One can hardly blame the folks at this store in Osaka who thought these signs were in perfect contemporary English.
Have you noticed that we need a whole new set of cuss words? The old ones have been neutered by constant exposure and are now pretty much useless.
In particular I speak of the venerable F-word, now so completely defanged that one may use it in front of one’s grandmother without even noticing. (Though the grandmother is likely to notice still.) It’s so ubiquitous that at times I wonder if anyone remembers how to use any other words at all.
I’ve noticed, in some internet interactions that were both amusing and annoying, that if someone complains about being constantly effed on, they are instantly jumped all over and told to eff off because they have failed to understand the subtle and subversive meaning that is intended, and they’ve totally missed the point. Whereas they may simply have found the writing ugly. I’ve certainly had that reaction. There’s not much of a subversive effect left anyway.
I was just visiting the fun pop-science website www.iflscience.com. The full name, used on their Facebook page, is “I fucking love science,” which makes me feel a little bit embarrassed when I share their posts. I noticed that their Twitter handle is @IFeakingLoveScience, though, and the section of their site where they sell things is the “I Love Science Store.” So I suppose they are not entirely comfortable with That Word, either? (I was unable to find any rules on Twitter that say you can’t use the F-word in your name, but perhaps that’s the case?)
The amount of effing on John Oliver’s show mystifies me. Oliver and the Last Week Tonight writers are surely persons of wide vocabulary. They don’t need to repeat the same word over and over; they have plenty more to choose from. Yet it seems like almost the only adjective used on the show is “fucking.” It gets old. I don’t understand why such a clever, insightful, educated bunch of people must use such monotone speech.
And that is my main complaint. I’m not making a moral judgment. I would like to preserve the ability of the strongest words to add seasoning to our language. Cuss words are known as “salty” language, right? Well, constant effing is like having every meal drenched in the hottest chile. There’s no variety, and one becomes numb.
Where can one go, these days, to add emphasis, outrage, or shock value? When the most shocking word can no longer shock, what is left? Do you have any candidates for a possible next Very Most Shocking Word?
And why is the very “worst” word one that signifies one of the very best things?
What do you think?
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I wrote the above a while back, and then Pussygate* occurred. Apparently the capacity to be shocked still exists. The term usually shows up only as p***y or the like in print, and now seems to be a contender for the top Shocking Word. Of course, this was not merely a matter of the word used— the word was a description of a heinous and criminal action that had been done to real women. (The objective meaning of the noun itself, again, is something quite positive.)
Even a small child can easily figure out that this is not the way to speak or act. Colin Farrell, the actor, reported on his 7-year-old son’s sadly hilarious reaction: “Now he can’t stand Trump because I had to explain to him why [he] keeps on being mean to kittens. He just keeps grabbing those kittens.” It seems that Henry can’t understand why people are being so mean to other people, either. He knows it doesn’t have to be that way.
In a powerful speech last week, Michelle Obama mentioned another little boy who took exception to the use of coarse language by a certain candidate. She quoted the boy as saying (as nearly as I remember it), “He called someone a piggy. You can’t be president if you call someone a piggy.”
I suppose these young men will become jaded and contaminated in the not too distant future, but at least for now they are wise, and they give me hope. Let’s remember what we all learned in kindergarten. Surely we can bring the level of our public discourse up at least a couple of notches from the deep trench it’s fallen into. I am fucking determined to try.
* For those reading in the future when this wretched election season is mercifully forgotten, Donald Trump was revealed to have spoken enthusiastically about assaulting women, using the P-word in a particularly disgraceful way.
http://www.japansubculture.com/its-no-ordinary-sale-its-a-fuckin-sale/
http://www.rolereboot.org/family/details/2016-07-im-not-going-stop-swearing-front-daughter/
http://the-toast.net/2014/12/09/linguist-explains-syntax-f-word/
https://solongasitswords.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/on-the-origin-of-fuck/
Elene Explores 
Trump effectively lowered the level of political discourse during the campaign. Now he is lowering the level of social equality.
The sad fact that this has happened in the United States is made even more unpleasant, by the fact that this American influence spreads to other Western-Democratic societies.
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And the influence of the far right in other Western societies spreads to the US as well. The fascist types are having a lot of international meetings lately. We need to keep an eye on them.
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