Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for September 26, 2009

You are missing a lot Alice… I remember wanting to learn to read so much that it was like a hunger.

Don’t worry about it, Alice – the other kids can’t read it either.

Alice, you probably don’t want to know.

Don’t feel too bad, Alice….even the kid that wrote it can’t read.

ignorance is bliss…sometimes.

I teach adults to read. You should see their faces the first time they see a four letter word in a book

Rubberneckers! The bane of tube slides everywhere.

doesn’t everyone remember the first “sentence enhancer” they learned?

Writers who once knew better words Now chiefly employ four letter words – Cole Porter

Good writers, too, who once knew better words Now only use four-letter words, writing prose, Anything goes!

That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. These words (A) are in common usage, and realistic literature should not avoid them (it was ridiculous that in “The Naked and the Dead”, Norman Mailer was forced to have soldiers on the front line saying “Fug”); (B) are understood instantly (a phrase such as “She’s pulchritudinous, but vituperative” will not be as clear as “She’s pretty, but a f—— c—!”), and (C) carry an emotional impact. It’s only in this last that I mourn our overfamiliarity with profanities, obscenities, and barnyard terms. They’ve lost their wonderful SHOCK value.

Have any of you seen or read “Atonement”? Now THERE’S an illustration of how a single, particular word can carry a great deal of weight. Without this word, there would be no story. The word in question (which Shakespeare only used in pun, but which his cont emporary Ben Jonson used outright) fortunately still carries SOME power in America, although it’s now common (and therefor weakened) in the England, Ireland and Scotland.

The lesson is to CONSERVE YOUR OBSCENITIES! Save ‘em for special occasions.

I still remember one of my first grade friends bragging about how he had walked to school shouting “the a-word”. Of course, he couldn’t tell us what the a-word actually was when I asked.

When I was about 7 or so, my friend’s mom caught me entertaining my pals with nasty songs about “poopy” and “peepee” and stuff like that. I got a firm talking to that turned my evil life around to the point that I would then instantly beat the bleeep out of any of my buddies who used a naughty word until they repented—which eventually included her son, at which point she gave me another firm talking to.

Marge Simpson: “What did they teach you about in Sunday School today?”

Bart: “Hell!”

Homer: “BART!”

Bart: “But that’s what we talked about! And I sure as HELL can’t talk about HELL without using the word ‘HELL’, can I?”

Marge: “Well, you’re not in church anymore, so stop swearing!”

i saw that episode

I remember when I was about 10 or so, I was at a neighbor’s house playing with a girl my age. She did something and I called her a fart blossom. Her mom sent me home! That was allowed at my house. That’s about all that was allowed in that vein. We would have gotten our butts whipped if we had said anything worse than fart blossom.