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Monday, April 30, 2007
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Language Most Foul
Are you trying to tell me that you don't swear when speaking to your parents?
This was the question Pseudononymous posed to me the other day. I'm always caught off guard by people's shock towards the fact that, yes, I curb the Foul Language when my parents are within earshot.
And I guess it is a bit of a surprise coming from a guy like me, who not only doesn't bother to censor myself in any way in my writing, but has a nasty habit of saying "fuckin'" instead of "uh" when at a momentary loss for words. And yet, when any member of blood relation, either maternal or paternal that is not on the same level of the family tree as I, is a part of my audience in any way, I suddenly become the biggest PCP (Politically Correct Pussy) in the room.
And it's not even because it would upset them.
First of all, my parents are clearly not under any delusion that I don't ever cuss. They know that I watch movies, listen to music, use the internet, and occasionally come out from under my rock to associate with other members of humankind. They have even read quite a bit of my writing that employs as much socially realistic wordplay as I am capable of, complete with liberal use of the word "fuckhead" and it's many beautiful variations. Never once have they batted an eye.
Also, I would never accuse my parents of being linguistic saints. My father grew up in Mollala, Oregon. For those of you who are not familiar with Mollala, it's the kind of place that has one cell phone tower, no movie theaters, two grocery stores, every restaurant is family owned, and if you took the time to map out all of the degrees of separation, you'd find that everyone is related to each other, and given a long enough timeline, have all had sex with each other. It's the kind of place where everyone there Votes Republican and Subscribes to AOL, mainly because they are unaware of any alternatives.
So to think that, on the day he chose to leave this town, my father didn't actually mutter the words "Fuck this shithole" would be asinine and naive on my part.
My mother came from Grandview, Idaho. Snapshot of Grandview: As of today, all cell phone service stops approximately 15 miles before you reach the city limits. Cable companies also felt no need to lay cable out that far, and the phone companies haven't bothered upgrading the local switch past the "I think that's our ring, ma" stage. So your choices in ISP are 28k Dial-up or Satellite. The good thing about the satellite service there is that your line of sight is always clear. There are no fucking trees there, and the nearest mountain is in the next county over.
My mother grew up in this dustbowl, raising chickens, cattle, and horses on my grandparent's ranch. She branded bulls, saddlebroke broncos, and went to Ho-downs(sp?) with boys that began chewing tobacco immediately after being weened off the breast.
So, again, I would be a moron to think that my mother had never once brought up the subject of a bear, or a pope, shitting in the woods.
And yet, here we are. My mother, my father, and me. Never a blue word between us.
The fact is, it goes both ways. I never have quite gotten used to hearing people cuss around their parents. It's not that I think people shouldn't swear around their parents. But, it seems that somewhere in my life it was implanted into my head that people just don't swear around their parents. And anytime any of my friends do, it loosens my grip on reality a little.
I remember the fist time I visited the home of friend back in High School. I will call him Ferris, as was his codename when he later become the Founder and Lord On High of Project Spam Weasel (international).
After spending an hour or so playing video games, Ferris' Father arrived home and entered the main room. I saw him enter and waived, quietly waiting for Ferris to formally introduce me.
Instead, Ferris' father spoke first. "What are you two faggots doing?" he said.
My eyebrows shot up. This was not the usual reception I expected from a parent.
Ferris, without missing a beat, responded "We're fucking each other in the ass. What does it look like we're doing, you blind old fart."
My mouth dropped open. This was not the kind of suburban household dynamic I was accustomed to. Part of me fully expected Ferris' Father to immediately produce some sort of blunt object from his pockets, such as a baseball bat or studded mace of some kind, and proceed to beat Ferris into a blood lump of goo. And, were that to happen, I would not have lifted a finger to intervene, nor would I utter a word of protest, for this seemed like the natural order of things to me.
Instead, Ferris' Father merely rolled his eyes and left the room. I was, to put it mildly, shocked.
"Dude," I said to Ferris. Which was all I said, being at a complete loss for words.
"What?" Ferris responded, truly oblivious the crisis he had just put me in.
"That was your dad!" I said, still making absolutely no sense to the boy, I'm sure.
"Yeah, and?" he said, purely out of morbid curiosity, I'm sure.
"You don't say 'fuck' to your dad," I said. "Are you out of your fuckin' mind?"
Immediately spotting the irony and absurdity of my statement, Ferris exploded into laughter and made no further statement to the matter.
As is the trend, I blame my own parents for this passive neurosis.
While many folks of my parents generation seemed to be rather divided on the subject of verbal censorship in the presence of their children, my parents seemed to take on a rather oddly balanced practice. While they never took any notice of me viewing movies or listening to music that employed foul language, they themselves never once uttered profanities in my presence. And when I say "never once" I mean, literally never once.
While even the most conservative of parents will have an occasional momentary loss of temperament, either from extreme frustration or pain, causing them to let loose one or two choice expletives in the presence of the children. In a normal, everyday, Ward Cleaver kind of setting, this kind of thing may happen once ever year or so.
