News Spotlight: Hip Hop's Demon Child

While browsing the news today, I can across an MTV article pointing out that Tyler, the Creator thinks his competition for the VMA's Video of the Year "suck". Those would be Adele's "Rolling in the Deep," Beastie Boys' "Make Some Noise," Bruno Mars' "Grenade" and Katy Perry's "Firework." Well, actually he approves of Adele. Anyway, I was amused that someone was actually honest about how they feel about their rivals because artists usually spew that "I'm honored to be nominated with..." crap. Then I watched the video. And I was even a bit more amused and decided I should research him. This video is pretty representative of what he's about-sin, murder, and angst. The only part not apparent is that he also happens to rap a lot about raping women-a whole lot. Because of that, there's no way I'll ever be a "fan". As much as I love filthy, his lyrics are even too much for me. But I do respect the fact he's offering a new approach to hip-hop.

"Dirty Joke": Opinion

Mrs. Jones goes to the doctor for a full medical.

After an hour or so, the doctor looks at Mrs. Jones and says the following: "Mrs. Jones, overall you are very healthy for a 45 year old. There is however, only one problem. You are 40 pounds overweight and bordering on obese. I would strongly suggest that you diet now to save any complications in later years."

She looks sternly at him and says, "I demand a second opinion."

"OK" he says, "you're fucking ugly as well!"

And I Quote...

“Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.” --Johnny Carson

News Spotlight: Parental F Bombs

Adam Mansbach's "Go the F**k to Sleep" is the latest book phenomenon. In a quest to express his frustration putting his 2-year-old daughter to sleep, he wrote a children's book (geared toward parents of course) about the perils of bedtime. Before its release, it became a viral sensation and as soon as it was available, it became a bestseller. This is proof that although parenting is usually praised as a euphoric experience, it does in actuality, sometimes suck.

"Bleary and dazed I awaken
To find your eyes shut, so I keep
My fingers crossed tight as I tiptoe away
And pray that you're f---ing asleep."

"Dirty Joke": Office Politics

After the annual office Christmas party blow-out, John woke up with a pounding headache, cotton-mouthed, and utterly unable to recall the events of the preceding evening. After a trip to the bathroom he was able to make his way downstairs, where his wife put some coffee in front of him. "Louise," he moaned, "tell me what went on last night. Was it as bad as I think?"

"Even worse," she assured him in her most scornful one. "You made a complete ass of yourself, succeeded in antagonizing the entire board of directors, and insulted the chairman of the company to his face."

"He's an arrogant, self-important prick, piss on him!"

"You did. All over his suit," Louise informed him. "And he fired you."

"Well, fuck him," said John.

"I did. You're back at work on Monday."

News Spotlight: F Bombs on Broadway

Chris Rock's "The Motherf**ker with the Hat" debuted on Broadway last night. It seems only fitting to give a little shout out to any play that uses a curse word in the title. And being that the play is centered around Alcoholics Anonymous, sex addiction, and of course a lot of swearing, it sounds like my kinda show.

And I Quote...

"A lot of shit is going to happen when pigs learn to fly." --Unknown

Rage Quit: Impossible Game

Nothing more entertaining than a raging, cursing lunatic. This guy takes playing video games very seriously.

News Spotlight: Oscar's First F-Bomb

If you watched the Oscars last night, you witnessed the Oscars first ever onstage "Fuck" as Melissa Leo used it while accepting her win for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Talk about trailblazing.

Be My Valentine

"Dirty Joke" : Labels

A hunter kills a deer and brings it home. He decides to clean and serve the venison for supper. He knows his kids are fussy eaters, and won't eat it if they know what it is - so he does not tell them. His little boy keeps asking him, "What's for supper?" "You'll see", says his dad. They start eating supper and his daughter keeps asking what they're eating. "Ok," says her dad, "here's a hint, its what your mother sometimes calls me." "We're eating asshole!!"she screams.

