Ever since Garry Trudeau stopped doing daily strips, the online outlet for Doonesbury has been running old strips in its place. Here is today’s (July 24 --if you’re reading this on a day other than July 24, you can navigate to it using the calendar), which is from 1984:
I’m trying to figure out what Boopsie is referring to in the last panel, but can’t come up with anything. However, I’m thinking I may be reading too much into it, and she’s not talking about anything real – the joke is that she isn’t supposed to be saying anything.
Here’s a vote for MacGuffin. The joke is that B.D. is so adamant about selling the salacious details of their lifestyle to trash “journalists.”
The line in the last panel is equivalent to Pinky saying “I think so, Brain. But where are we going to get three dozen owls and a swimming pool filled with mayonnaise?”
I don’t know how well known the term was in 1984. I assume not well known or that particular strip would have generated some controversy. But Trudeau might have known it and slipped it in. Most of his critics concentrated on his political statements and wouldn’t have been looking for veiled references to explicit sexual acts.
Exactly. The whole joke is that she’s describing something so outré that we don’t recognize it from her description; it’s outside our experience. If we could guess what she was talking about, the strip would be much less funny.
Just an off-hand guess, but Boopsie’s comment could be an oblique reference to the 1984 Summer Olympics which took place in L.A. later that summer, and would have been big news at the time. (The U.S. had boycotted the 1980 Olympics and this was their ‘comeback’ year, so anything connected with competitive sports was a big deal.)
I was actually thinking of opening a thread like this. I thought the joke was that Boopsie was referring to something unidentifiable, but was wondering if I had missed something.
I may have heard the term before South Park began using it in Terrance and Philip episodes, but certainly wasn’t aware of it in the 70s and 80s. We used the more descriptive “pussy fart” back then.
In any case, queefing may be shocking but not really depraved, and it isn’t something you specifically do in the shallow end of a pool.
Based on the suggestions so far, I’m still going to go with unidentifiable.