That Damn Profanity

Some clean words about dirty words…

On occasion (which actually means pretty much anytime I write something) I will use a profanity and on other occasions (which in this case means about once a year) someone will object to my use of profanity and I’m guessing you know what I think those people and the horses they rode in on can go do with themselves.

One of the benefits of having no boss and writing for your own pleasure is being able to use the exact words you want to use and if you were a psychologist or psychiatrist right about now you’d ask me to explain why I want to use profanity and then charge me $100 an hour for having to stay awake while I bored the shit out of you with my answer.

(Actually, years ago I briefly saw a therapist and if how hard she was laughing at my complaints was any indication I gotta think I was wildly entertaining and the high point of her day, but being a professional therapist she rejected my attempts to charge her for the experience.)

Also…just in case you haven’t tried it…therapy is awesome.

Someone has to sit there and listen to you whine for an hour and not interrupt with their own list of complaints? Well worth the money and I’d do it every day for the rest of my life if I could afford it.

Somebody (I believe it was Charlie Sheen, but if it wasn’t Charlie it certainly sounds like something he’d say) was asked about paying women for sex and he said he wasn’t paying women for sex, he was paying women to leave after sex and I feel pretty much the same way about therapy. You could tell your troubles to a friend for free, but your friend might be a blabbermouth so instead you pay a therapist to listen and then not tell everybody all the fucked-up things you told them.

And now back to those apparently unavoidable cuss words.

The Seven Dirty Words

I saw one of the four greatest standup comedians in history (the other three are Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle and Donald Trump) do his act live a few times and George always did his “Seven Dirty Words” bit and each time made a convincing argument that getting freaked out by a series of sounds was kinda stupid.

If you’ve never heard Carlin perform the bit, here it is:

As George pointed out in one performance, you can also be upset by the exact same words if they’re uttered in the wrong order:

“You can prick your finger, but you can’t finger your prick.”

Same words, same sounds, but say them in the wrong order and they go from being acceptable in polite company to being offensive and frankly, Scarlett, when I say “polite company” I’m actually thinking of people with a good-sized stick up their ass, who have Missionary-Position Sex in the dark once every Leap Year whether they want to or not, get it over with as quickly as possible and then never mention it again because the whole experience was so distasteful.

I’m just guessing, but it seems likely that these are the same people who buy decorative soaps that you’re never supposed to actually use and have a “good set of towels” just in case the Duke of Edinburgh drops by for lunch and if you’re not the Duke or at least an Earl or maybe even the Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl, they’ll lose their shit if you and your Dirty Commoner Hands touch the good towels or a decorative soap shaped like a gladiola.    

(If you didn’t get the Duke of Earl joke, this video will explain it, plus you get to hear some pretty good doo-wop music.)

Friggin, frickin and frackin

George Carlin is pretty much dead these days so I guess I’ll have to be the one to point out that when someone uses words like “friggin” or “frickin” or “frackin” – which are socially acceptable – they’re making sounds similar to the word “fucking” which isn’t.

So they want you to know they actually mean “fucking” without uttering the real word because if they use the real word they’re deathly afraid they’re going to burst into flames and/or turn into a pillar of salt, Go Directly to Jail Without Passing Go and Collecting $200 and as a final punishment you might send them to the decorative soap store to buy more soap shaped like rose buds or mint leaves and while you drive there and back you need to: “Think about what you’ve done, Mister.”

In any case…

The acceptable version and the profane version all make you think the same thing, but use the wrong vowel – in this case it’s the letter “u” – and now you need to be banished and disinvited to the Duke of Edinburgh lunches for the foreseeable future.

(OK, on my first attempt I typed the “Dike of Edinburgh” which for my money would be a way more entertaining social occasion and I’d hate to miss out on that meal.)

I once read a story about a primitive tribe discovered in the Amazon jungle that had developed a complex social hierarchy and the more important tribe members wore a piece of colored cloth around their neck that had to be dyed and knotted in a certain way to let the other tribe members know they were a Kind of a Big Deal and then the writer of the story said, surprise; there is no Amazon tribe, I’m actually talking about neckties.