"Vice Pioneers" : "Fuck"

Cohen v. California freedom of speech case


Ulysses: first movie to drop F-bomb


French Connection: profanity for profit

It's about that time to explore another beloved term for "Vice Pioneers." We've already uncovered "Cunt" so this week we go after the second most profane word in the English language. "Fuck" is a special word though. While "cunt" is shocking and all, it has limited meaning and can only be used in special occasions. Fuck on the other hand is the most versatile word, with the ability to be used as a noun, verb, adjective, etc. The word has a vague origin, but there is still plenty of history surrounding the word.

From Wikipedia: Fuck is an English word that is generally considered profane which, in its most literal meaning, refers to the act of sexual intercourse. However, by extension it may be used to negatively characterize anything that can be dismissed, disdained, defiled, or destroyed.

"Fuck" can be used as a verb, adverb, adjective, command, interjection, noun, and can logically be used as virtually any word in a sentence (e.g., "Fuck the fucking fuckers"). Moreover, it is one of the few words in the English language which could be applied as an infix (e.g., "Am I sexy? Absofuckinglutely!"; "Bullfuckingshit!"). It has various metaphorical meanings. The verb "to be fucked" can mean "to be cheated" (e.g., "I got fucked by a scam artist"), or alternatively, to be sexually penetrated. As a noun "a fuck" or "a fucker" may describe a contemptible person. "A fuck" may mean an act of copulation. The word can be used as an interjection, and its participle is sometimes used as a strong emphatic. The verb to fuck may be used transitively or intransitively, and it appears in compounds, including fuck off, fuck up, "fuck you", and fuck with. In less explicit usages (but still regarded as vulgar), fuck or fuck with can mean to mess around, or to deal with unfairly or harshly. In a phrase such as "don't give a fuck", the word is the equivalent of "damn", in the sense of something having little value. In "what the fuck!", it serves merely as an intensive. If something is very abnormal or annoying "this is fucked up!" may be said.

Etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary states that the ultimate etymology is uncertain, but that the word is "probably cognate" with a number of native Germanic words with meanings involving striking, rubbing, and having sex.

Flen flyys and freris
The usually accepted first known occurrence is in code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and English composed some time before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys", from the first words of its opening line, Flen, flyys, and freris (= "Fleas, flies, and friars"). The line that contains fuck reads Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. Removing the substitution cipher (here, replacing each letter by the next letter in alphabetical order, as the English alphabet was then) on the phrase "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" yields non sunt in coeli, quia fvccant vvivys of heli, which translated means, "They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely". The phrase was coded likely because it accused some Church personnel of misbehaving; it is uncertain to what extent the word fuck was considered acceptable at the time. (The stem of fvccant is an English word used as Latin: English medieval Latin has many examples of writers using English words when they did not know the Latin word: "workmannus" is an example.) (In the Middle English of this poem, the term wife was still used generically for woman.)

John le Fucker
A man's name, "John le Fucker", is said to be reported from AD 1278, but the report is doubtful: an email discussion on Linguist List says:

"This name has been exhaustively argued over ... The "John le Fucker" reference first appears in Carl Buck's 1949 Indo-European dictionary. Buck does not supply a citation as to where he found the name. No one has subsequently found the manuscript in which it is alleged to have appeared. If the citation is genuine and not an error, it is most likely a spelling variant of "fulcher", meaning soldier."

False etymologies
One reason that the word fuck is so hard to trace etymologically is that it was used far more extensively in common speech than in easily traceable written forms. There are several urban-legend false etymologies postulating an acronymic origin for the word. None of these acronyms were ever heard before the 1960s, according to the authoritative lexicographical work The F-Word, and thus are backronyms. In any event, the word fuck has been in use far too long for some of these supposed origins to be possible. Some of these urban legends are that the word fuck came from Irish law. If a couple were caught committing adultery, they would be punished "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge In the Nude", with "FUCKIN" written on the stocks above them to denote the crime. Another theory is that of a royal permission. During the Black Death in the Middle Ages, towns were trying to control populations and their interactions. Since uncontaminated resources were scarce, many towns required permission to have children. Hence, the legend goes, that couples that were having children were required to first obtain royal permission (usually from a local magistrate or lord) and then place a sign somewhere visible from the road in their home that said "Fornicating Under Consent of King", which was later shortened to "FUCK". This story is hard to document, but has persisted in oral and literary traditions for many years; however, it has been demonstrated to be an urban legend.

