Oh dear, the luvvies are having head spins again because our Royal Family are such a racist bunch.
"Phwar!" is all I can say.
But who is "Luke", you ask?
When I was a chocko, we had a Vietnamese fellow in our regiment. He was immediately christened Luke, as in "Luke the gook"; Luke the gook being a general description for our enemies as we refought the Vietnam War in the West Australian bush (in 1986).
I don't recall anyone ever getting their knickers in a twist about that. Then again, we used to be fairly upfront about the nicknames that we gave to people.
We had a bloke at school we called "poof", because he was a poof.
We had a bloke we called chocko, because he was a dark chocolate colour. As a joke, that was later changed to "chalker", as in chalky white, because he was anything but pale.
We had a bloke called spoonface, because he was missing the gristle in his nose, making it completely flat. His face was not spoon shaped, but being boys, we couldn't resist insisting that his face was concave.
A bloke I rowed with had an eye tic of some sort where his eyes constantly flicked back and forth from side to side. We called him Cylon, as in Battlestar Gallactica (the original) where the Cylons had a red light that went from side to side in their eye slit.
Another bloke had been hit by a car as a small kid and dragged down the road face first. Nerve damage meant that half his face was frozen forever. We sometimes called him Mumbles, because he could only talk out of one side of his mouth.
A bloke who was going bald at 15 was called Badger, as in "bald as a badger".
A kid with buck teeth was called Rabbit.
A bloke by the name of Russel, who had a lisp, was called "Ruthel".
A bloke who bore an uncanny resemblance to Herman Munster was of course called Herman, or "Herman-head", or "box head" - because his head was literally quite square like a box.
A few years back, a mate had lots of skin peels to remove cancerous skin from his face. We of course immediately called him "face off", after the John Woo movie.
Our school captain was called "keg-o-leg", because he rooted a girl with enormous thighs.
I could go on for hours, but you get the drift.
Our friends all got a nickname, and getting one meant acceptance into the tribe. The most awful thing that could happen was to be nameless - an outsider, an alien, a foreigner, an intruder, the odd one out, and worst of all; a stranger. You only did that to your enemies.
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I forgot "nurries", because his balls had failed to drop.
"Three balls", because he allegedly had three testicles.
One of the best was the kid who was caught wanking - he became "Feed 'em up" or the extended version was "feed 'em up ducks", due to the hand movement you make when you throw grain to ducks or chooks. Calling him "feed 'em up" was always accompanied by some visual "throwing of the grain", and you had to say it in your best farmer's voice. Like the way farmers call pigs, or call chooks.
9 comments:
Exactly my thoughts when I read the tosh on Newser.
signed
Special K
In my experience "Gook" was never used by Australians. The term in general use was "Noggie".
This was 1986 or 87. I guess the language had moved on. Thanks to American movies, many words had entered the army lexicon by then.
Forgot the fat kid we called "piggie".
Gook was commonly used in the Army in the 70's. One of our classmates from Singapore was called Gook by all and sundry. Also popular was to refer to Chinese and Vietnamese people as "Slopes" (note that their foreheads are designed to deflect anti-armour projectiles).
Nicknames are a distinctive part of Aussie culture. Anyone attempting to prevent the use of nicknames in Australia should be jailed as a cultural terrorist.
And of course a badger isn't bald, but its arse is.
When I was a kid, my hair was always so out of control I was nicknamed "Medusa".
and who can forget the beautiful logic invoved in scooby, the brother of spock. Spock had wonderful eyebrows, but scooby did not, so we thought perhaps his ears represented his races features, which somehow got bastardized to "over ear" or in scooby languarge ( in the best scooby voice) "over here"
cacker (the baby rock lobster)
I just had dinner with Spoof, Chook (original expression in 1977 was "ugly as a chook's bum") and Filthy Phil.
We had nicknames that were animal, vegetable and mineral. My rowing crew alone had a horse, a sheep, a spider and an occasional rock lobster. We also had a plank (for the 4x2 between his legs), a spud, feeble, grandpa and many, many others.
Not to be forgotten was a bloodnut called FOT, for "fucking orange thing", or "fucking orange top".
Ubique. Un-pc joke doing the rounds after Tiananmen Square.
Q: Why do chinese tanks have handbrakes?
A: So they can park on slopes.
I told you it was Un-PC.
Kae - good one, I'll be using it!
Italian tanks of course are also special having nine reverse gears and one forward gear (the latter in case the enemy attacks from the rear).
Cheers.
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