Before you go all-out puritan on me, this is a column on semantics.
I thought I misheard it, but I didn't: "You're cockblocking me" -- or words to that effect, on "Million-Dollar Real Estate" or whatever that show is on Bravo. (It could be called any number of similar names on any number of other so-called reality-show*** channels.)
Cockblock?
"Did he say 'cockblocking'? What's that?" I asked a younger person in my family who was watching the show. She attempted to define it diplomatically and pointed me to the Urban Dictionary, which is a lexicographer's delight. Cockblocking apparently refers to one's thwarting another's sexual-liaison opportunity. It seems to be used by men and women. Of course, for the next hour or so I used cocblock out loud in every conceivable manner, just because I'm addictive and compulsive and socially unruly and wanted to have some semantic antics. (Putting on my quasi-academic robes, I wonder if it was indirectly derived from the term "shotblock" in basketball.)
It was suggested that perhaps I was "cockblocked by God" after I mentioned at dinner (shortly afterwards at Panera) my seminary background and double life in high school as a "pious" acolyte who sometimes hid porn magazines (probably coffee-table reading these days) as most, or at least some, teenage boys routinely did in those days. (Notice how I'm still struggling with Catholic guilt, at least a little.) But residual or shadow guilt did not prevent me from literally LOLing about this characterization.
Imagine if "cockblock" were to be used in a presidential debate. That'd be honest, funny, and semantically exciting.
"Mr. Romney, you and your anti-everything party not only cockblocked health-care reform but every jobs stimulus we offered. You're a bunch of cockblockers. You've cockblocked the American people."
No, it won't happen.
2 comments:
Cockblockers. Hmm. Sounds like a game show on The Playboy Channel. Oh, if only Bill Cullen were still alive.
I myself have sometimes been fascinated by the term "cold cock." (I mean this as a verb, of course.)
I was a fan of the series "Cold Case," in which a squad would reopen really old murder cases.
I had an idea for a spinoff (Hey, Law and Order had spinoffs, right?) called "Cold Cock Case," in which every week some guy would come in and tell the cops how some guy kicked him in the nuts 30 years ago but he couldn't see who it was because the guy got away. This would lead to the squad tracking down the cold cocker so the cold cockee could get some "closure." (And, more than likely, get in a pretty good kick for himself.)
If Dick Wolf is reading this, I'm available.
That a great cockamamie suggestion, Mark.
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