The word "fuck" did not come from any of the following:
"File Under Carnal Knowledge"
"Fornication Under the Christian King"
"Fornication Under the Command of the King"
"Fornication Under the Consent of the King"
"Fornication Under Carnal/Cardinal Knowledge"
"False Use of Carnal Knowledge"
"Felonious Use of Carnal Knowledge"
"Felonious Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
"Full-On Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
"For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
"Found Under Carnal Knowledge"
"Found Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
"Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" (referring to the crime of rape)

Usage history
Early usage
Its first known use as a verb meaning to have sexual intercourse is in "Flen flyys", written around 1475.

William Dunbar's 1503 poem "Brash of Wowing" includes the lines: "Yit be his feiris he wald haue fukkit: / Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane" (ll. 13–14).

John Florio's 1598 Italian-English dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes, included the term, along with several now-archaic, but then vulgar synonyms, in this definition:

Fottere: To jape, to sard, to fucke, to swive, to occupy.

Of these, "occupy" and "jape" still survive as verbs, though with less profane meanings, while "sard" was a descendant of the Anglo-Saxon verb seordan (or seorðan, serða), to copulate; and "swive" had derived from earlier swīfan, to revolve i.e. to swivel.

While Shakespeare never used the term explicitly; he hinted at it in comic scenes in a few plays. The Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i) contains the expression focative case. In Henry V (IV.iv), Pistol threatens to firk (strike) a soldier, a euphemism for fuck.

Rise of modern usage
Though it appeared in John Ash's 1775 A New and Complete Dictionary, listed as "low" and "vulgar," and appearing with several definitions, fuck did not appear in any widely-consulted dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1965. Its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary (along with the word cunt) was in 1972. There is anecdotal evidence of its use during the American Civil War.

Censorship
The films Ulysses and I'll Never Forget What's'isname (both 1967) are contenders for being the first film to use the word 'fuck,' although the word 'fucking' is clearly mouthed silently in the film Sink the Bismarck! (1960), and the title character says it in the cartoon Bosko's Picture Show (1933). Since the U.S. adoption of the MPAA film rating system, use of the word has been accepted in R-rated movies, and under the older rules, use of the word in a sexual way would automatically cause the film to be given an R rating. Later changes could allow for a maximum of three, non-sexual, strictly exclamatory uses of the word in PG-13 movies, extreme example being the movies The American President and Nine Months (this is more of a guideline than a rule, however, since the MPAA states it has no strict rules on how a movie is rated).

In 1970, Beatle John Lennon successfully got the word past the censors on his song "Working Class Hero" with the lines "They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool, till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules" and "You think you're so clever and classless and free, but you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see."

Since the 1970s, the use of the word "fuck" in R-rated movies has become so commonplace in mainstream American movies that it is rarely noticed by most audiences. Nonetheless, a few movies have made exceptional use of the word, to the point where such films as Fuck, Good Will Hunting, Casino, The Last Detail, Menace II Society, The Big Lebowski, The Departed, Scarface (1983), Pulp Fiction, Blue Velvet, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, and Goodfellas as well as the HBO TV series The Sopranos are known for its extensive use. In the movie Meet the Parents, and its sequels Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers, the main character's last name of "Focker" is a running joke. In the popular comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral, it is the chief word, repeatedly uttered, during the opening five minutes. To many, one of the most humorous tirades demonstrating various usages of the word appears in the comedy, Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), where Steve Martin expresses his dissatisfaction in his treatment by a rental car agency. The movie Student Bodies inserted a scene in the middle of the film to explain to audiences that movies with an R rating are more popular than those carrying a PG rating, which the movie could easily have had. He ends his address with, " ... the producers of this motion picture have asked me to take this opportunity to say 'Fuck you'.", at which time the MPAA R-rating banner appeared.

