“Your gal ain’t doodly-squat”

Skimming social media recently, I came across posts reporting the death of R&B singer Billy “The Kid” Emerson at the age of 97. Though he would later renounce secular music and become a preacher, Emerson had a great run as a singer and songwriter in the 1950s, signing to Sun Records in its heyday. While Emerson never achieved the fame of labelmates like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, some of his songs have endured as rockabilly standards, perhaps most notably “Red Hot.” Emerson wrote and recorded “Red Hot” for Sun in 1955, though his single didn’t crack the charts.

“Red Hot” would become more famous when it was covered in 1957 by another Sun act, Billy Lee Riley & The Little Green Men. From there it entered the repertoire of many rockers, including the Beatles, who can be heard playing “Red Hot” in recordings at Hamburg’s Star Club in 1962.

“Red Hot” features Emerson’s immortal call-and-response refrain:

My gal is red hot
Your gal ain’t doodly-squat

Doodly-squat (meaning ‘nothing/anything at all’ or ‘an insignificant amount’) might seem like a mild topic for Strong Language, but there’s a lot going on under the surface of that frivolous-sounding word. The Oxford English Dictionary surmises that the doodly part comes from doodle as a slang term for ‘excrement,’ and the squat part comes from the use of that word as a verb meaning ‘to void excrement.’ Over time, doodly-squat would get eclipsed by the variant diddly-squat, which the OED calls a “probably euphemistic” alteration. Both doodly-squat and diddly-squat, as well as plain old squat, are prime examples of what linguists have called “vulgar minimizers” or “squatitives” (more on that later).

WTF are the “fboys” in “FBOY Island”?

Although it’s given all-caps styling in the title, FBOY Island, HBOMax’s first foray into reality TV, is not an initialism. Rather, it’s an abbreviation of, and a euphemism for, fuckboy. It’s an oddly diffident elision when you consider that HBO has been gleefully detonating F-bombs for a couple of decades.

I’ll get to the story behind the coyness—and to the history of fuckboy—in a bit. First, though, an introduction to the series, whose first three episodes premiered on July 29 and which will continue through August 12.

Yep, it’s another “dating” show—the title nods to Love Island, Paradise Island, and, for all of us 30 Rock fans, the wholly fictional and hilarious MILF Island—with a familiar setup. Three young women who have slightly different skin tones but are otherwise hard to tell apart (size 00, hair extensions, false eyelashes) are transported to a magnificent villa on a tropical island (not identified, but it’s Grand Cayman, and the villa costs $5,198 a night). So are 24 young men who appear to have spent vast amounts of time at the gym and the barber shop, and whose occupations include “bitcoin investor,” “CBD entrepreneur,” “TikToker,” “club promoter,” “talent agent,” “child care-slash-influencer,” and “exotic dancer-slash-realtor.”

Shit! Goddamn! Sing sweary songs and jam

It’s a couple of years since our last fuck shit stack of sweary songs, and almost five since we began this series at the Rotten Cocksuckers’ Ball. So it’s about fucking time we posted some more bawdy blues and mothercussin’ melodies.

Much of the audio below is NSFW, if that still means anything, but it straddles the range from super-profane to merely suggestive. Genre-wise it’s cheerfully all over the place, so if you don’t like one, try the next.

LaVern Baker and Jackie Wilson clearly enjoyed this party version of ‘Think Twice’:

I said you better think twice, Jackie
Before you call me a dirty ho
I’ve got news for you, little boy
Don’t fuck with me no mo’

Lana Del Fucking Rey!

Lana Del Rey, the depressed, addicted, nostalgic, resentful, mournful, louche musical genius voiced by Elizabeth Grant, has released her new album, and – even more than all her previous albums – it is an instant Strong Language classic.

Sluts

Last week, in response to the passage of draconian anti-abortion laws in several U.S. states, a Los Angeles–based makeup company announced that for four days it would be donating 100 percent of its revenue to organizations that support reproductive rights. The company, which was founded in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election “by a group of jaded romantics,” is no stranger to controversy. The provocation begins with the company name: Lipslut.

Pictured: Lipslut’s “F*ck Trump” shade. The company also sells “F*ck Kavanaugh” (named for the newest U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Brett “I Like Beer” Kavanaugh), “F*ck Hollywood,” “Notorious R.B.G.” (a tribute to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg), and a dark purple shade called — deep breath — “Leftylibglobalistsantifacommiesocialisthollyweirdopigs,” which takes its name from an internet troll’s insult.

Lipslut joins an increasing number of mainstream brand names, titles, and idioms that deploy the S-word. As of this writing there are 54 registered or pending SLUT trademarks in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database; while a few are put to risqué use (SLUTNATION.XXX), many are family friendly. Which means that slut—a wanton word throughout its history—may be shape-shifting yet again.