posted
Anyone ever listen to these guys/girls? They. Frelling. Rock. Frelling. You have not heard classical music until you've heard "Flight of the Bumblebees" on electric guitars, and I have never found a better song title than "Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairy". If they don't come to Nashville on their next tour, I will drive to Atlanta and smite them. Verily.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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posted
I've only ever heard their Christmas tunes. I'll agree, based solely on my limited exposure to them, that they are indeed quite good. I own their CD The Christmas Attic. I'm quite fond of "Midnight Christmas Eve."
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
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That was all the ones I could think of from badly-censored movies and books. Was it enough to trigger your aneurysm?
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
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(I'd include the equally annoying TANSTAAFL, but I don't think it's really used as a substitute for swears.)
((My issue, of course, being with fake science fiction swear words. Shudder. Except, oddly enough, for smeg, which is vaguely real. And funny! I guess they work in comedy.))
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posted
And I've still never heard a straight answer as to whether it was intentional, or whether they simply made it up and happened to be really lucky that it genuinly meant something.
Maybe it's okay in Red Dwarf because they also say other swear words. (Okay, fairly mild swear words. Bastard, git, prat, etc).
Can I include "heck" and "gosh" in the "fake swear words catagory"?
Note to cartoon writers (especially those that do anime dubs. You know who you are): If a character has just seen their entire family wiped out, along with their friends, and several thousand other people, they would not express their anger by exclaiming "Darn them!" in a loud voice. Unless they are idiots.
And I'm fairly sure that "frig" is a genuine if rare swear word, and isn't "bastich" German for "bastard", or something? Or have I been badly influenced by old X-Men comics?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
And what the hell do TANJ and TANSTAAFL mean anyway?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
I'm not sure heck and gosh, while cheesy, are any more "made up" than other real I-don't-want-to-really-swear words. Like zounds. Which I don't have a problem with, really.
TANJ: Something characters in Larry Niven stories often say when they mean "Shit, the engine's broken." It is an acronym for There Ain't No Justice.
TANSTAAFL: Not really something anyone says to replace some other swear, I think. From Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It is also an acronym: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Perhaps it is the ain't nos that bother me. Yuck.
Other fake science fiction swears that don't make me bleed pure hatred: Any from Douglas Adams. Again suggesting that the comedy angle is the only workable one.
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posted
Part of the reason "smeg" isn't stupid, I'd say, is the fact that it isn't just a censored swear word. The stupid ones like "frell" and "frag" are just "fuck" w/ some letters changed so it's okay to say. They're the spoken equivalent of "f***".
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posted
TANSTAAFL isn't a curse, it's a universal truth.
But acronyms like that frequently become words. Snafu, for example.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
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posted
Yes, but does anyone who isn't a cretin ever say "snafu" in real life?
For some reason, the use of "slag" in Beast Wars never bothered me either. Possibly because fake swear words, while common in sci-fi, are somewhat rarer in cartoons. Or maybe it's because "slag" actually means something over here (albiet something totally different). Or maybe it's the shear effort they put into it. How I laughed when they said "Ape Slag" once.
I'd put "gosh" and "darn" in, because (to me at least), they have the same relationship to "god" and "damn" as "frell" does to "fuck". They are a way of swearing without really swearing. And are stupid.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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