Thursday, June 07, 2007

It's OK to Say Sh@#$!# on TV

It's OK to Say Sh@#$!# on TV

How is that we can say "excrement" without blushing, even though it refers to the same thing as "shit"? If it's the *shit* we object, shouldn't we ban "excrement" and 'feces" and "doodoo" and "poo" as well?

A word cannot be disgusting. It's just a noise. Shit can be disgusting, but if you need to talk about it, whatever word you use still refers to the same object.

Finally, mostly of the time when we say "fuck" or "shit", we aren't even talking about intercourse or excrement. We are saying "I don't care what they think" or "I think this is terrible food" or "that was an incredible dinner" or "ouch", etc. When I was a kid I got into big trouble for using the word "crud". I had no idea why, until my mother finally admitted that when SHE was a kid, "crud" meant the same as "shit". Can you imagine complaining about somebody saying "crud" today?

Words are only the tool for referring to what we want to talk about. They cannot be "bad" or "good" or "evil" or "disgusting" or "cool".

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Quote

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together.
-Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)