Half-Fast, Whole F-Word

If you needed proof that “ass” and its variants (kick-ass, bad-ass, Big Ass) have become unexceptional in mainstream US advertising, here’s a new Verizon ad that tells customers they can “stop living with half-fast Internet.”

Geddit? “Half-assed,” haha.

Update, December 2014: the video I originally embedded is no longer available, but the campaign continues.

“Don't have a half-fast holiday.”

Via Language Log.The comments are worth reading.

For additional examples of commercial near-profanity, see Booking.com’s “Abso-Booking-Lutely,” Sheets Energy Strips “I Take a Sheet in the Pool,”  Peet’s Coffee and Tea’s “Do You Give a Cup?” and Kmart’s “Ship My Pants.”

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Meanwhile, a new cookbook from Rodale—yes, that Rodale, 84 years old and famous for healthy-living publications like Women’s Health and Prevention—says F-U to innuendo and drives straight into foul territory.

Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook. Tagline: “Eat like you give a fuck.” Via AdFreak.

 

It’s a real cookbook, and there’s a real trailer for it. As the header warns, the language is “explicit”—and also very funny. The ad team has clearly paid attention to pharmaceutical advertising.

  

“Consult your doctor or use common fucking sense.”

 

The Thug Kitchen website minces nectarines but not words.

Hey, you missed a fucking apostrophe there!

 

I can’t wait to read the review by Cursing Mommy.

Comments

[Jessica]

In a world full of over-apostrophizing, why, oh why, can't they put it in when it's 99.9% never wrong?

I mind the profanity far less in the book usage, and in the clever uses like "half-fast" than I do with profanity for its own sake, like the FCUK brand or Effen vodka. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, as I always say.

[Nancy Davis Kho]

The only thug kitchen I'm interested in is Auntie Fee's. She was totally robbed of the Thug Kitchen book contract. https://www.youtube.com/user/auntyfee

[Nancy Friedman]

Nancy Davis Kho: Auntie Fee wuz robbed!

[Mike]

There's a current TV commercial for a gaming website that offers the chance to win a "shipload of cash". Can I remember the name?--no, but the tagline is memorable.