Dirty joke in the Awake magazine!

by TJ - iAmCleared2Land 26 Replies latest jw friends

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    The OED mentions an example of "blow" meaning "fellate" from 1933.

    The joke however is slightly older. It appears in the 4/25/1926 issue of the Oakland Tribune (p. 81), where it was credited to the Rutgers Chanticleer, a college humor magazine (see this source on Chanticleer). That version reads:

    "A wealthy young lady named Fleau / Had a poor but good-looking beau. / Said Fleu to her beau: / 'Will you geau to a sheau?' / Said the beau, 'If you'll bleau I'll geou, Fleau.'

    Since college-age kids would be more likely to use new slang, it is possible that "bleau" here has a sexual connotation. But notice also that this more original version has a rich/poor theme absent in the Consolation version. Since the beau was poor, and yet boyfriends were expected to pay for their girlfriends, the joke would make a lot of sense if "blow" meant "pay". And according to the OED, this was indeed an older slang sense of "blow", i.e. "to lay out or get through (money) in a lavish manner, to squander". Here are some examples it lists:

    1874 HOTTEN Slang Dict., Blew, or blow,..to lose or spend money. 1892 Daily News 5 Sept. 6/3 Sometimes you'll blow a little money..but another week you may make a lot. 1896 Dialect Notes I. 412 ‘To blow oneself’, to spend money freely. 1904 W. H. SMITH Promoters v. 100 The Church people in England were the folks that had the money to blow. 1932 H. SIMPSON Boomerang x. 244 A thousand pounds, which she proposed..to blow in a couple of months' high living. 1957 Economist 21 Dec. 1030/1 He will probably feel able to blow with a clear conscience the £2,000.

    Today, we may still say, "blow your wad" to refer to the same thing, but I think the intransitive use is obsolete, which is what occurs in the joke. That is why that this sense is not really accessible anymore, and the sexual connotation is the one that comes to mind more readily. But the rich/poor theme in the original joke clearly points to a sense of "spend lavishly", which is probably what was intended in the republishing of the joke in the Consolation (although the rich/poor theme was no longer overt in this version). This leaves the question of whether there was a double entendre in the original joke. If "blow" did have the sense of fellate at the time, then this is certainly possible. It is somewhat unclear however whether the old guys at Bethel (C. J. Woodworth at the time was 68 years old, I think) were up on the latest slang.

  • Homerovah the Almighty
    Homerovah the Almighty
    Today, we may still say, "blow your wad"

    Thanks Leolaia, I just sprayed coffee all over my monitor

    Hey I just Bleau a wad of coffee .......cool

  • GermanXJW
    GermanXJW

    Meat in due season.

  • VM44
    VM44

    Why was Woodworth publishing "jokes" in the magazine at all? Was it appropriate? I don't think so.

    Unless one considers that the whole magazine itself was a joke!

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat

    Entertaining as this thread is, everyone knows that oral sex was not even invented in 1939.

  • TheListener
    TheListener

    I just have to say this thread had me laughing like crazy. Funny and amazing research at the same time. Classic.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Did anyone find where in the post my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek?

    BTW, I got the info on the college mag from NewspaperArchive.com, a great website for doing this sort of research.

  • compound complex
    compound complex

    In AWAKE! (late 1960s, I believe) the editor published a retraction and/or apology
    for a little tale of an unfortunate laborer's mishap with a barrel of bricks that
    he was pullying upward by rope. AWAKE! apologized for making sport of the
    man's misfortune. Seems he was yanked up by the rope to which he was attached
    as the barrel plummeted downward. I recall he was yo-yoed up and down a number
    of times. It was pure slapstick

    The story was hilarious [I read it], but ought we to split our gut in immoderate
    guffaws when viewing a scene straight from THE THREE STOOGES? Surely, God's
    people have a sense of decency and decorum that precludes such tittering ...

    The above is not a dirty joke though the poor man wound up duly soiled. The thread
    title served to remind me of a Society apology.

    A rarity, surely to be remembered.

    CoCo

  • hamsterbait
    hamsterbait

    The MAGAZINE itself is the dirty joke.

    HB

  • changeling
    changeling

    About "the bees that were molested": To "molest" means to bother. In Spanish you would say: "no me molestes" or "don't molest me" as in "don't bother me". The person who wrote the words to that Kingdom Melody was probably a native spanish speaker.

    changeling

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