A friend sent this cartoon to me on WhatsApp. I responded with a link to my latest blog post. He responded saying that he reads all my posts as he subscribes to them and gets email alerts. I tried again and said, “The cartoon refers.” He still could not get it! He responded with “What cartoon?”
I finally had to explain that I sent him the link to my post in response to the cartoon of the spider inviting the fly into his website!
He finally got the joke and confessed to being a tubelight! (Tubelight is a term used here to refer to someone slow on the uptake. A tubelight, unlike other bulbs takes some time to light up when switched on.)
I love the cartoon—we are ALL spiders, constantly conspiring to lure those innocent flies to our website! I also like Tubelight, can I borrow it? I’ll use it judiciously, I promise!
Feel free to Diane! It is so expressive is it not?
Rummy,
lol I will share a secret: as a blogging spider I like a good challenge so I insist upon alluring not flies but wasps (I have great fun dodging them too) lol 😉
Cheers
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I would rather be a wasp any day anyway!
We don’t have the term tubelight in the UK. The nearest equivalent would probably be birdbrain, though that doesn’t exactly mean slow on the uptake, just generally dim-witted. In any case, birds are quite intelligent in their own way.
Slow on the uptake is used here too but in more refined circles! Tubelight is more the hoi polloi usage.
Tubelight is a great term and I want to use it but without the cultural context I would probably have to do a lot of explaining.
Who knows? You may well start off a meme which takes your neighbourhood by storm!
“dipstick” is the word here in New Zealand… or if you want a “bit slow on the uptake” … or there was a further failing “he/she’s a bit dopey” and then I think a blond bimbo might also be trailing along in to it all…
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Dipstick is common in the UK too. It was used constantly in the old TV sitcom “Only Fools and Horses”.
We use dipstick to describe a foolish person. Slow on the uptake is used quite often too.