In several PG-rated movies, however, the word is used, mainly because at the time there was no PG-13 rating and the MPAA did not want to give the films R ratings; for instance, All the President's Men (1976), where it is used seven times; The Kids Are Alright (1979), where it is used twice; and The Right Stuff (1983), where it is used five times. Spaceballs (1987) is one of at least four anomalies in that it was rated PG after the 1984 introduction of the PG-13 rating, yet it includes Dark Helmet's line, "'Out of order'?! Fuck! Even in the future nothing works!" The second is Big (1988) which has the character of Billy asking Tom Hanks' character, "Who the fuck do you think you are?" The third is Beetlejuice (1988) which has the character Betelgeuse kick over a fake tree and scream, "nice fucking model!" The fourth is 1988's Caddyshack II where Randy Quaid's character shouts out he is going to break down a door with a "fucking baseball bat."

In the 1999 film "Galaxy Quest," Sigourney Weaver's character Gwen DeMarco is edited from the line "Well, fuck that!" to "Well, screw that!" The change was made to avoid a PG-13 rating, and the original line is obvious when reading her lips.

Films edited for broadcast use matching euphemisms so that lip synching will not be thrown off. One televised version of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, for instance, had the actors dub in the words frick, Nubian, and melon farmer for fuck, nigger, and motherfucker, respectively. In similarly dubbed versions of Die Hard and Die Hard 2, Bruce Willis' catchphrase "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" is replaced by "Yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon" or "Yippee-ki-yay, Kemo Sabe." Similarly, the TV broadcast edit of Snakes on a Plane has Samuel L. Jackson saying "I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane", emending two occurrences of motherfucking. In the film The Big Lebowski, John Goodman's character repeatedly yells, "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" while trashing a car. It was infamously censored on television as "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps." His character also repeatedly says to Steve Buscemi's character, "Shut the fuck up, Donny," or "Donny, shut the fuck up." In the television version, fuck is censored with hell.

Many stand-up comedians who perform for adult audiences make liberal use of the word fuck. While George Carlin's use of the word was an important part of his stage persona, other comedians (such as Andrew Dice Clay) have been accused of substituting vulgarity and offensiveness for genuine creativity through overuse of the word. Billy Connolly and Lenny Bruce were pioneers of the use of the word in their shows for general audiences.

Recently, the hip-hop group Black-Eyed Peas' hit song "Don't Phunk With My Heart" was censored on many radio stations to "Don't Mess With My Heart", establishing a new trend toward eliminating all euphemisms for "fuck" as well as the word itself. James Blunt's first major song, You're Beautiful, featured the line "she could see from my face that I was fucking high" - this was censored to "flying high" for broadcasting purposes.

Use in marketing
In April 1997, clothing retailer French Connection began branding their clothes "fcuk" (usually written in lowercase). Though they insisted it was an acronym for French Connection United Kingdom, its similarity to the word "fuck" caused controversy. French Connection fully exploited this and produced an extremely popular range of t-shirts with messages such as "fcuk this", "hot as fcuk", "mile high fcuk", "fcuk me", "fcuk her", "too busy to fcuk", "fcuk football", "fcuk fashion", "fcuk fear", "fcuk on the beach", "the joy of fcuk", etc.

In 2009, the European Union's OHIM trade marks agency disallowed a German brewery to market a beer called "Fucking Hell". They sued, and on 26 March 2010 got permission to market the beer. They claim the beer is actually named after the Austrian village Fucking and the German term for light beer, hell.

Freedom of expression
In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the mere public display of fuck is protected under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and cannot be made a criminal offense. In 1968, Paul Robert Cohen had been convicted of "disturbing the peace" for wearing a jacket with "FUCK THE DRAFT" on it (in reference to conscription in the Vietnam War). The conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeals and overturned by the Supreme Court. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

In 1983, pornographer Larry Flynt, representing himself before the U.S. Supreme Court in a libel case, shouted, "Fuck this court!" during the proceedings, and then called the justices "nothing but eight assholes (referring to Justices Warren E. Burger, William J. Brennan, Jr., Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, and John Paul Stevens) and a token cunt" (referring to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor). Chief Justice Warren E. Burger had him arrested for contempt of court, but the charge was later dismissed on a technicality.

