Weight, snafu

[Kristian PEDERSEN]

Don Rosa wrote (about Donald's weight of 23 kg):
I just made it up myself on the spot for that calculation. I don't recall
how I came up with it, but I probably simply guessed at what a person would
weigh if he was only about 3.5 feet tall... or, say, about waist tall to a
6 ft. adult. But since I am not very experienced with metric weights, I
can't vouch for how well I guessed.

-- I recall a Barks onepager in which Scrooge uses a coin-operated weight.
The Danish version gave his weight as 10 kg, I don't know about the
original.

> Another favorite is "Great
> howling crashwagons!" I don't even know what a "crashwagon" is, but one
> that is great and is howling sounds *really* scary!
> 
M. Mitchell Marmel replied:
> Aviation generic term for any airport vehicle (fire truck, ambulance, 
> etc.) meant for dealing with what was once called a 'crash' but is 
> now called an 'incident'.  However, 'Great howling incidentwagons' 
> just doesn't have the same je ne sais quoi... :D
> 
-- No, it sure doesn't :)

Another term I discovered via Barks was "snafu", which my dictionary told me
was military slang for "situation normal, all fouled up". I was surprised to
see that expression in a Disney comic, as "fouled" in that context seemed
very much like a euphemism for an altogether ruder word (I think it was in
one of Barks' later stories that I saw it). How could the editors let
"snafu" pass, but in another instance ask him to replace "Shut up!" with "Be
quiet!". Was the expression that common?

Aha - I just did an internet search, which turned up an interesting entry in
Donald Markstein's Toonopedia: "Private Snafu"
(http://www.toonopedia.com/snafu.htm).

Kristian