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Laird Jokula

Posted by Lewis on September 26, 2007

In Reply to: Jockular? posted by pamela on September 25, 2007

: : : : : : : I just read Optop us from Sunday's comics (9/23). One character talks about top hedge managers who make big bucks for fooling with numbers all day. He then says we should kiss an American hero like that... but not in the Biblical sense... Ous then goes to a classroom and kisses a teacher and says "twerent in the biblical sense". My ques.ion What does "in the Biblical sense" mean?

: : : : : : This phrase is usually attached to "know." In the King James translation of the Bible, which was the most common one read by Protestants until a few decades ago, "to know" meant "to have sexual intercourse with." "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD" (Genesis 4:1). So to know in the biblical sense is to be sexually intimate. This comic writer has extended the phrase to kissing. The character in the strip kissed his teacher, but not romantically. Maybe it was a quick peck on the cheek. ~rb

: : : : : I'm inclined to think the cartoonist simply used the phrase incorrectly. I'm unable to imagine how you could kiss someone "in the Biblical sense." That being the case, a kiss NOT in the Biblical sense makes no sense.
: : : : : SS

: : : : Here, to the right of the pond, "not in the Biblical sense" was rather in vogue among jokers a few years ago. You'd say "do you know X?" and he (it was almost always "he") would say "Yes - but not in the Biblical sense." So it wouldn't surprise me to find this tired old joke stretched to cover kissing. (VSD)

: : : And here in Australia it went even further - "I like him - not in the Biblical sense"; "He's a good guy .. . I don't mean that in the Biblical sense. Haw. Haw." - jockular types can append "in the Biblical sense" to almost anything for faint, instant smut. The lack of sense never got in the way. Pamela

: : "Jockular" - is that a Scottish dialect?

: : L

:
: I was going to type jockey (i.e. joke-ee, not the horse rider), but I couldn't think how to spell it (probably because there is no such word). So I risked using a "big word" instead and got it wrong. I say "big word" because the only other time I can recall ever saying "jocular" (at a work Christmas party) there was general agreement that "Pamela should get her hand off it" (meaning: Pamela should stop using fancy pretentious words. I had said "sobriety" earlier, and enough was enough apparently). So now it's twice bitten for me on "jocular". Pamela

: Mind you, I am picturing a kilted vampire. Pamela

I'd spell it "Jokula" for the kilted vampire.

Actually, "Highlander" was very like a vampire tale - immortals and the "last one standing" gets the prize of mortality. in some canons of vamp literature, killing the older vampire destroys the power of all those vamps that particular vampire had caused to become undead. wiping out the rest of the immortal warriors is pretty similar.

L

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