To shed some light on both, Nova does not mean “doesn’t go” in spanish. Nova means the same thing in spanish as it does in english, a star the suddenly increases its output. You can say something “doesn’t go” in spanish by saying “no VA” with a strong accent on the VA, sorry I don’t know how to do the accents. But same as in english you would not refer to a non-working car is not-going, but rather not-working.
As for Colgate, it might in very stilted spanish spoken with an Argentinian accent mean “hang yourself”, but if you want to tell someone to hang themselves you would say “cuELgate” or more likely “aHORcate”, in this case both the pronunciation and the actual words are different. And AFAIK Colgate sell just great all over the spanish speaking world.
I used to live across the street from the Ticky-Poo Laundromat. Couple months ago, my friend down in Washinginton State (she used to live here) was surfing the 'net and ran across a picture of the place on one of those “wierd picture” sites.
It’s common for chemists in Ireland to be just called after the name of the propietor. I saw one owned by Enda Horan. Nice Irish name in big letters over the shop. Took a snap of it for the Swedish friends, as the shopfront to them seems to be advertising the towns “Only Whore”.
I always think of it as payless - don’t get paid. The factory must be a sweatshop. Or you don’t have to pay for the shoes. Payless shoes, you pay what they’re worth.
I remember seeing a liquor store called Belcher’s. And there was an art museum in Louisville, KY called the Speed Museum. My mother drove me and my sister up there once and we made numerous jokes about it (ie: "Speed…ha ha ha…do they give out free samples? Hey Mom, can we go see the Smack museum tomorrow?)
A diner I visited in Utah was advertising pies for sale and one of them was a Marionberry pie (Like the, er, uh, rather controversial mayor of Washington.) I was afraid to ask what was in it.
The ‘&’ is pretty small, so it looks like they are BM beans. True, beans WILL give you a bowel movement, but I don’t think people want to be reminded of that.
As for Kum-and-Go convenience stores, that’s nothing compared to Kum-and-Go’s old rival in my hometown —P & P. It stands for Provisions and Petrol, but they never posted that anywhere, so all you got was P&P. Everybody started calling it Piss and Poop, but at school we called it the Piss and Shit Gas Station. We all got in trouble for that.
Thankfully, P & P closed down last year, only to be replaced by Kwik-Star!!!. I never understood why they spelled Quick wrong. What the hell’s wrong with Quick Star? An issue for another thread: why do gas stations always use a K in place of Q?
When I was using the laundry room at a campsite in Scotland last year, my friend was rather tickled to see a Speed Queen washer. For him, it always conjures up images of recreational drug-using gay men.
I seem to recall Smack My Ass And Call Me Sally hot pepper sauce being advertised in a magazine some time ago. Always thought that was a cool name for a product, but not something a hostess would like to offer her guests during a sophisticated dinner party.