[ADS-L] dot-calm

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

I don't think this requires any deep or complicated explanation. Advertising 
agencies use cutesy puns all the time, and the puns do not require homophony. 
Indeed, that would to some effect ruin the effect.

The spelling of "harbor" as "harbour" in real estate names is not anything 
particularly new or exciting.


In a message dated 12/31/06 2:25:33 PM, db.list at PMPKN.NET writes:


> Driving back to Central Florida from visiting family in Maryland for
> Xmas, i saw a couple billboards on I-95 in Georgia advertising a
> residential community in, as i discovered from looking at the website,
> St. Mary's, Georgia (which is in extreme southeastern Georgia). The most
> noticeable text on the billboards read
> 
>     cumberlandharbour.calm
> 
> with "calm" written in a different, more flowing script that the rest of
> the sign.
> 
> Well, what caught my mind about this, aside from the gratuitous "u" in
> the word "harbour",[1] was that it looked like a web address, but i
> wouldn't expect there's be a .calm top-level domain.
> 
> About a half-second later, i realized that it was a play on .calm=.com.
> However, i don't have the cot-caught merger,[2] so it was initially
> opaque to me.
> 
> Anyway--while recognizing that there is a large military population in
> that area, which presumably means there are a number of people with the
> cot-caught merger for whom this would be a transparent play on words, i
> wouldn't have expected that area to have this merger. Anyone know if
> this advertisement reflects some sort of cot-caught merger incursion
> into the South, or if it's just some LA (or wherever) ad agency being
> clueless about what would work for a particular location?
> 

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