Joke Thread 4

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That isn't wrong, but the original that I posted, stated 'dessert his dessert in the desert, which a sharp-eyed Phil Pascoe picked up thus:


... desert his dessert in the desert.

‘Dessert’: (Double ‘s’): The sweet course eaten at the end of a meal.

"a dessert of chocolate mousse".

The two meanings of desert, but different pronunciations:

Arid land with usually sparse vegetation. especially: such land having a very warm climate and receiving less than 25 centimetres (10 inches) of sporadic rainfall annually. (Of which the two largest do not have any sand – only ice).
Geographically defined by lines known as 'isohyets' - lines drawn on a map connecting points having equal rainfall at a certain time or for a stated period, rather like 'isobars' which define differing barometricand pressures. (Hold that thought - it might pop up in a pub quiz).

World’s largest Deserts:

Antarctic Polar Desert: 14 million km² (5.4 million square miles).
Arctic Polar Desert: 13.7 million km² (5.3 million square miles).
Sahara Desert: 9.2 million km² (3.5 million square miles).
Arabian Desert: 2.3 million km² (800,000 square miles).
Gobi Desert: 1.295 million km² (500,000 square miles).

2) Desert – same spelling – different pronunciation: Meaning ‘to Abandon’. Lots of synonyms and colloquialisms. (Leave, give up, cast off, turn one's back on, betray, jilt, neglect, shun, leave high and dry, leave in the lurch, leave behind, leave stranded, maroon, relinquish, renounce, walk/run out on, rat on, drop, dump, ditch, give someone the push, give someone the’ big ‘E (elbow), bin off, renege on, repudiate, forswear, wash one's hands of, have no more truck with, have done with, abjure, disavow, recant, cast off/aside, shun, neglect, relinquish, renounce).

Just need to sit back now and wait for someone to chime in and ask 'What's this doing in a Joke Thread?', inferring that I've had my sense of humour surgically removed and could bore the boobs off a buffalo at 1,000 Metres. :cool:

Having spent some time living in the Middle East and in deserts/up mountains, a small but amusing factoid is that the Arabic for "desert" is "sahra" (in phonetic English), and that for "deserts" is "alsahari" or "sahara"!

Deserts are often full of life and, IMHO, indescribably beautiful.

One thing I learnt early on is that to the Bedu, what we call a "desert" (singular) is generally a contiguous series of deserts, each with its own characteristics - there are many types of sand and it's critically important to understand the nature of the ground you are traveling on, as well as what is ahead - as you travel, there can be very significant changes in every aspect of the sand beneath you - the size & shape of the grains, are they smooth/polished or sharp/gritty, how they bind (or not) together, how compact the ground is, how stable the cusp of a dune might be, the likely incline of a slope with respect to the prevailing wind, how the sand is layered, what's likely to be on the other side of a ridge etc. etc.

So, what we call "The Sahara Desert" is a bit of a misnomer - it's actually a large area of loads of smaller, very distinct, deserts and should just be called "The Sahara" (no extra "Desert" needed!); Wikipedia notes this correctly.

Below is a photo of my wife and "Stoffel", my heavily modified desert Jeep, in the Rub' al Khali, aka "The Empty Quarter", an area of 650,000 km2 or 250,000 square miles - the flat whitish area is a "sabkha", a dried out salt pan left over from when the whole area was beneath the sea and/or from groundwater that's seeped to the surface over centuries and evaporated.

The sand Stoffel is on is firm and compact; the dunes to the right are quite soft and the downwind side of the ridges, the surface of which is light, windblown small grains, would be very soft indeed. The sabkha is not safe to drive on except in the hight of summer - in winter the base can soften and a vehicle can break through the crust and get stuck - very tricky to get out of.


https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/threads/your-cars.126994/post-1414775
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I just found a half frozen tiny bird as I walked home, so I put it in my pocket to give it a chance of survival.
When I showed the wife, she told me how much she loved me for being so kind and sensitive, so I thought I'd try for a kiss & a cuddle as she was in a good mood !!

She said "No dear, not in front of the chilled wren".
 
Having spent some time living in the Middle East and in deserts/up mountains, a small but amusing factoid is that the Arabic for "desert" is "sahra" (in phonetic English), and that for "deserts" is "alsahari" or "sahara"!

Deserts are often full of life and, IMHO, indescribably beautiful.

One thing I learnt early on is that to the Bedu, what we call a "desert" (singular) is generally a contiguous series of deserts, each with its own characteristics - there are many types of sand and it's critically important to understand the nature of the ground you are traveling on, as well as what is ahead - as you travel, there can be very significant changes in every aspect of the sand beneath you - the size & shape of the grains, are they smooth/polished or sharp/gritty, how they bind (or not) together, how compact the ground is, how stable the cusp of a dune might be, the likely incline of a slope with respect to the prevailing wind, how the sand is layered, what's likely to be on the other side of a ridge etc. etc.

So, what we call "The Sahara Desert" is a bit of a misnomer - it's actually a large area of loads of smaller, very distinct, deserts and should just be called "The Sahara" (no extra "Desert" needed!); Wikipedia notes this correctly.

Below is a photo of my wife and "Stoffel", my heavily modified desert Jeep, in the Rub' al Khali, aka "The Empty Quarter", an area of 650,000 km2 or 250,000 square miles - the flat whitish area is a "sabkha", a dried out salt pan left over from when the whole area was beneath the sea and/or from groundwater that's seeped to the surface over centuries and evaporated.

The sand Stoffel is on is firm and compact; the dunes to the left are quite soft and the downwind side of the ridges, the surface of which is light, small grains, would be very soft indeed. The sabkha is not safe to drive on except in the hight of summer - in winter the base can soften and a vehicle can break through the crust and get stuck - very tricky to get out of.


https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/threads/your-cars.126994/post-1414775
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I spent a lot of my time as a child worrying about quicksand! I think comics at the time led you to believe it was a common way to die.
 
I spent a lot of my time as a child worrying about quicksand! I think comics at the time led you to believe it was a common way to die.
I thought that was just me, especially after seeing Lawrence of Arabia!
 
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