misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

In today's New York Post (which I have taken to blatantly reading on the subway without regard to fellow New Yorker's opinions of my intellectual capabilities), there was a op-ed piece by Andrea Peyser about the results of Anna Nicole Smith's autopsy. Unhappy with the autopsy not assigning proper blame to Anna Nicole Smith's own reckless behavior, Peyser angrily titled the negative piece: "Her death a mishap? My butt!"

In writing or speaking, there is nothing worse than the use of a "soft" word used in place of the expected "hard" one. My butt? As any self-respecting swearer knows, the proper terminology is "My ass". Anything less than that sounds fucking gay. My butt? Why not just go all the way gay, and say My tush! or My behind! There's a whole list of soft swear words that are supposed to be more socially acceptable replacements to the real ones. Other culprits are: Darn, Dang, Heck, Shoot, Crap, Poop, or, my new personal favorite, Fetch (as in What the fetch?)

If you don't have the fucking balls to use the real swear word, than you have no business using a replacement. "My butt" is not an acceptable replacement to "My ass". If you are not allowed to use the word "ass" in the NY Post, then come up with a different headline, something soft, like "Anna Nicole has no one to blame". Don't feign anger with a fake word, because you just look like a pansy, or, even worse, a piece of poop.

The particularly irritating element to these fake words is that they are used in EXACTLY the same way as the real words. Oh Darn! and Oh Fuck! express the exact same sentiments, only they use a different combination of letters. That is the problem with our perception of curse words: the words themselves hold absolutely no value, it is simply our interpretation of these words. So someone, some day, decided that the four-letter combination of F U C K was bad, distasteful, and forbidden. K U C F? No problem there. But rearrange, and the trouble starts. Even worse, "butt" refers to the exact same part of the body as "ass". So how the fuck is one worse than the other? How come someone can say "breast" on TV, but not "titties"? Same fleshy part of a woman's body, just using different letters. Penis? No problem. Cock? Call the FCC, even though it invokes the same image. You can point to my 8-inch penis, and call it a cock, schlong, dick, pocket rocket, or pecker, and it never changes what you are pointing at. So how come some of the references are dirty, and not others? Sex? Acceptable. Fucking? Never.

If you are going to ban one word, you have to ban them all. If people want to ban the word "Fuck", then they are morally obligated to ban all incarnations of it. Crap, shoot, darn. All should be equally liable. In theory, it is the equivalent to say saying you can't smoke in restaurants, but you can "take a drag." Or maybe it is illegal to "spit" on a police officer, but what about "blowing saliva"? Is that ok? Different words, so one should be better than the other, right?

Fuck. Shit. Bitch. Tits. Cock. Ass. Memorize these words. They are the only ones to use at all times. If you don't want to use these words, than don't use the sentence that begs their use. No more oh darn! for you. Now it is, "boy, i'm just really disappointed in that outcome!"

Fuckers.