The Finest Word in the English Language: Fuck

(Ed. Note: Please make sure you read the following post on the two morons who staged a lightsaber contest in the UK, when you're done this. It'll give you today's laugh of the day.)

I’m watching Team America: World Police. Are there two people better at satire in today's film business than Matt Parker and Trey Stone? Nope. They's the mans.

It’s a good day for me to be watching it. They’re so brilliant with dialogue, but they pepper it so heavily with swear words. Yeah, the individual words lose their potency, but as a whole, it’s brilliantly venomous yet hysterical.

This morning, my dad sort of chewed me out for swearing so much in this blog. Yes, believe it or not, my father reads this shit. Hi, Dad.

We got into a bit of a “discussion” about the fact that I evidently have the mouth of a trucker. I know, I know: I’m a dirty girl.

It turns out that he was under the misguided impression that I swear to impress people. Just ain’t the case, Pops.

Why do I swear then? I love the way it rolls off my tongue. I love the sound of it. And when I write, I can hear myself speaking everything I type. “Fucking amateurs...” I throw in an extra French accent on the last syllable. ”Amateurs...”

I swear because I spend most of my life having to be repressed by the need to be under a government’s thumb, on the clock on a job that leaves me wishing I could just once break the rules and throw in a fucking caption that nobody sees coming, in a life of constrained friendships resulting from everyone being on a different schedule-- we’re all growing up, responsibilities have felled us like that stone that took out Goliath.

I swear ‘cos it’s one of the only ways I get to rebel and say exactly what the fuck I mean whenever the feeling hits me.

I cuss madly because the intelligent, reasoned individual that dwells within my heart can’t for the life of her see what the hell all the fuss being raised over these four little letters (f-u-c-k) is all about. They’re letters. Harmless little letters.

The word “fuck,” in what little literature can be found, is etymologically traced as far back to 1535, at which point it’s thought it came via Scandinavian languages or Low German, and essentially meant the same then as it does now-- emotionless or lusty sex, sex that smacked of amorality. “Flying fuck” apparently originally meant (dating to the turn of the 19th century) “to have sex on horseback.” (You know, we Canadians excel at sex in canoes, according to Canadian legend Pierre Berton, but I think I’d need some pointers on the horseback thing, especially since I’ve been thrown from horses before-- which reminds me of another story to tell sometime.)

However, there’s very, very little, it seems, documented on the use of the word fuck. Why? Because people have always shunned the word. It has been long deemed unworthy to put on paper. It’s an irrational fear of letters, that’s all it is. And thanks to it, etymology freaks like me have lost some valuable insight into several generations of the English language. Sad.

The thing, though, is, this mentality of the word fuck, or any other negative, bad word, really being bad is pretty assinine. There are words I won’t say-- nigger, kyke, and other really shitty and disrespectful racial slurs are things I won’t participate in, because it’s not, like the word fuck, just a stupid perception of what is right or wrong, but rather, they’re words that call to mind centuries of racial oppression and prejudism. I won’t be a party to that.

Lastly, I swear 'cos I'm a kid at heart and it gets me giddy to know that no one can wash my mouth out with soap.

So, fuck it. Here's to therapy by way of catharsis: Fuckin' A.