Warning: Some Violence and Much Strong Language.SHE WROTE: Bob Mayer, Taking It For The Team Since 2004
Bob is gritting his teeth again. I have the master of Agnes and the idea is that I would just write the next Agnes scene, and since that was MY idea, you'd think I could do it, but I don't GET this first act. Stuff happens that makes no sense to me. My girl is sort of wandering around baking cake and getting attacked and then suddenly boinking Shane. This is my problem, not Bob's, although I don't get his stuff, either. I keep sending him questions saying, "Why are they doing this?" and he's writing back, "You're hung up on MY scenes?" Well, yeah. I need to get the whole thing. These people are doing a lot of stuff but I can't figure out why.
This makes him insane. For a year and a half now he's been trying to deal with my extremely non-linear process without screaming obscenities at me (which is more than I do for him, so he really is a gentleman), and we're behind on Agnes and I'm still going, "I don't know, I just don't HAVE it yet."
I think it's safe to say that Robert is taking one for the team right now because he's repressing all that rage when what he really wants to do is freaking kill me.
So now I'm going to step away from the computer because Bob hasn't written an e-mail for the last half hour even though I sent him lots of questions which means he's beating his head into the drywall and taking my name in vain. This is a good time for me to go back to the nice comfy chair in my bedroom and tell myself the story again. "This is a story about Agnes who needs . . ."' Everytime I tell it, it gets clearer, but trying telling Bob that. "Don't tell it," he'll say. "WRITE IT."
In a minute.
"This is a story about Agnes who . . ."
30 Comments:
I always have to talk things through. When I was in high school, I would sit down with my English teacher every paper and just talk about what I was going to write. I don't know what it is, I just can't think on paper. Maybe it's a female thing?
I suspect he's sniffing his dog. I imagine that brings him back from the brink
Yep. It's one of the differences between guys and the gals. We HAVE to talk about it, and out loud. We usually know the answer but we have to voice our thoughts before the realization sinks in and we can totally grasp the concept. I try talking to the dog but she usually yawns and gets up and leaves the room.:) It's similar to going on a date, you have to try on at least ten outfits ...
Slightly off the point, I know, but I am always so taken aback by the way Americans say boink instead of bonk. It is a singularly unattractive word in either version, with its implications of violence. Can't they just screw, in a sweet old-fashioned way?
Okay, I shall keep quiet again now.
In the US, to bonk is to hit. Which I guess would work too, as "hitting it" is a new-ish slang for boinking.
Yep, it's bonk in Oz too. Of course bonk is also used for hitting as well as in "bonked him on the head with a hammer". Whenever I read boink I think of the energizer bunny going for it - dont know why. Kinda warped really.
Screw is good too although hang the old fashioned sweet way. A down and dirty one is much more fitting of the term I reckon.
'Bonk' dates back to the 1920s or so in British English as a term for 'to hit, strike, thump, clout', and of course, it still means that. It began to be used for copulation only around the 1980s. It is in a long tradition of violent verbs for the activity, but that still doesn't make it any more appealing.
What I find intriguing is how, why and when it mutated into 'boink' in American English. Possibly something to do with pronunciation issues: US English does not possess the short 'o' used in BE 'bonk' at all, so to Brits, the American pronunciation of it would sound like 'bahnk' anyway.
I didn't really mean that the screw should be sweet and old-fashioned - only that, compared with bonk/boink, the word was more established, and although it evokes related images of carpentry, at least it doesn't sound quite as painful as bonking. Maybe.
:-)
It's still one of Eric Partridge's "sadistic verbs of copulation," Tigress. What about something classy, like "His virile manroot searched out the core of her femininity"?
*Mole giggles and runs away*
I want a writing process like Bob's for my next birthday.
*pokes brain* Be linear, damn you!
Yikes! I've been here three times today! Got to stop this. Talking about manroot, in the land of Oz "root" is an expression for boink, among the crude and uneducated of course. ;) When I was young and living in OZ (as my kids would say BTW~before the wheel) there was an American song, Tooty Fruity, the boys used to sing "Tooty Fruity I wanta rooty" and laugh like hell. They were so crude! It always made me think of pigs rooting in mud. I'll take the harmless old boink any day.
Yes, 'root' is an interesting one. It does not have that meaning in British English, but the suggestion has been made that it is an alteration or evolution of rut, which seems quite a persuasive argument to me. The word 'rutting' can be, and sometimes is, applied to enthusiastic copulation amongst species (including humans) other than those that have a seasonal rut. Indeed, I have even seen 'rut' and its forms used as a euphemism for 'f**k', even in the swearing/exclamation sense, as in, 'will this rutting concert never come to an end?'
Tal - yes, exactly. When a new (last 20 years, at most) word is introduced for the process, it seems such a shame that it is yet another slapping, striking, thumping, hitting one. Plus ça change...
Root, "rut" hmm, so that's where we Aussies got the word and screwed it up. : ) It's like the comedian, Mike Myers, in the dumb movie Flying High, saying "you put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable" only he says. "em-fas-is" and "sill-abb-ill."
I'm a Brit and I've always thought as bonk as a fairly tame term for sex. Bonking sounds more fun than any of the other terms. I've never associated it with hitting--like being 'cool' isn't associated with temperature.
Slang has its own rules, surely?
"Bonking sounds more fun than any of the other terms. I've never associated it with hitting."
