i listened to so much Car Talk as a kid that to this day, if you say "dimly lit," i 100% expect the next two words to be "quonset hut"
@gardevoir what the fuck does quonset hut mean
-F
@Felthry it's one of those metal half-cylinder structures from the 1940s
(it was brought up in the context of a puzzler with a framing story set during the 1940s; they loved this particular turn of phrase so much that they'd bring it out in unrelated situations for *years* afterward)
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@gardevoir huh. we have never heard of nor seen one of those
-F
@Felthry @gardevoir Oh, they used to be very common things where you needed a temporary but durable building. The classic Quonset Hut was built in enormous quantities during World War II and surplus buildings went all over the place afterwards.
If you've ever seen a boring 1950s movie about a giant monster unfrozen by radiation in a remote location that goes on to attack New York and get killed? The scenes where the scientist types and the army types argue about whether it's even possible that a preying mantis (or whatever) could grow to 200 feet tall and be a threat to civilization was set in a Quonset hut.
('Quonset' is the Rhode Island town where they got their first serious use.)