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[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 8:18 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:

> "Ratfucking" goes back to at least the early '60s

I first heard "rratfuck" in the Army in 1961. It was used as part of
the phrase, "Shitty-assed ratfuck." One day, a bunch of EM were
sitting around with nothing to do - we were supposed to be learning to
interpret on the fly raw intercepted Russian voice-commo, which, when
first heard by the untrained ear, sounded like AM radio in a
thunderstorm - when someone suggested that we invent a new obscenity
that would be not be transparent to the NCO's and officers. The cited
phrase, spoken as "SARF!" - was agreed upon.

Yeah, I know. Not particularly Byronic, but SARF! We weren't being graded on it.

In addition, there was the onomatopoetic "Thoob!", invented to
represent the sound of ejaculation. It was never spoken, but was often
written. There was a level of secrecy known as "SECRET [codeword],"
used in the Agency to prevent the theft of dictionaries, wordlists,
etc., by those looking to save a buck or two while completing that
thesis. Since there was no right to privacy, an EM and all his
possessions could be searched by the duty officer / officer of the day
at any time, on a whim. If anything marked SECRET was found among your
possessions, that was your ass.

A codeword, by definition, consisted of any three consonants and any
two vowels combined so as to be pronounceable. The official, default
codeword was SECRET KIMBO. We replaced it with SECRET THOOB.

The interpreting of a voice-intercept was bejargoned as "pulling it out."

--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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