And I Quote...

“I disagree with the use of the word "pussy" to describe a weak person. Because the vagina is the tougher of the two genitals. Think about it. It can pass something 50 times it's size through it. You can pound on it for hours and it goes "More! More!" It bleeds every month and it won't die! It's like the Predator! Meanwhile my penis...if it gets cold or there's a fight he's like "I'm outta here!" What I'm trying to say is...my dick is a pussy.” --Hal Sparks

"Vice Pioneers" : "Cunt"

Namesake: Gropecunt Lane


Shakespeare: hidden cuntery in literature


Jack Nicolson: first scripted "cunt" in mainstream cinema

Cunt. How does hearing it make you feel? If your sentiment is in line with the masses, it infuriates you. Considered the most offensive word in language (in the United States and abroad), it has the power to rile people up like no other word. It is no secret that I am not part of the masses when it comes to this word and that it is thoroughly embraced at Metal Taboo. However, I never really looked into its history. Here's a look into this distinct four letter word.

From Wikipedia:
Etymology
Although it has been said that "etymologists are unlikely to come to an agreement about the origins of 'cunt' any time soon," the word is most often thought to have derived from a Germanic word (Proto-Germanic *kuntō, stem *kuntōn-), which appeared as kunta in Old Norse. Scholars are uncertain of the origin of the Proto-Germanic form itself. In Middle English, it appeared with many spellings, such as coynte, cunte and queynte, which did not always reflect the actual pronunciation of the word. There are cognates in most Germanic languages, such as the Swedish, Faroese and Nynorsk kunta; West Frisian and Middle Low German kunte; Middle Dutch conte; Dutch kut; Middle Low German kutte; Middle High German kotze (prostitute); German kott, and perhaps Old English cot. The etymology of the Proto-Germanic term is disputed. It may have arisen by Grimm's law operating on the Proto-Indo-European root *gen/gon = "create, become" seen in gonads, genital, gamete, genetics, gene, or the Proto-Indo-European root *gʷneH2/guneH2 (Greek gunê) = "woman" seen in gynaecology. Relationships to similar-sounding words such as the Latin cunnus (vulva), and its derivatives French con, Spanish coño, and Portuguese cona, have not been conclusively demonstrated. Other Latin words related to cunnus are cuneatus = "wedge-shaped"; cuneo = "I fasten with a wedge", (figurative) "I wedge in", "I squeeze in", leading to English words such as cuneiform (wedge-shaped).

The word in its modern meaning is attested in Middle English. Proverbs of Hendyng, a manuscript from some time before 1325, includes the advice:

Ȝeue þi cunte to cunnig and craue affetir wedding.(Give your cunt wisely and make (your) demands after the wedding.)

Usage: pre-20th century
Cunt has been in common use in its anatomical meaning since at least the 13th century. While Francis Grose's 1785 A Classical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue listed the word as "C**T: a nasty name for a nasty thing", it did not appear in any major dictionary of the English language from 1795 to 1961, when it was included in Webster's Third New International Dictionary with the comment "usu. considered obscene". Its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1972, which cites the word as having been in use since 1230 in what was supposedly a London street name of "Gropecunt Lane". It was, however, also used before 1230, having been brought over by the Anglo-Saxons, originally not an obscenity but rather a factual name for the vulva or vagina. "Gropecunt Lane" was originally a street of prostitution, a red light district. It was normal in the Middle Ages for streets to be named after the goods available for sale therein, hence the prevalence in cities having a medieval history of names such as "Silver Street", "Fish Street", and "Swinegate" (pork butchers). In some locations, the former name has been bowdlerised, as in the City of York, to the more acceptable "Grape Lane".

