Ods Bodkins

Ah bugger, I'm googable now. From now on I'm gonna have to watch my cussin'.

Speaking of which, a friend & I were discussing the bizarreness of swear words. In our culture it's most often the word itself that is objected to, rather than the meaning of the word. (No surprise there, we're a shallow people.) So whereas "fuck" is outlawed from the public domain, "intercourse," "fornication," & "reproduction" are not. Further, you can often say "fuck" all you want as long as you bleep it. Which means everybody knows what you've just said & your intention still comes across. The only people who don't know it are those who don't know what the word means anyhow. And they'll learn soon enough, especially if you tempt them by withholding it. Point is, the information is still getting across. You've only tampered with the name the information is going under. To me this is like having a Red Scare where no one minds if you dabble in Marxism, so long as you avoid using the word "Marxism" while explaining your economic theories. Very backwards.

Creating a firestorm about swearing naturally fuels the potency of the words themselves. You'll notice "gadzooks" doesn't cause much of a rise in blood pressure these days, though at one point in history uttering something along the lines of "God's hooks" was pretty effin' vulgar. Seems as though as we've lost our interest in the word, it subsequently lost its teeth. We now regard the word as quaint. Imagine that.

On a related note, nipples are apparently illegal in North America. Correction: female nipples. Despite the fact that nearly everyone at one point drank from them. Cleavage is fine, it seems, but the areola itself is right out. Bras are okay, though they imply that breasts will be contained within. Everyone can see that the breast is there, but we must shield it from our vision or it might stir up unholy thoughts & turn us into slavering rapists. By the same logic, shouldn't we make food similarly hidden? When I'm hungry & I spot a juicy looking cheeseburger, it produces a form of lust. Then I scarf down a gluttonous amount of cheeseburgers, keel over from high cholesterol, & wind up in Heck. Far more virtuous it would be to avoid the temptations of the cheeseburger, faint from hunger, & end up in Heaven.

Oh... except that there ain't no Heaven or Heck. Them's fables from some old book. Instead you wind up six feet under with either a size-large casket or a size-small. With swear words graffitied on your tombstone.