and much skin is shown, whether it's intentional or not. Teams are often, but not always, named after animals, and it seems that those who play this game have knee reconstructions incredibly early in their lives. No running with the ball unless you're bouncing it, and this is the game with high flying marks and kicks.

Rugby League/Union: I wish I knew. I don't even know the difference between the two codes. These forms of the game are popular further north than I come from - well, apart from the Melbourne Storm - but I know little about them save that they are allowed to carry the ball at times, there's a lot of bum sniffing going on, and not as much jumping around as in Aussie Rules. The teams pack together in tight "scrums", pushing and shoving each other until someone can manage to flick the ball out from under the dogpile and get it moving toward the big "H" at either end of the field. Lots of blood, lots of grunting and the ball seems to be a tad fatter than that of Aussie Rules.

Gridiron: I'm still working this one out, though of course images of it have been disseminated to we lowly Aussies for years through TV and various other media. It seems vaguely similar to what I know of rugby, though with less bum sniffing (but more dogpiling) and more armour (probably because of said dogpiling), with "yard lines" they need to get the ball past to ultimately get a "touchdown". The sheer amounts of padding and helmetting worn by these guys tells me this has to be a very physical game, but I have no idea as not much of the players actually shows. Their "oval" is actually a rectangle, so they don't call it an oval at all. There's a lot of pushing and shoving going on in it, and a whole lot of grunting. These guys can pick up the ball, as long as they can push their way through the flying bodies of tackling others to get to the goal line.

Soccer/English Football: I'm going to be killed for this, but I can't tell if there's any difference between soccer and English football at all. No hand holding at all, it's all fancy footwork, and their goals are big nets. The ball is round and it doesn't seem to matter where the ball gets handled, as long as it's not by a hand. Heads, feet, knees, chests - anything goes in the wacky world of Soccer.

So there you go. I'm so dead, aren't I?

Dudley Dundee

Australians don't tend to be a flashy mob. Though we are, like most of the Western world, influenced by the all-pervasiveness of the US, we still retain a certain reserve as a national characteristic. "Pull yer head in" is a common saying amongst the Aussies, usually addressed at someone thought to be "crowing". Braggarts and "those who blow their own horns" are generally looked down upon by Aussies.

Ours is an understated culture. We have a wry, self-effacing and rather earthy humour, and one that I know can either rub others up the wrong way or be completely missed as attempts at joking at all. We aren't known for our passion, though we are known for our generosity. Aussies are a giving people, but we don't tend to like having attention drawn to it. Those who do are derided as being having big heads that need deflating.

On the other hand, Canadians have a reputation for being polite to a fault. The character of Dudley Do-right is as iconic to them as Crocodile Dundee is to Australians, giving the impression that Canadians are uptight and polite, honest to a fault and are incredibly naive to the point of idiocy.

  Dudley Do-right and associated characters © Jay Ward Productions

If you believe this is the absolute truth for every single Canadian, Aussies, then go back to your buffalo hypnotising and brandishing your big knives around.

 Crocodile Dundee ©1986 Paramount Pictures.

Back home we often wondered how our fellow Colonials deal with their louder downstairs neighbours. Do they try to ignore them, or do they sigh, turn up their own music and join the party?

It's hard for the Canadians not to be affected by their proximity to the US. Here in Southern Ontario, people travel across the border into the US as a matter of course, some to work, others to shop or holiday. Historically the closest states to here were also British colonies before the War of Independence, so the foundation peoples of both countries were similar types.

Compared to Australian understated tastes, even the Canadians like things bigger and brighter. This isn't to say that Australians don't want big things and the newest toys, but things that many Canadians take for granted are technologies that were things which made me gawp like some kind of yokel when I got here. Houses I would have considered large are called small by those who live in them, and in living here I finally understand why the Husband considered my house back in Australia so tiny.

All that being said, Canadians are friendly and close enough to Australians for me to be comfortable amongst them. And while I may be mistaken for having a British accent by them, at least I haven't yet been asked what language we speak in Australia, unlike when I worked at a Girl Scout camp in Ohio 13 years ago...