Yesterday I speculated that Lamers Bus Lines was the most disproportionately photographed, unintentionally insulting, bus line name on the Internet.
Apparently not. Several readers pointed out that, while a Flickr search for lamers bus returns 81 photographs, a search for fücker bus and fucker bus return a combined 84 photos not unlike these.
With Lamers, PUTA, Fücker, SCAT, and the SLUT, I’m beginning to wonder if something very fundamentally wrong with the way human society is choosing the names for its mass transit systems.
My grandfather lives near Sarasota and seeing the SCAT buses is funny. Oddly, though, “scat” doesn’t seem to be a very commonly used word, so I’m often explaining why SCAT buses are so funny.
while on the subject of SCAT, don’t forget about somerville community access television!
here in Switzerland, there’s a company called FART (see for example http://www.maggiore.ch/15/common_details.jsp?id=84130). I seriously think you’re onto something…
SCAT is also the name of the trolley that runs in Cocoa Beach, FL, my home town. Something to do with “Space Coast Area Transit”. So ridiculous. All the buses say Ride SCAT.
Boneheads… The Fuecker (this is the English spelling) busline is owned by a German family. Fuecker is their surname / family name. It was around LONG before the term you are referring to became a common part of American slang.
It’s not just owned by a German family, it’s in Germany where it’s not considered strange for reasons you point out.
That name also came over to the US with my mother’s family, and all of them fought the American habit of Anglicizing a name pronounced Fewker into a swear word by small minded English speakers. Some of the family have changed their last name, but most keep it and would, I think, gladly teach you how to pronounce the umlaut correctly.