Warning! To those of you contemplating a vacation in Iceland and who are thinking of bringing your laptops with you.
According to the European statistics reports, Iceland is one of the most advanced countries in terms of number of internet users. 95-98% of the country’s population has the access to the internet. At the same time, according to national statistics, 14-year-16-year olds there spend more time on porn websites than teenagers in other European countries.
Iceland is determined to do something about this. Idle hands—as we all know—are the devil’s plaything. And God knows what those teenage hands are busy doing.
So, in a hands-on approach, the country has taken steps to ban online pornography. Critics of censorship in the internet say that if this bill is approved, one of the coldest European countries will become even colder.
The draft law can be adopted this spring. When it comes into effect all porn-websites will be banned and their IP-addresses will be blocked. It will be no longer possible to pay for the services of porn suppliers using credit cards of Iceland’s banks.
To those who claim that it is impossible to ensure such a ban technically, the minister’s senior adviser, Halla Gunnarsdóttir, noted how if humans managed to send a man to the Moon it is definitely possible to banish porn from the Internet. Nothing new here. Printed pornography was banned on Iceland about 10 years ago. And the Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson has already made a mark with a number of bans. In 2009, his government banned prostitution ( criminalizing those who pay for sex) and in 2010, strip clubs.
Ironically, it was Scandinavian countries namely Iceland’s closest relatives Denmark and Sweden where porn expansion started the 1960s.
Ironically, too, in that Iceland is home to the world’s largest display of penises and penile parts. Check it out people! Here: (http://www.phallus.is/)
As for me, I’m heading to Thailand. Penises be damned! … by Doctor Bawdy
A good portion of the following has been drawn from an earlier post at English Language and Usage at Stack Exchange . You can see it in its entirety here
Ever wonder about those asterisks and other bleeping marks used to shield us from those “unpleasant” and “socially unacceptable” words. What are they called? Where the f**k did they come from?
As a social service for the more literate reader s of this blog (You know who you few are), I have done some research on your behalf. You know research. It’s stealing other people’s work and riding their backs to fame and fortune. Meanwhile, the rest of you illiterate, sex-starved readers can simply skip this entry and go on to more salacious material which requires less grey matter.
My humblest and most sincere apologies to the two sites from which I have literally lifted most of the following material; but my loyal man-servant, secretary, and researcher, igor, failed to record the source of the following. But f***k it!. No one really gives a s#*t anyhow. So here goes nothing.
The most term invented in 1980 to describe textual symbols meant to represent profanities is “grawlix/grawlixes”. Other suggestions for the same thing are “obscenicons” or “maledicta”. These refer to e.g. old comic strips in which the dialog bubbles of characters sometime contain expressions like “@#*!%!”, meant to represent a profanity.
The use of typography to censor words was originally used to avoid breaking obscenity laws, when it was blasphemous to make fun of religion. Religious words were censored more than “normal” swear words, and were only censored when used as part of oaths; normal use was unbleeped. Dashes were used to obfuscate throughout the 18th century and asterisks were common from the 19th century on.
1710
Eliminative dashes, as in D–n for Damn can be found as early as 1710 in The Tatler (found via The Anatomy of Swearing (2001) by Ashley Montagu):
D—n you all, for a set of sons of whores; you will stop here to be paid by the hour! … Why, and be d——d to you, do you not drive over that fellow?
1687
Earlier than then Rigby sodomy trial of 1698 is this citation in the OED for shit:
a1687 Duke of Buckingham Instalment in Wks. (1705) II. 88 You’re such a scurvy..Knight, That when you speak a Man wou’d swear you S——te.
1688
Mark Liberman of Language Log searched LION (LIterature ONline) and found Richard Ames’s “A Satyr Again Man”, from Sylvia’s Revenge (1688):
314 Bully how great i’th’ Mouth the Accent sounds;
315 Bully who nothing breaths but Bl—d and W–nds?
1680
The same Language Log post has John Oldham’s poem “Upon the Author of a Play call’d Sodom” from Works (1680):
26 Whence nauseous Rhymes, by filthy Births proceed,
27 As Maggots, in some T—rd, ingendring breed.
1684
Jack Horntip has a fascinating collection of books from the 17th century to today. Several contain typo-bleeping, but it may be that some of them are later (sometimes 19th century) reprints with censoring added at the later time, and the originals may have been uncensored.
The following are all from the Jack Horntip Collection and most only show the raw OCR (plain scanned text). It’s possible they’re from later printings, but from the first pages I get the impression they’re the original typography. However, they could be later, edited, “facsimile” re-printings, as I’m unsure if the years would be written in Roman or Arabic numerals at this time. (These should all be available online in the Early English Books Online database for further verification.)
The earliest that has a full PDF is in Sodom or the Quintessence of Debauchery (1684) by the Earl of Rochester, which is chock full of all sorts of uncensored sexual language but bleeps out “heaven[s]”, “almighty”, “God[s]” (although there’s a single “p—s”), for example:
Al . . . ty Cunts, whom Bolloxinion here
Say what you want, but be careful of the Church!
