The Beautiful Islands of San Serriffe (2016)

https://realdougwilson.com/writing/san-serriffe

by Schiphol • 2 years ago

101 17 2 years ago

ggm• 2 years ago

The flong riots.. how well I recall this and my mother's hilarious laughter. I had to have much of the jokes explained to me.

rob74• 2 years ago

Nowadays I think most people (me included) would need to have "flong" explained to them - or to google it of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flong (funny that the Wikipedia article contains a reference to the Guardian hoax).

mannykannot• 2 years ago

"The San Serriffe hoax is ranked fifth in the top one hundred April Fool's Hoaxes by the Museum of Hoaxes." One should always be skeptical of an entity calling itself that, of course, but I look back rather wistfully to the days when #10 was an amusing hoax.

pvaldes• 2 years ago

What? Flong is not a word alluding to some dirt sexual practice? For Pica's sake, where is my old internet? This is inchcredibly dissapoint.

fuzzfactor• 2 years ago

Notice in the advertisement where it says "Costain is Changing the Face of San Serriffe", what they are actually adding is a serif, to both cases.

brudgers• 2 years ago

Donald Knuth offshores there.

ipython• 2 years ago

Unlike other offshore bank havens, this one is fully transparent: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html

bombcar• 2 years ago

Kind of surprised it wasn't mentioned; it's where I heard of San Serriffe first - I assume they use the Potrzebie there.

tokai• 2 years ago

Sounds like a place Etaoin Shrdlu would go.

graemep• 2 years ago

Loved this bit.

"the islands will accelerate at first gently and then more rapidly as they approach Sri Lanka. Simple calculations suggest that the island group will hit the coast of Sri Lanka at a velocity of 940 km an hour on January 3, 2011."

canistel• 2 years ago

Strangely, I have a feeling of deja vu, hearing of San Seriffe.

nathell• 2 years ago

See also San Escobar: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Escobar

With a delightfully detailed map (featuring San Serriffe as a neighbour!): https://www.polityka.pl/multimedia/_resource/res/20122854

And a writeup by said map’s author (google translated from Polish): https://jarekkubicki-wordpress-com.translate.goog/2018/01/12...

Optimal_Persona• 2 years ago

Hopefully their beaches are known for more than just their comic sands...

j-cheong• 2 years ago

lmao

shagie• 2 years ago

In my desire to have obscure flags of real and imaginary places as laptop stickers and backpack patches ... the flag of San Serriffe calls to me.

omnimus• 2 years ago

San Serriffe is also lovely niche bookstore in Amsterdam https://san-serriffe.com/ Safe to say named after this

The Beautiful Islands of San Serriffe (2016)

Related Stories