Last night I was trying to write a blog post but my phone kept changing the word I typed into another word that meant something altogether different. I think this is because the word that I wanted to use was naughty and the phone is programmed to censor such words and replace them with words that make no sense. I've had this problem with my smart phone ever since I got it and last night I finally snapped. I threatened my phone with the most terrifying fate that can befall a silicon based life form and she (my phone's a girl) was so shocked that she immediately rebooted. But I'm serious: if she doesn't stop screwing with my cussing it's the cat video server farm for her.
But she deserved it. I am sick to death of her censoring perfectly serviceable obscenities. I think it must be Google's doing because my smart phone is an Android - the Rum Raisin release I think. And I have no difficulty believing that a selfish tycoon like Larry Page would configure his software to censor potty words. After all he looks like a direct descendant of Cotton Mather. Prissy Larry "Prudence" Page is probably just implementing his Puritan ancestors Prime Directive: take absolutely all of the fun out of everything everywhere all the time. After all he lives in Northern California which is now the Plymouth Bay Colony of America, filled to the brim with new, oh so hip puritans. In neo puritan California you can't even touch your date's boob without filling out forms in triplicate, getting them notarized and filed with the Ministry of Canoodling in Sacramento. Which stinks because most of the excitement of dating centers on imagining how the party of the first part is going to counteract the party of the second part's 'forward' moves.
So if you're on a date in San Jose with some loser who's telling you that World of Warcraft is really just a metaphor for life what do you do? I mean it's obvious that the guy's a flushee but if you haven't executed the right paperwork then what is going to occupy your mind until he picks up the check and you can leg it? Video games? Now if you're sitting across from me in someplace that isn't California you'd better be focused on what countermeasures you're going to employ to neutralize my world class moves. Because I guarantee you that while you're explaining why cat videos are an under-appreciated art form I'll be deep into battle planning. As a matter of fact I always let my date do a lot of talking so that I have time to review my strategic options in relation to her body language. Are her gestures tightly focused? That could mean that she intends to defend her strategic center which I counter like Hannibal at Cannae with a double envelopment targeting her rear. If she's wildly gesturing from side to side it indicates that she fears a flank attack which means a Guderian Blitzkrieg that directly punches through her defenses is called for. But you never want to Foch it up by launching a suicidal frontal attack against prepared positions because you'll get slaughtered after gaining a few measly yards of what by the time you get there will be No Man's Land. But I digress.
Because I want to spend some serious time focusing on this Pagean Puritan Language Police Problem. Let me start by stipulating that I don't think it's Sergei Brin's fault because he's Russian and Russians say fuck all the time. No, this is an American problem and it's interfering with my God given right to express myself as crudely as I want. I am a serious writer: I struggle with phrasing and voice and all that other literary crap and it takes me literally seconds of word wrangling to come up with the 'most just'.........no, no, no, no! you idiot phone, I typed 'mot juste', not most just! Now this is another problem I have: I try to be clever and spice up my writing with Frenchified Anglo Norman bits and my phone screws with them too. One would think that an immigrant such as Mr. Brin would take a strong stand against the ethnocentric excision of foreign words because Brin comes from Russia and everyone knows that Russians hate xenophobia almost as much as they hate foreigners.
But back to my smart phone's fucked up fucking with words like fuck: I did a little experiment with George Carlin's famous Seven Banned Words. I typed them using my smart phone and this is what came out. "Such shot poss can't duck as hole and cook suckered" which admittedly sounds vaguely dirty but it doesn't have the same zing as the traditional Carlin 7: Fuck, Shit, Piss, Cunt, Dick, Asshole and Cocksucker. So you can see why it's a huge problem for me. What? You say you're shocked by my vulgar language? Au contraire madame bleu stocking, I am simply expressing myself in my culture's dialect. You see, I am a member of the west Texas band of the Oilfield Trash tribe. And while we speak Texas Saxon it is a specific and highly specialized dialect that has developed in parallel with mainstream Texan. For example Ofts (that's what they call us, Ofts) have dozens of phrases for "getting the hell out of town before the landlord realizes we've all gone" such as "skedaddle", "scoot", "get the hell outta Dodge", "bug out", "skip out" and so on. And Anglo Saxon obscenities are some of the most commonly used words in our culture. Shit, if you can't say shit in the West Texas oil patch then you are shit outta luck.
See what I mean? Indeed we use almost all of the really good dirty words with the exception of those that take the Lord's name in vain or refer to the principal ladypart. We don't say those words because we're particularly pious but because West Texas is filled with churches and as any self respecting West Texas pastor's wife will tell you they "don't appreciate assholes that spout that bullshit".
Now I know what you're thinking: "This Bill Reeves chap is full of crap, he's putting us on, what a jerk." But I swear that I'm not and here's the proof: Christopher Meyer was "Her Majesty's Ambassador to the United States" which is just a limeyfied way of saying "British Ambassador". In in his book: DC Confidential, he recounts an exchange he had with the First Lady Laura Bush. Now I think everyone would agree that Mrs. Bush is a classy lady? Right? After all she comes from Midland which is as hoity toity as it gets in West Texas. On top of that she's a Methodist and Librarian - two bywords for prissy the world over yet this is what happened at an exclusive State Barbecue for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his staff in Crawford:
According to Sir Christopher Meyer's gossipy memoirs, DC Confidential, Laura Bush cheerfully informed the dumbstruck British contingent that she was a fan of Friedman and his song 'Proud to be an Asshole from El Paso'.
That would be Kinky Friedman and His Texas Jew Boys performing Asshole from El Paso. So if this super high class West Texas lady and Methodist to boot who was at the absolute pinnacle of the social register at a formal Texas State Barbecue said asshole to the Ambassador from the fucking Queen of England and then said El Paso (which is simply another way that Texans say asshole. And if you've ever been to El Paso you know why.) you can imagine what the lower orders like us Ofts talk like.
That being said there are generational differences in West Texas Oft obscenity. For example, the older set emphasize the scatological. My Aunt Barb in Odessa manages to source at least one new and creative use for shit, poo, piss or crap every single week. She's a true connoisseur of scat. She then takes what she's learned, mimeographs it and painstakingly mails it to dozens of fellow Ofts to preserve our fragile tribal culture. Clearly she's much sharper with shit than email systems. I think the geezers focus on the scatological because back in the day a lot of them had to do their business in holes in the ground so the wonders of indoor plumbing loom extra large in their pantheon of really swell things.
By contrast we young-uns always had porcelain thrones. We also had the dubious benefits of extensive sex education and excessive sexual stimulation so we tend more towards the sexually obscene (without, of course, pissing off Pastor's wives) so words like prick and tits flit off of our tongues and keyboards much easier than they do for our parents who are still hung up on their latrines. It makes for some interesting tribal reunions as the generations cuss past each other in an orgy (if you're young) or crapload (if you're old) of mutually incomprehensible invective.
But the important thing is that we're all cussing. Because frequent and florid obscenity is one of the few things that all Ofts have in common. Just like the Sioux have to sue and the Masai must sigh (I guess), we Ofts need to cuss. It sustains and enriches our culture and keeps it distinct from all those shit eating sons a bitches that are always trying to screw us over.
God bless the Ofts. God bless cussing. And to hell with Larry Page.
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