1675
Mock Songs and Jovial Poems (1675):
You’d find the Perfume,
Almost as strong as it was:
Nay, she had such an Art,
In Letting a F—,
I mean for the Noise and Smell;
1672
Covent Garden Drolery 2nd Ed. (date also shown on the scanned first page):
Now he that sate here had much the better pjace,
He broke not his Neck, though he wetted his Ar—
For by th’ill successive disposure of th’other
Folks saw, and they tumbled too, one o’re another,
1658
Wit Restor’d by John Mennes issued in 1658:
In rythem daigne goddess to accept my verses,
I wis with worse wise men have wip’t their A—
O thou which able art to take to taske all
(Pox! what will rythme to that?) oh, I’me a raskall,
1658
The earliest I found is John Philips’ Sportive Wit (1656) and contains many bleepos. Here’s one poem.
On Tobacco.
When I do smoak my nose with a pipe of Tobacco after a feast,
Then down let I my hose, and with paper do wipe mine — like a beast.
It so doth please my minde,
It doth so ¿ase behinde,
For to wipe,
For to wipe my ¿ewel.
Tobacco’s my delight,
So ‘t is mine to sh —
Oh fine smack,
Oh brave ¿ack my jewel.
Th-th-th-at’s all, folks.
From the desk of Dr. Bawdy and the website www.bawdylanguage.com
I was visiting with my aunt Olga Bawdynova in Chelyabinsk, when the meteor hit…
Wow! You should have heard what the Russians said when that happened. It made it obligatory for every literate person to learn how to swear in Russian. As a public service towards that end, I offer this video clip. Enjoy.
From the desk of Dr. Bawdy and the website www.bawdylanguage.com
Sonnet du Trou du Cul
Sonnet of the Asshole
français
As a public service, I am pleased to provide readers with a poem I neglected to include in my book, one truly deserving of recognition.
This is the only poem known to have been jointly composed by Rimbaud and Verlaine. Parnassian poet Albert Mérat, published a book of sonnets called L’Idole, in which each poem extolled a part of the body of his mistress —with one omission. The two young iconoclasts proceeded to rectify its absence with the following ode.
This sonnet appeared in the “Album Zutique,” a book of scabrous parodies by the literary circle who called themselves "Les Zutistes."
We offer thanks to practicalalchemy.com for, not one, but four different versions of their piece, each interesting in a different way. Translations, as you’ll see, vary widely, depending on how you happen to look at it; the blind eye offers up a variety of perspectives.
Sonnet of the Asshole
Dark and wrinkled like a violet carnation,
It sighs, humbly nestling in the moss still moist from love
That follows the descent of sweet white cheeks
Down to their edge.
Filaments like tears of milk
Have wept beneath the cruel south wind
That drives them back across the little clots of russet clay,
And disappeared there where the slope has called them.
My Dream has often kissed its opening;
My Soul, that envies mortal intercourse
Has chosen this to be its wild and musky nest of sobs.
It is the swooning olive and the sweet cajoling flute
The tube through which celestial creamy pralines tumble down
Female Promised Land rimmed round with dew!
d’après Albert Mérat
— Paul Verlaine (quatrains)
Hidden and Wrinkled sonet
Hidden and wrinkled like a budding violet
It breathes, gently worn out, in a tangled vine
(Still damp with love), on the soft incline
Of white buttocks to the rim of the pit.
Thin streams like rivers of milk ; innocent
Tears, shed beneath hot breath that drives them down
Across small clots of rich soil, reddish brown,
Where they lose themselves in the dark descent…
My mouth always dribbles with its coupling force;
My soul, jealous of the body’s intercourse,
Makes it tearful, wild necessity.
Ecstatic olive branch, the flute one blows,
The tube where heavenly praline flows,
Promised Land in sticky femininity.
— translated by Paul Schmidt
Sonnet in Praise of the Butthole
Dark and puckered like a tiny violet eye
It breathes, obscurely lurking in a mossy froth
Still humid from love that follows the curving soft
Slope of snowy ass just past the crease of thigh.
A few glistening threads running like milky tears
Have wept past the rough hot wind pushing them away,
Getting beyond those little gnarls of ruddy clay
To lose their way where the echoing downslope veers.
In dream I often find my suck-hole on the job;
My soul, so jealous of palpable fuckery,
Says this is its musky tear-duct, its nest of sobs.
It’s the swoon-diving olive and the flute cajoled,
The pipeline where the celestial praline flows,
Feminine Promised Land in the moistening fold.
— translated by Dennis J. Carlile
Obscure and wrinkled like a purple eyelet,
It breathes, humbly tapi among foam
Humide encor of love which follows the soft escape
Of the white Buttocks to the heart of its hem.
Similar filaments with milk tears cried,
Under the cruel southerly wind which pushes back them
A through small russet-red marl clots,
To go itself to lose where the slope called them.
My Dream was often brought together with its suction cup;
My heart, of the material coitus jealous, made of
It its fawn-coloured drip and its nest of sobs.
It is the pâmée olive, and the flute caline
It is the tube where goes down the celestial one dresses:
Female Chanaan in enclosed moistnesses!
— Babelfish
