Saturday, August 14, 2010

We Need New Curse Words

So I'm watching a movie last night and every other word is an F-bomb. 

I get it. I realize the movie was supposed to depict people in real life.  And I'm sure people speak that way in many, many circles in which I do not travel. Don't get me wrong. I can curse like a sailor. Which makes sense - I AM a pirate. And as peaceful as I may be...I still need a good curse word for when I stub my toe.  It happens.

But the F-bombs really got to me. I couldn't get used to them. I cringed every time I heard them. This led to self reflection. Why am I cringing? Why am I letting this particular word offend me? They aren't talking to me. I shouldn't take it personally.

So I tried to salvage the rest of the movie by playing a little game in my head. I tried to think of the least offensive word I could. Then, in my mind, I substituted that word for the F-bomb every time they used it. So now the movie was full of the word "puppy."

"You mother puppy! Why the puppy did you do that!!! You must be out of your puppy mind!!"

That's when it hit me. I hadn't been offended at all by the F-bomb. Heck! I love puppies...and I got really tired of hearing it over and over.

No, I wasn't offended at all. I was bored. 

Bored out of my puppy mind.

The F-bomb is soooo overused. In fact, it is rarely used for the purpose in which it was created. I mean, seriously,  "Why the F-bomb did you do that?" doesn't even make sense.

Twenty five years ago, I remember overhearing a five year old use the F-bomb to a younger child. I had to laugh. It was so outrageous. I asked the five year old, "Do you even know what that word means?" He looked me in the eye and replied "well, it's like making love. But you don't really mean it.".

I would like to think that child has grown up to be a Professor of English somewhere. He certainly had a command of the English language at a very young age. 

And yet that was twenty five years ago. It doesn't offend any more. It's used in the strangest of word combinations. It's like using like in like every sentence. Makes no sense and gets very tiring.

So I'm ready for new curse words. Something fresh. Maybe a funny sounding word like "snorket" and it can mean something vile and crude. I think it would take me a while to get tired of "snorket." It's kind of fun to say. I'll try it in a movie:

Here's a line from the movie Superbad: "McLovin's never existed because that's a made up dumb SNORKET FAIRY TALE NAME, YOU SNORKET!

I think snorket works! (excuse my language).

1 comment:

  1. I just used "snorket" in a pirate novilla I;m writing. thanks for the inspiration :)

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