A New Zealand brewery, Tui (named after an iconic native bird), is famous for posting tongue-in-cheek orange billboards alongside our highways. A coy statement on the lefthand side (eg. "Australians and New Zealanders are just the same, really") is countered by a bold YEAH, RIGHT, on the righthand side.
Well, last night we passed a new one. On the LH side it read, "Planking will never become a craze."
Yeah, right.
The USA has the Rapture, and in Australia and New Zealand we have planking.
What is planking, you ask? It's a competitive fad where people lie down in odd places and pretend to be a plank of wood, and people photograph them with their cellphones and then post the pix on social networking sites.
It became notorious when Acton Beale, 20, plunged to his death while planking on the rail of a seventh floor balcony in Brisbane.
Now pupils are suspended from school, and supermarket workers are fired because they are indulging in the fad.
People, truly, are bizarre. But at least it adds new words (or new meanings for old words) to the English language.
4 comments:
I mentioned planking to my sons. The 14 year old said, "yeah, its cool." The 18 year old opined that it was "really dumb."
On the other hand I thought rugby was a spoof for years.
Right now, rugby union is definitely a spoof. The Wellywood sign (to publize the 2011 Rugby World Cup) is just one of the symptoms.
Interesting what a difference four years can make (where sons are concerned)!
I thought it was going to be like, "walking the plank." Glad you brought me up to speed.
Join the club! When I first started reading mysterious references to planking in the papers here, I automatically thought piratically and that walking the plank was involved. And CONGRATULATIONS on the publication of SURGEON'S MATE, Linda. I look forward to reading it when it gets to NZ. You will be glad to know that our local library system has three copies of STAR CROSSED!
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