It’s going to snow — again. When I heard that, I had a few choice words to say about a certain rodent (Groundhog Day was Wednesday) Mother Nature and the poor Weather Girl who looks as if she was harnessed into her clothes (but that’s a different blog.) I felt better — like — right now, and went about my business. You see, that’s what swearing does — it makes us feel better. Unfortunately, like most things the millennials have gotten their mitts on, in the 21st century, swearing is being ruined.
I’m old enough to remember when swearing was an art form, a verbal quest to find words that expressed the primitive soul that lurks inside all of us. In those days, people generally didn’t swear in polite society. Swearing was reserved for exasperation, frustration, anger, the end of the argument – all the most primitive emotions. People swore when the pudding boiled over, or the neighbour wouldn’t listen to reason, or the cat crapped on the carpet. Swearing was reserved for those special times when ordinary words just didn’t cover it. It released the tension, so we didn’t toss the pudding across the kitchen, punch the neighbour or kill the cat. These words were forbidden, and so, with one broken taboo, we were badasses. We stood toe-to-toe with life’s evil fortunes and refused to be bullied. Then it was over. We metaphorically washed our mouth out with soap and carried on.
Unfortunately, these days swearing is used as punctuation. In the torrent of conversation, it’s splashed around like ketchup on a redneck’s breakfast. It literally doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s lost its punch. When you call your best friend a bad bitch on a daily basis, what do you call her when she actually is one? And that’s why the millennials spend every waking hour offended. They have no way to release the emotional pressure. When I trip on the stairs and bang my shins, I release a torrent of invectives on everyone from the person who chose to live on the second floor (me) to the carpenter who built the offending structure. Millennials can’t do that. When life comes along and pees in their porridge, they just have to take it. And it serves them right, the $%()#! bastards!
I love the British Broadcasting Corporation! In a time when 99% of the gutter-feeding media are giving the other 1% a bad name, the Beeb (as it is affectionately called) is a bastion of reasonable thought. For example, last week they reported that the village of Saalfelden in Austria was in the market for a hermit. Apparently, the hermit they had retired last autumn, and they haven’t been able to fill the position. This is real news — the kind of news that not only informs us but also makes us think. Particularly, I was thinking, “Wow! I didn’t know the world still had hermits. I thought the old guy down the road, talking to his vegetables, was just nuts.” It surprises me that being a hermit is a genuine profession from which some people do retire. And that knowledge opens up a whole can of other questions; not the least of which is, for a hermit, what does retirement look like?
I know it’s nearly the end of January, and we’re firmly in the grasp of 2017. I know you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube and that bitching about the past is about as effective as a blind man at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. And I know I’m not the only one fed up with hearing what an Anno Horribilis 2016 was. BUT, 2016 was an Anno Horribilis — a great big bad anno horribilis — and, dead horse or no, I’m not done kicking it. Here are a few things that came out of 2016 that I want to see shot in the head and buried in the backyard.
WD Fyfe 