I swear a lot, and I swear well. I take pride in my proficiency in profanity. I was taught to swear by (in no particular order) Billy Connolly, the Twelfth Man, my seedy uncle Dino who farms avocados, bananas, lychees and obscenities up in the hills behind Lismore, a floor full of engineers and industrial chemists in my first year at college, and above all else, Derek and Clive. Indeed, as a professional profaner of some repute I find myself drawn to other highly credentialled swearers, both in my social and in my professional life.
My current boss uses swearing for emphasis, clarity, comic relief and simply for punctuation in the finest Antipodean tradition and has even been bestowed the honorary title of "King of the Sweary People" by fellow academics. The lab is accepting tenders from interested and talented fabricators for a custom-designed crown for HRF'nH Peter I as we speak. Or we may just chip in for a kids meal from Burger King and permanent-texta a 'G' over the first 'R' on the little grease-stained cardboard crown thingy.The true talent in swearing, of course, is the art of neologism - the invention of new and exciting swear words which offend in new and exciting ways. As evolution will tell you, the pathway to new function is by reshuffling old functions in new combinations or in new niches; and as the Germans will tell you, why have the inefficiency of five separate words outlining your meaning when smashing them into each other in a massive conjugated freight-train of verbiage gets your point across with typical Teutonic force. Try it at home, or at work, or the next time some individual of dubious parentage cuts you up in traffic: just conjugate all your favourite epithets at once - in any order - and let fly. It's liberating. And educational.
Of course, there are downsides to heavy use of the more gutteral verbs, nouns and adjectives. It does tend to attract attention... such as when you are the only one at a table of ten asked to keep quiet by the waitress at the Thai place your work has invaded, many pints of Speights and bottles of red to the good, for a lab outing. Or when your two year old suddenly starts pronouncing 'Truck' with an F. Loudly and repeatedly. On such occasions it is perhaps wise to reflect and reconsider whether quite so much profanity actually adds value to one's day-to-day quality of life, or of employment, what with all that dropping of a dozen F-bombs into a five minute conversation on cricket and league with the Head of Department at Friday drinks.
However, be warned. For subtracting the Old Norse from one's vocabulary can end up with there being very few words left. It did for me. I tried it on Monday and people asked if I had laryngitis. Not so, I'd just made a bet with myself that I could give up swearing cold-turkey, and furthermore, any occasion on which I did drop one of the Seven Words You Can't Say On Television would mean a day on which I would be barred from savouring an after-work beer at the close of the day. (Seeing as though the six handles of Speights and bottle of Taylors '07 Promised Land over dinner probably contributed somewhat to the blue tinge to the air around me on Friday night, probably not a bad idea to give the grog a break too.) The results: Based on my efforts of Monday my next beer will have to wait until Friday. Of next week. Furthermore, based on my redoubled efforts of Tuesday I have decided to declare a Swearing Amnesty while the new policy is being adapted to, lest I forget what beer looks like let alone tastes of. Talk of a Swearword Buy-Back Scheme is, however, a bit premature.
So premature, in fact, that I've chucked in the towel. I'd settle, and to be fair have settled, for just swearing less. Or, at least, being aware of when I'm actually swearing, rather than using F-bombs for commas and only being mildly aware of the fact. So the swear jar has been emptied for beer money and the language is back to salty sailor talk - though not before the publication of the first ever edition of the World of Bollocks to not include any swearing whatsover - and that in a blog about swearing, is an achievement that can only be described as pretty fuckin' sweet.
Jesus suffering fuck, it was going so well.
Arsefisting cockburglaring cuntmuppet.
The Doctor is OUT to wash his mouth out with soap and water.
