31 May 2005

May

May has been quite an average swearing month. It started off slowly but picked up pace towards the end. Recording swear words is certainly becoming a natural part of my life and using the mobile phone ‘voice memo’ device is proving successful and incredibly useful when out-and-about. Approximately 50% of all swear words uttered in May were recorded on the mobile phone feature. However on one occasion when recording the sentence ‘What, none of those Olympic cyclists who have broken all those records have bollocks?’ I accidentally said the word ‘bollocks’ again instead of replacing it with ‘bks’ or some other inoffensive abbreviation. I therefore had to count this sentence twice!

Silent Swearing...

In May when swear words were said whilst I was at home I tended to write them straight into the swear notebook. On a couple of occasions, I went to use the swear notebook less than a minute after swearing. I have observed that, if I am still particularly angry, I will viciously scrawl the swear into the notebook and then begin to write the reason for it occurring – when I begin to write this explanation I get so angry at the situation that has just occurred that I sometimes scribble several other swear words into the description. If you were to count the total number of swear words in the notebook, you would find that it is a larger number than the total number of swear words in the Swear Box. This is because of these few additional rants. The notebook has, in this respect, become a silent venting ground for secret swears – swears that have been silently written down (not uttered) and therefore don’t need to be counted – ha!

The F Word...

After the April swear diary was published onlline, I received several email comments. One was from the same bloke called John from Nottingham. He seems to be quite an avid reader of the swear diary and was able to make a few more astute observations. He commented on the general decline in the swear output, but more precisely drew attention to my biased usage of the word ‘fuck’ and its derivations: ‘fucking’, ‘fucker’ and ‘fucked’ etc. It made me wonder as to why I do favour this word so much. I think it is because, 5 months into the Swear Box project, there are now only two occasions when I ever swear. The first is when I am in a social situation and accidentally slip out a mild swear word without thinking – ‘bloody’ or ‘arse’ for example. This has happened exactly 4 times in May, that’s 36% of the total swear words uttered.

The second occasion is when I am really, really angry, and I have to let someone know about it! When this happens I am completely conscious of the fact that I’m about to swear, but it seems well worth the hassle for the sense of release it provides. It’s almost as if I need to say these words to get some of the anger out of my mind. On these occasions I tend to use the word ‘fuck’ because it is so powerful – it is number 2 in my Subjective Hierarchical Order Of Offensiveness (or SHOO as the bloke called John likes to call it). It is a familiar word, yet totally satisfying – this is why I think I tend towards it.

Over Exposure...

John also provided me with a detailed analysis of his reaction to each of the swears in the April Swear Box. This actually gave me a sudden sense of dread as to what I’d done, I felt a wave of embarrassment close in over me. Do I really want people knowing what pisses me off? Do I really want people getting an incite into my personal life? I guess that is one of the thrills of making the swears public – you just don’t know how many people are looking at them, reading them and forming opinions of me based on what they see. It could be people all over the world, or could be just a bloke called John from Nottingham – hmm…

Erratum...

The second email I received was from my old friend Richard Dedemonici. Alas, he wasn’t just dropping me a line to say 'hello', but was actually writing to report a major inaccuracy in my rendition of the swearing incident at his lecture, recounted in the April swear diary. Apparently what I had remembered of the incident was completely wrong. The young scouser had actually said to Richard 'if it wasn't for that policeman over there, I'd kick your fucking teeth down your throat' and not simply ‘dick’ as I had recalled. How could I have been so foolish? How could I have made such a terrible miscalculation? Fortunately, Richard let me off the hook, and with it confirmed that he certainly didn’t consider ‘dick’ to be a swear word especially seeing it is actually his name – doh!

Foul Language Leaves A Foul Taste...

My final comment for May 2005 is that I think I am becoming a more sensitive sole! On 24th May I was again unfortunate enough to find myself sat in front of a programme called ‘Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares'. Jon had said that it was a ‘good programme’ and that we should ‘watch it’. After a few short minutes I was already shocked and appalled. What a hideous man! He was swearing every other ‘fucking’ word. I can safely say he is not able to speak a complete sentence without slipping in the ‘f’ word here or there. Immediately I began to detest him, how could Channel 4 let such a disgusting man on the television?

His case wasn’t helped by the fact that during the section of the programme which I did watch, he lured a sweet fellow-vegetarian man into his restaurant to try a pizza. Not telling him that it had actually had Parma ham hidden under the cheese topping, and then laughing in his face when the poor man found out what he’d just eaten! I huffed into my room as a boycott against the programme. It made me very proud that I have curbed my swearing output, but angry that this disgusting man is given the time of day. I’m glad people are no longer able to hear me saying the ‘f’ word every other sentence and that I’ve never had to eat one of Gordon Ramsey’s pizzas!

June Swear Diary >