Put a group of people on a desert island and before long they’ll develop a social hierarchy so some people can feel superior to other people and I believe Dr. Seuss explained all that brilliantly in his classic story about Star-Bellied Sneetches and if you don’t get that reference you need to stop reading this right now this minute and go read the much more entertaining Dr. Seuss book. 

Anyway…

You can say “friggin” instead of dropping an F-Bomb if you’re worried about what the Star-Bellied Sneetches at the country club think of you and the same goes for “goldurn” and “goshdarnit” because they’re words used by people who are afraid to say “god dammit” which brings up the question of “dagnabit” which I’d advise you not to use at all unless you’re making a Bugs Bunny cartoon and playing the part of Yosemite Sam.

The point being all those fake words were created to make you think of the profane words they’re emulating because we’ve decided some sounds are offensive so you shouldn’t make them, but apparently it’s OK for everybody to think about the offensive words and sounds and then go have a small glass of dry sherry while you calm down, but be careful where you sit because the people upset about certain words are also the same people who cover their couches with plastic.

Can’t and certainly have no desire to speak for everybody, but when a grown adult says they have to go make “wee-wee” or “poo-poo” I lose a certain amount of respect for them.  

BTW: Just to be clear, we’re definitely not talking about communicating with kids which is a totally different audience and our delicate and precious children should learn about profanity and sex in the traditional American way; being wildly misinformed by another fourth-grader on a school playground and looking at their father’s porn magazines, which I’m not sure exist anymore so these days they probably need to take a good, long gander at dad’s Google search history.

But when it comes to grown-ups I prefer they quit dancing around the subject and say what they mean which isn’t surprising because I’m also irritated by passive/aggressive people and if I have to choose between the two I’d much rather deal with aggressive/aggressive people because at least you know what the real issues are.

If you need a verbal halfway-house until you feel strong enough to use a full-strength profanity all on its own you can imitate a Texan and say, “I gotta piss like a Russian racehorse.” (A “wounded wolf” or a “wild wolverine” are also acceptable…I’ve heard both…I’m guessing the key is alliteration, but you might want to check that with an actual Texan or in this case, maybe a Tall, Tan, Talkative Texan.) 

One approach to writing

As I believe I mentioned in the second paragraph, a good therapist would want to know why I insist on using profanity and not let a comment like that slide and the fact that you haven’t brought it up again means you definitely suck as a therapist and I want at least part of my hundred-dollar-an-hour therapist fee back.

I’m well aware that there are other legitimate approaches to writing, but as I explained in a previous post, I’m shooting for an honest, straight-forward, natural style and using the words I use in real life and avoiding words I don’t use because I hate sounding like an editorial writer because they tend to be filled to the eyeballs with bullshit words from another century like “poppycock” and “balderdash” – words they would never use in Real Life unless they happened to be the Dike of Edinburgh.

On the other hand…

If you’re P.G. Wodehouse maybe you do use those words and then it would make sense to use them in your writing and now that I think about it, Jeeves would be unlikely to tell Bertie Wooster to go fuck himself even if he wanted to and if you don’t get that reference all I can say is that’s a bunch of “flapdoodle” and I say that without having any idea what “flapdoodle” means.

In conclusion: some Stoic philosophy

Time travel movies often depict a protagonist who wants to travel back in time to warn Lincoln to avoid Ford’s Theater or JFK not to go to Dallas or Leonardo DiCaprio not to get on the Titanic and avoid Kate Winslet like the plague because she was going to be a selfish asshole about sharing piano space, but if I had a time machine I’d want to travel back and find the 18-year-old me and warn him that for the rest of his life people were going to try to control him by giving or withholding their approval based on how close he comes to doing what they want him to do and maybe ask him to write down this line from Stoic philosopher Epictetus:  

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”

Once you figure out you can’t control other people (well, you can try, but you end up with some pretty unhappy people on both sides of that effort) the corresponding realization is they can’t control you either.

In a rational world – which we definitely haven’t achieved and looks like we never will – people would realize everybody gets to make their own choices and that being the case I’ll continue to use a profanity when it seems like the right word because I’m writing for adults and not writing children’s books, but I have no objection to anyone who doesn’t want to hear or read those words and decides to stop reading my stuff.

Which will give them more time to add to their decorative soap collection.