Funny As

The guys at work find this video absolutely hilarious. I have to admit that I've lived here long enough to find it pretty damn funny as well.

It might be hard to understand back home. It might seem weird or even nonsense to someone who hasn't spent some real time here in NZ.

I thought I'd put it up on the blog to offer possible insights into either the Kiwi sense of humor, an example of how far I've integrated into Kiwi culture or both. The origins of the "as" expression is "sweet as" as far as I know. I believe this is from "that's sweet as anything" but shortened to simply "sweet as." I've heard "cool as" as well. It may be from blue collar British slang too, as I heard a tradesman fixing a door on the show "Peep Show" using "sweet as."

WARNING: Contains light profanity. It's the "S" word which is just at the edge between casual slang and profanity here. At school, the teachers might use words like "damn" and "hell" and even "crap" in front of the kids, but probably not the S-word. If one of them dropped something on their foot and said the S-word in front of their class it wouldn't be a big deal past a little tittering, I suspect.

Given a few more years the S-word will probably leap across the gap between casual slang and profanity and join "damn," "hell" and "crap" in the ranks of expletives that are discouraged but not necessarily unacceptable in public schools.

Joanne doesn't and wouldn't speak this way at school though. Our American sensibilities prevent us from being comfortable relaxing our language this way in public.