Well what do you know. I finished my dive stuff and can actually write a little bit more tonight.
Some people have commented on my language. Actually, my sister and the person who used to share an office with me at TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) have told me repeatedly to clean up my blogs. The word that bothers them starts with an f, ends with a k, and has a c and a u in the middle. Also all the variants, like mother before starts with an f ends in a k and has a c and a u in the middle followed by er. In fact, my old office mate actually threatened to quit reading my stuff if I continued to use starts with an f, ends with a k, and has a c and a u in the middle. Now shit and bullshit is OK because that is part of the vernacular. Plus, he told me I could use them. In case Aaron is reading, the vernacular is the everyday use of language. The spoken or narrative as opposed to the literary. Oh, wait a minute. He's probably watching Star Trek reruns and commenting on how the black guys are always the ones who get killed.
Now I can write good literary prose when I put my mind to it. I was taught to not use contractions and the pronoun you. For example: When trying to write good prose you don't use contractions and you don't use the pronoun you. The way I was taught to write at Hixson Junior High School and Webster Groves Public High School in Webster Groves, Missouri that sentence would read: When trying to write good prose (actually, they would have had me use 'write prose well')one does not use contractions and one does not use the pronoun you. Spelling and grammar were pounded into our young pliable brains. After the first theme/essay, when I learned what the teacher wanted, I could usually write A papers. Yeah, but no one talks like that. I try to write like people talk. Hence, the gonna's and wanna's. And since I write like people talk, and not just like I talk, but how most people in America talk, some profanity slips in.
I blame profanity entering the vernacular on us baby boomers. The worst word I ever heard either of my parents say as I was growing up was damn, and that was rare and never with God in front of it. I never heard them use shit and I never, ever heard either of them use any racial epithets. Never. And if my sister and I did, we would have been knocked into the middle of next week.
My father told me that cursing was the crutch of the conversational cripple. He also told me that there was a time and a place for it. He worked for the railroad at one time and he told me that when he was at work, he cursed like a sailor. I was in the Navy for four years. I know how sailors curse. My father also told me you don't (Look. Two literary violations!) curse around women and children. So, imagine my shock, when working in a computer room twenty years ago, I heard female operators use language that could cause paint to peel off a wall. And, I found this type of language to become more common. A few years back, I even heard my mother say shit.
So, since we have become so inured to profanity, sometimes I throw it in for shock value. Other times I throw it in because I just can't starts with an f, ends with a k, and has a c and a u in the middle ing help it.
Some of my readers ask me how I can read some of the tripe by people like Robert Jensen (I have since found out he is a hate America firster along the lines of Noam Chomsky) or Molly Ivins (She still has not gotten over her buddy Ann Richards losing to Dubya) without my head exploding. I look on stuff like that as an opportunity. Unfortunately, midway through an incredibly brilliant analysis of the bullshit I'm reading, I occasionally go berserk. Like, f'rinstance, Robert Jensens's use of the words humanity and Palestinians in the same sentence without crimes against and by the.
So when that happens, I can usually destroy my keyboard because I begin to start pounding on it with great force or, I can throw in a safety valve. Hence the other night when Robert Jensen wrote
but because the argument I had made about the humanity of the Palestinians didn't seem to matter to him.
My response was
Humanity of the Palestinians? Hu-starts with an f, ends with a k, and has a c and a u in the middle followed by ing-manity of the Palestinians?
I mean, when I hear something so incredibly outrageous as that, I just totally lose all self control. I will promise to try and do better in the future.
So, if I use starts with an f, ends with a k, and has a c and a u in the middle you'll know that's it's either my keyboard or a dirty word.
Keyboards cost money.
Posted by denny at August 14, 2002 09:40 PM