My mother and father, however, have a verbal discipline that I have not yet seen matched. No matter how many times I colored on the walls, brought home bad grades, set fire to furniture, or dated girls that liked to show off all their piercings, my parents kept their tongues in check.
As the leading psychologists of our time will argue, the family you grow up with forge your entire sense of reality and normalcy concerning your relations with other people. Our opinions of our family and their practices are largely inconsequential, it will continue to influence our interactions for the rest of our lives. This is why women who were abused by their fathers will often spend the better part of their lives with abusive boyfriends or husbands. Even if we hate our family, the atmosphere they created in our youth will be our basis for what is "normal" and we will be inexplicably drawn to it like a security blanket or comfort food.
So, as a result of my parents never once using foul language in my presence, coupled with the unspoken but well implied expectation that I exercise the same discipline, I still don't ever cuss to my parents. And they, probably just out of pure habit now, never cuss to me.
And you know what? I'm fine with that.
TTFN
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Thursday, April 12, 2007
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Fuck Japan
The other night, TankGirl and I were chatting up a sideline conversation. We were at a business meeting with a bunch of Chinese people that we didn't really care for. None of them spoke English and we were being more or less ignored. So we started talking amongst ourselves, completely unfettered by the rules of "mixed company" conduct.
The conversation covered all manner of subject; death, childhood, politics, pro-wrestling, and the new Buffy, The Vampire Slayer comic.
Now, as far as mapping out the stream of consciousness that conversations with TankGirl and Frogman usually deteriorate into, I can't. So I don't really know how I got to the point of arguing whether or not one man could have sex with an entire country, such as Japan.
We weren't drunk. We weren't stoned. Neither of us had been struck in the head recently. And yet, somehow the subject came up.
TankGirl immediately dismissed the idea, of course. "You couldn't fuck Japan," she said, "Your dick would fall off."
Them's fightin' words.
"First of all," I said to her, "I wouldn't fuck Japan. I'd make love to Japan. Secondly, it would not. The dick, like the rest of the body, gets stronger with more frequent use. Besides, it's just Japan. It's not like I'm talking about Canada over here."
"Do you have any idea how many people there are in Japan?"
"No," I said. "Do you?"
"A lot. Your dick would fall off."
"Look, I don't know what they taught you at your High School Health Class, but the human penis doesn't just 'fall off.'"
"If you tried to fuck Japan, it would."
So, as always, it came down to the math.
First off, let's check the known limits of male performance; I checked around Teh Internets only to find that this is one of the great unanswered questions of our age. The number of times a man can ejaculate in any measured time period does not seem to have ever been tested under any seriously scientific or medical conditions. And so hearsay, conjecture, and The Penthouse Forum are the only resources. And they don't even seem to agree. Everything from "my dad says, if you come more then 10 times in 12 hours, you'll start shooting blood" to "I once jacked off 100 times in one day on a dare" with every conceivable "I knew this one guy..." and "One time, my cousin Walter..." in between.
So, I'm just going to have to go with my own personal experience on my own personal limits, to make an uneducated guess as to what I'd be capable off if faced with the challenge.
So, with plenty of vitamins, bottled water, caffeine, red meat, Viagra, and non-petroleum based lubricants, I'm going to say that I could probably find the energy and wherewithal to fuck 30 people in one day. I'm not trying to impress anyone here. I'm just saying, if I decided to go Olympic Style on this, that's probably how far I could take it. The only reason that number isn't higher is because, as I said, I'd go the extra mile to "make love" to japan.
According to the CIA Factbook the estimated population of the country of Japan was at 127,463,611 roughly one year ago.
Jesus. That is a lot.
Okay, well, first of all....it would be cruel and immoral for me to fuck everyone in Japan. Let's narrow things down to those that aren't too young or too old.
Thankfully, the CIA seemed to anticipate my question. They are more than willing and able to tell me that, of the Japanese Populace, 83,769,876 of them are between the ages of 15 to 64. They weren't able to tell me how many of them were not fat or ugly, so we'll just go with that number.
So, if I were to set up shop in Tokyo, with a "Take A Number" dispenser and everything, prepared to service 30 men and women a day, how long until I worked my way through all 83 million of them?
Well, if I was dedicated enough to work seven days a week, 365 days a year, I would earn my McDonald's Arches in a little over 7,650 years.
Unacceptable.
So, let look at this from another direction.
Let's say I want to fuck Japan in 20 years. That would be 11,475 people a day for 20 years...shit.
Okay. 50 years? 4,590 people a day. Fuck!
No more birthday parties, book clubs, or Batman movies. I'm too busy...fucking Japan.
Okay...I still stand by the fact that my dick wouldn't fall off. But even if it didn't, that wouldn't change the fact that it just couldn't be done.
I hate it when TankGirl's right. She gloats.
TTFN |