The word appears several times in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1390), in bawdy contexts, but it does not appear to be considered obscene at this point, since it is used openly. A notable use is from the "Miller's Tale": "Pryvely he caught her by the queynte." The Wife of Bath also uses this term, "For certeyn, olde dotard, by your leave/You shall have queynte right enough at eve ... What aileth you to grouche thus and groan?/Is it for ye would have my queynte alone?" In modernised versions of these passages the word "queynte" is usually translated simply as "cunt". However, in Chaucer's usage there seems to be an overlap between the words "cunt" and "quaint" (possibly derived from the Latin for "known"). "Quaint" was probably pronounced in Middle English in much the same way as "cunt". It is sometimes unclear whether the two words were thought of as distinct from one another. Elsewhere in Chaucer's work the word queynte seems to be used with meaning comparable to the modern "quaint" (charming, appealing).

By Shakespeare's day, the word seems to have become obscene. Although Shakespeare does not use the word explicitly (or with derogatory meaning) in his plays, he still plays with it, using wordplay to sneak it in obliquely. In Act III, Scene 2, of Hamlet, as the castle's residents are settling in to watch the play-within-the-play, Hamlet asks Ophelia, "Lady, shall I lie in your lap?" Ophelia, of course, replies, "No, my lord." Hamlet, feigning shock, says, "Do you think I meant country matters?" Then, to drive home the point that the accent is definitely on the first syllable of country, Shakespeare has Hamlet say, "That's a fair thought, to lie between maids' legs." Also see Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene V): "There be her very Cs, her Us, and her Ts: and thus makes she her great Ps." A related scene occurs in Henry V: when Katherine is learning English, she is appalled at the "gros, et impudique" English words "foot" and "gown", which her English teacher has mispronounced as "coun". It is usually argued that Shakespeare intends to suggest that she has misheard "foot" as "foutre" (French, "fuck") and "coun" as "con" (French "cunt", also used to mean "idiot"). Similarly John Donne alludes to the obscene meaning of the word without being explicit in his poem The Good-Morrow, referring to sucking on "country pleasures".

Usage in modern popular culture
Television
In the United States the broadcast use of "cunt" is still rare; nevertheless, the word has slowly infiltrated into broadcasting:

***The HBO TV shows Oz, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire and True Blood, as well as the Showtime series Weeds, Californication & Brotherhood also make frequent use of the word; and two episodes of the sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm are devoted to the comical repercussions of its inadvertent use.
***An episode of the NBC TV show 30 Rock, titled The C Word, centered around a subordinate calling protagonist Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) a "cunt" and her subsequent efforts to regain her staff's favor. While the word was never uttered on camera, it is strongly implied that this is the offensive term used.
***Jane Fonda did utter the word on a live airing of the Today Show, a network broadcast-tv news program, in 2008 when being interviewed about The Vagina Monologues.[

Film
The word has few, if any, recorded uses in mainstream cinema prior to the 1970s, the first possibly being in Carnal Knowledge (1971) in which Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) asks, "Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch! Is this an ultimatum or not?" Its subsequent use has been limited to films restricted to adult audiences, such as The Exorcist (1973) in which Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran) addresses the butler, Karl (Rudolf Schündler): "Cunting Hun! Bloody damn butchering Nazi pig!" and Taxi Driver (1976) in which Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro) describes himself as "A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up."

Saturday Night Fever (1977) was released in two versions, "R" (Restricted) and "PG" (Parental Guidance), the latter omitting or replacing dialogue such as Tony Manero (John Travolta)'s comment to Annette (Donna Pescow) "It's a decision a girl's gotta make early in life, if she's gonna be a nice girl or a cunt." This differential persists, and in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Agent Starling (Jodie Foster) meets Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) for the first time and passes the cell of "Multiple Miggs", who says to Starling: "I can smell your cunt." In versions of the film edited for television the word is dubbed with the word scent.

In Britain, the word "cunt" remains perhaps the only word that can alone result in an "18" rating from the British Board of Film Classification. Ken Loach's film Sweet Sixteen was given an "18" in 2002, ensuring that young people of the age depicted in the film were unable to view it legally, because of an estimated twenty uses of "cunt". The BBFC's guidelines at "15" state that "the strongest terms (for example, 'cunt') may be acceptable if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeated use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable." The 2010 Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll was given a "15" rating despite containing seven uses of the word.

