Don’t Open the Lid!

By JoCo December 22, 2005

I cannot avoid sharing this will all of you. Mark sends me this link via here. Come on Ikea, maybe you want to run it by an English speaker before you put it in the US catalog? And not for nothing, but what the hell kind of piece of furniture is that?

Comments

paul says

having followed that link i look forward to the re-write of your song.

hugh says

Word of advice: Don't make fun of the Norsemen's language. Unless of course you like having your town pillaged and burned. Some things are simply not done. Taunting superheroes in tights is another example.

Glenn says

I think there was a discussion of this quirk of language on a thread I saw recently (linked from here?)

Also, have a gibbering cephalopodmas! (I wanted to link to I Crush Everything for a carol, but I refrained from linking to the song (and no lyrics page), and linked to the songs page.

Mats says

I will slay your women, rape your towns and burn your goats for tauntng our language you dirty amerikan. ;)
The name "Fartfull" mens something like Speedy.

Med vänliga hälsningar/
Mats (Swedish dumbass with long blond hair and beard wielding my Ax of DOOOOOM)

Jeff says

Well at least it wipes clean with a damp cloth.

JoCo says

Egads, who knew Swedes were so quick to anger? Mats: does that mean that in Sweden the cartoon character Speedy Gonzales is named "Fartfull Gonzales?" If so, that's awesome.

Mats says

Not realy he is named Speedy Gonzles here to.

And i sacrificed a pig in your Honnor this Midwinter blooding ritual (allso caled X-mas). ;)

Molnies says

LOL!
Man those guys at IKEA never stops to amaze me =D
I'm from Sweden myself, and yeah it means something like Speedy. This isn't the first dumb name they came up with. Last year I heard about another piece that they had named Beslut (which in Swedish means "decision") but many Americans read it as Be Slut xD

Fredrik aka Molnies

Delysid says

Actually this is an example of how far ahead the Europeans are in the field of sustainable energy technology. This unit is a self-powered computer workstation. Inside the seat chamber is a highly efficient methane-powered electrical generator. You merely follow the super-healthy cancer-fighting high-fibre high-protein vegetarian diet outlined in the user manual, consisting largely of various bean and cabbage dishes, and within a day or two your digestive system will be primed so that you can sit down on the Fartfull and power a low-energy-consuming computer, the Tootkalc, also available from Ikea, for several hours.

Michael says

"does that mean that in Sweden the cartoon character Speedy Gonzales is named 'Fartfull Gonzales?'”

Now *there's* jet propulsion for you.

Michael says

What interested me also was that Ikea calls the piece a "work bench." Ah, the significance of idiom: yes, we'd call it a "workstation," and we put "workbench" in another context (footnote: cross-reference "Shop Vac"), but ... when you think about it ...