Sizzlin' Citrus

Ok. Since enduring a lunchtime chat with co-workers about porn shops/personal porn preferences, etc,* I found this amusing entry on a website. Apparently, the censors of the Vietnam web world told a company to find another name for their grapefruit business.

I’ll just copy and paste it- cause you’ve got to read this:

Vietnam's internet authorities rejected a website for a grapefruit wholesaler this week over fears web surfers might think it was a sex site, an official said.
The attempt to register www.buoi.com.vn was turned down because without proper Vietnamese tone and vowel markings the word "buoi" (grapefruit) might be confused with "buoi" (penis), said Minh Ngoc, an officer at the Vietnam Internet Network Information Centre.

"It's very sensitive .. it could cause misunderstanding," Mr Ngoc said yesterday.

"In written Vietnamese, the two words are distinct, with the citrus fruit using a rising-falling tone, while the part of the male anatomy has different "u" and "o" and a falling tone."

However, in the western alphabet most commonly used for Vietnamese websites, the two words are indistinguishable.

Ok. So if a person is looking for a porn site, and accidentally find the Grapefruit Wholesaler's site, wouldn’t they just keep surfing?

I’d think that if a person were searching for a Grapefruit wholesaler, and accidentally stumbled upon the porn site, it’d be much worse.

So I offer you Kell’s Words To Live By, for February 10, 2006: “Find Quality Problems.”

*Honest – I’m not a prude, but I really *don’t* want to discuss porn with my co-workers. If perchance I am a prude, I’ve always been taught not to air my dirty laundry at work. I’m absolutely positive that discussing porn with co-workers constitutes dirty laundry. If I don't have to discuss porn with my co-workers ever again, I'm even okay with being a prude.