Popular music
In 1979, during a concert at New York's Bottom Line, Carlene Carter introduced a song about mate-swapping called Swap-Meat Rag by stating, "If this song don't put the cunt back in country, I don't know what will." The comment was quoted widely in the press, and Carter spent much of the next decade trying to live the comment down. However use of the word in lyrics is not recorded before the Sid Vicious' 1978 version of My Way, which marked the first known use of the word in a UK Top Ten hit, as a line was changed to "You cunt/I'm not a queer". The following year, "cunt" was used more explicitly in the song "Why D'Ya Do It?" from Marianne Faithfull's album Broken English:

"Why'd ya do it, she screamed, after all we've said,
Every time I see your dick I see her cunt in my bed."

Since then, the word has been used by numerous non-mainstream bands, such as Australian band TISM, who released an extended play in 1993 "Australia the Lucky Cunt" (a reference to Australia's label the "lucky country"). They also released a single in 1998 entitled "I Might Be a Cunt, but I'm Not a Fucking Cunt", which was banned. The American grindcore band Anal Cunt, on being signed to a bigger label, shortened their name to AxCx.

Some Weekend Hilarity

This is the funniest thing I have seen in a really long time. Fucking hilarious.

And I Quote...

“A guy can just as easily dump you if you fuck him on the first date as he can if you wait until the tenth.” --Kim Cattrall as Samantha Jones, "Sex and the City"

And I Quote...

“I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.” --Elizabeth Wurtzel

And I Quote...

“Instead of warning pregnant women not to drink, I think female alcoholics should be told not to fuck.” --George Carlin

Cee Lo and His Blatant "Fuck You"

Yay to Cee Lo for flat out naming this song "Fuck You"! Now you know I of all people had to pay homage to this song and video. And I love that it is so chipper in color and theme otherwise. Great stuff!

For the Love of "Cunt"

One of our repeat customers was inspired to write this post on her Facebook profile after purchasing a custom "Cunt" keychain. No doubt, the word is one of the most despised in the English language, but one of the main reasons I started Metal Taboo is to take back power in words that were created or changed to inflict insult and hurt. I think Dawn is right on board with her assessment of the word. I particularly love her promise at the end not to leave her keys behind in unwanted places:

The C Word

People generally do not understand why I like the word c*nt. Arguably the most offensive female slur in the English language, I admit the first time I heard it used by a guy in anger, I was repulsed and offended. Over the last 25 years or so since I first heard c*nt used, I have come to embrace the word. Some believe that c*nt may actually be derived from the name of a goddess, a woman in power, one to be worshiped. This image was considered offensive to patriarchal religions and therefore inverted in meaning to be negative. There is no clear etymology for c*nt but most align the word with some aspect of femininity, goddess or female genitalia. I embrace c*nt in defiance to this bastardization of the word and claim it as a woman.

A very powerful word, c*nt is included George Carlin's list of Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television routine and it is not a word to be used in general conversation in 'polite society'. Yet it is such a sharp little word - small, crisp and clean and out of your mouth before someone can figure out if you really said THAT word or perhaps you just sneezed. Like other offensive words it finds power in the meaning given to it by history, society and context.

I am not so naive to say that it is only four little letters, what harm can it do? I fully understand the way the majority of people view this word but since I've embraced c*nt and have used it to season my language with close friends, the word has lost its sting and power and therefore if someone calls me a c*nt it really does not phase me. I think at this point in my life I would just laugh in their face. There are plenty of other words that could be hurled at me that would cut far deeper and hurt me, so my admiration of c*nt does not diminish the power words can hold.

Because of my love and personal ownership of the C word I bought myself a present and it came in the mail today. Were this not Facebook I would not be obstructing the letter "u" in the photo and in this note but I understand that because of the obscene connotations of this word the use of it could get me kicked off Facebook. I sincerely hope that those of you who took the time to look at my note and photo are not outraged or offended and can understand that this is just another part of who I am and I will try not to leave my keys on your desk, end table, etc."

--Written by Dawn Howard