Let me guess: are you under 30? ;-)
If so, you may have heard 'bonk' used only as a term for sexual intercourse, because now it has acquired that meaning, people are a bit cautious about using the word with its basic meaning, and saying things like, 'she bonked him over the head with a rolling-pin' or 'he bonked the ball straight through next-door's window'. It was always colloquial, of course, and probably of imitative origin (the sound of something being struck), but trust me, the word means 'hit'.
Language changes and evolves all the time, both formal, written language and informal, colloquial style.
The point that Talpianna and I have commented upon - and which is a well-known fact - is that many of the vulgar or colloquial words for sex are associated with pain and violence in some form, including f**k, the probable Indo-European root of which also meant 'to strike'. In that sense, then, 'bonk' is squarely in a very ancient tradition.
Not only do I dislike the implications, but I think that 'bonk', even when used in its original sense, is an ugly word. And 'boink' is even uglier!
:-)
I never thought of "boink" as being violent. It sounds sort of... springy and fun!
Well as much as I'd like to be under 30--I'm not. Nice try though. ;-)
You're right, you point is a well known fact and I really don't think screw is any nicer. My female friends all say bonking and it has never offended me. Maybe we should all play it safe and say 'making love'?
Actually, I think F**K has an entirely different origin. Back in the early days, when non-married sex was against the law, police officers would write tickets For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. They would abbreviate it F.U.C.K.
Just what I have heard...
This is probably not the place to go in detail into the etymology of f**k, a subject that has been extensively researched and debated. But it is a word of considerable antiquity, and has cognates in most Germanic languages; I'm afraid the acronym version is a fantasy, albeit a clever one, k.l.! The Latin term is connected too, namely futuere, and there must be a common Indo-European origin.
'Screw' is a 20th-century colloquialism, as is 'bang'. 'Knock' is one that is no longer used much, as far as I know. But do you all see a pattern here? 'Bonk' fits it.
;-)
Toni - what word did you use, colloquially, before 'bonk' started to mean, uh, screw?
:-D :-D
I seem to recall reading somewhere that the writers of the sitcom Cheers invented "boink". Although they have to have used "bonk" as a basis, at least unconsciously.
I kind of like them both. I realize "bonk" is a variant of "hit", but it's always struck me as a very mild kind of hitting. Like the puppy in the commercial getting bonked on the head with a roll of toilet paper. Overtones of the cartoonish "boing!"
I always thought of boink in two ways, as one of those words that describe sounds, (specifically something small falling into water) and as something used for comic effect (Calvin and Hobbes--"Scientific Progress Goes Boink"). So when Jenny used it as a euphemism for sex, it kind of surprised me. (It also surprised my seventeen-year old son.) But it did sound kind of comical, in a snarky way, so I adjusted. After reading the discussion on boink's relationship to hitting (which makes sense, I'm not doubting anyone), my brain hurts. And all I can think right now is that if you drop the b, you're left with oink, which, in American English, is what pigs say.
Oink! LOL
Hmmm... I do believe the expression when I was growing up was the non violent term 'having it off' LOL. And I guess for more non violence there's always shagging.
Here's to Jenny's boinking (and now I can't get the duracell bunny out of my mind either)
And just for fun :) .. another use of the word 'bonk' from my neck of the woods -- Bonk: To run out of energy or 'hit the wall' ... in mountain biking parlance. As in -- "I was bonking up the trail" :) or -- "I used the chairlift to take the bonk out of going up."
Language is a fascinating and evolving thing.
I have seen the cycling meaning of 'bonk' in the dictionary, but have never actually heard it used. It is an older meaning than the sexual one, of course.
'Shag' is a lot older (18th century) in BE, though in American English, it is sometimes conflated or confused with 'snag' (as in catching or grabbing something as it goes past). This leads to another set of interesting and eyebrow-raising AE/BE misunderstandings! :-)
:-D
I'm surprised the Brits use "knock" as slang for sex given the well-advertised British colloquial offer to "knock you up in the morning," which they SAID meant come by and knock on the door. I always suspected that y'all were just trying to put one over on the idiot Yanks--now I have further proof.
Of course, "knocking boots" was popular slang in the US during the last decade, but I haven't heard the term used lately.
Oh, 'knock' is not in current use. I don't remember it in my own lifetime, which takes it back before the middle of the 20th century.
And in any case, it must always be clearly distinguished from knock off, knock out, knock back, knock up, knock over, knock down, knock about, knock around...
Not to mention 'knockers', of course.
:-D :-D
So, if you install shag carpeting...?
I've heard "knocking shop" as rather old fashioned BE (I think) slang for a brothel.
(Incidentally, it took me three tries on this post before I could decipher the code letters correctly.)
In Australia my father's generation used knocking off for f**king. It never seemed to me that this was an activity involving two people because the expression would be, such and such is knocking off so and so. I also used to wonder where you fell after you were knocked off.
'Knock off' in BE means (1) the obvious meaning, e.g. pushing an object off a shelf, and (2) stopping doing something.
'We knock off work at 5 pm'.
English may be a global language, but my goodness, the regional variations are legion!
:-)
"Knock it off!" also means "Quit that!" When my cats are strolling along the top of my bookcase headboard, I often tell them to knock it off. Unfortunately, they seem to understand it in the first sense the Tigress just mentioned.
Must be a feline thing....
"Knock off" also means to kill someone...
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