If You Visit Venezuela, Please Bring Us Back A Penisphone
That rascal Hugo Chavez! First he uses a photo op with President Obama to hawk his new a book, and now he's on Venezuelan TV urging his citizens to buy a new Vergatario cellphone. For those not up on Spanish slang, that's equivalent to buying a Dickarama here in the states.
From the Guardian:
Why the president chose [that name] remains unclear, but he enunciates each syllable with a grin. Some laugh, others are affronted.
Verga is slang for penis and vergatario is a newly minted word which signifies excellent but retains connotations from its root.
[...]
Chavez turned a segment of his weekly TV show into a promotion. "Has your Vergatorio arrived?" he asked his mother. "This is the first call I've made with my Vergatorio."
Because the government is subsidizing the manufacturing cost, the Vergatorio is very affordable. Expect to see a Vergatorio next to pretty much every Venezuelan's mouth once they hit the market.
"Chavez launches $15 mobile phone with a name to make his mother blush" [Guardian]
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Comments:
I would be buying that phone ASAP and waving it around everywhere I go, because clearly, I am 10.
At first, I thought the phone resembled a penis.
This reminds me of the time the guys at work taught me "Give me your wallet" in Spanish to tell the guy who waxed our stores floor. It wasn't "Give me your wallet".
An oppressive dictator handing out cell phones. I'd watch what you say on that phone!
I'm interested to see what it looks like. The article didn't have any photos. If it's a decent looking quadband GSM phone, I'd be interested in having one...
[nerdapproved.com] ?
@PartOfIMAXConspiracy_GitEmSteveDave: "¿Chupa me verga?" by any chance?
(quad-lingual in filthy things to say)
The satellite-phone version comes with a handy leather belt to help strap it on.
Is Chavez the president, or a multi-level marketer?
Definitely a new way to 'reach out and touch someone.'
Oh, I almost forgot...when you set it to silent mode, does it get limp or just vibrate?
@Trai_Dep: IIRC, it was "Pinga". The worst time was when they said they would pay me $20 if I got him to give me his wallet, so I offered him $10 as I said it to try and get him to give me his wallet. Yeah, I'm being 100% honest. That exchange is what led to them telling me what i was really saying, and our waxer almost falling over laughing.
@PartOfIMAXConspiracy_GitEmSteveDave: My middle school friends - parish kids no less* - managed to keep straight faces long enough to convince me that maricon was Spanish for (White) American. Hey, it had a certain logic...
I was already taking Spanish, so I merrily tested out, "Yo soy maricon!" to many, many, many Hispanic classmates until, days later, my Spanish teacher gently, laughingly corrected me.
Well, it made getting conversation in the urinal stalls of the Boys Rooms more interesting. And animated!
* Don't let the starched shirts, ties and navy uniforms fool you: FAR more evil than their public-school brethren.
"For those not up on Spanish slang, that's equivalent to buying a Dickarama here in the states."
The word "verga" in Spanish is actually pretty vulgar. I would say the equivalent would be "cock" in English. So "cock-phone" would be more (in)appropriate.
@Saisu Mimen: Yeah, but powering up the Cock-Signal to light up Gotham City's skyline is one step too far.
It's going to made with parts imported from China & assembled in Venezuela.
It will work about as well as the nationalized oil company in Venezuela, which is near collapse due to Hugo's hatred of the US & its experts in oil production.
Okay first off ... he did not promote his book ... if you read the news or at least paid attention to it, you would have known that the book is Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent written by Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano in 1971.
Secondly, if you knew Spanish, you would understand and comprehend that the root word verga in this context is slang, not for penis (although that is one of its synonyms) but for "ass" in the context of "that kicks ass" or it is a "kick ass phone." That would be an English equivalent and by no means do I imply that, that is what it means literally. It should be more of a foundation so that non-spanish speakers understand that when one claims to "kick ass" that it is not literal.
@HiPwr: dic⋅ta⋅tor /ˈdɪkteɪtər, dɪkˈteɪtər/ -noun
1. a person exercising absolute power, esp. a ruler who has absolute, unrestricted control in a government without hereditary succession.
Think what you want about the guy, but he was democratically elected and works alongside a Congress.
@Trai_Dep: Actually, I offered $10 in hopes to get the $20. It was a guaranteed doubling of my money, in my mind. Otherwise I would never have tried the cash. As for "Yo Soy":
the picture makes it look so... small!
(sorry, i had to make a size joke, nobody else had)
My Penisphone is smaller than your Penisphone.
This reminds me of Aqua Teen Hunger Forces "Dickesode", they would be the only thing on TV that I would believe a penis phone would be in.
WTF...not that I don't know what a penis looks like, but what kind of journalist would write a story about a unique phone, and not show a picture of it, or at least put a link in?
This actually makes a lot of sense. It costs a lot of money to lay cable and all the boxes and utility sheds. In Poland I had family that had cell phones before landlines simply because when the apartment buildings were built it made sense to only run cable to every other building or so since phones were such a luxury. Then the infrastructure was never improved for 50 or so years. My godfather lucked-out since he lived near train tracks and accidentally dug-up a WWII German telegraph line while planting trees and it happened to go by a train station with a phone box so he had a phone since '90 or so. My other family either never bothered to get a land line or got it 2002-2006.
@Saisu Mimen: That word ("verga") is indeed a very vulgar word mostly in Mexico, the rest of latin america and other spanish speaking countries have their own word for this appendage.
"Verga": the tallest mast on a ship...
@David Ortez: sorry to shoot down your linguistic pretenses, but verga means literally penis. Its used in the context of awesomeness by some, but by no means loose the penis connotation that derives from its actual linguistic root. So basically saying im a verga means im a dick which in spanish translates to Im awesome, regardless its not considered polite speech.
![[nerdapproved.com]](http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/the_boner_phone.jpg){kind=link}
Must...suppress...inner...middleschooler...
I'm so glad I do not live there. I fear I would be unable to resist the siren song of a phone named after a wiener. I'd have to go to one of those stores that carry bachelorette party supplies (all inexplicably themed with dicks) and decorate to match.
HAY GUISE LOOK AT MY PENISPHONE LOLZ.