On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 14:54:21 -0700, Gerald Peterson wrote:
Wow, Individual differences I guess. I hardly noticed, and must
be immune from being bothered by such language. Interesting
article, tho of course hardly representative.
I actually did not know what photograph was being referred
to (since the figures could be photographs as well) and then
I realized that it was the f'n unicorn. Now I appreciate that
people have their biases and they tend to impose them on
others (compare a censored version of Scorcese's "The
Departed" that is sanitized for wholesome family viewing
with the uncensored version; the point is the number of
deaths and the brutality is the same in both but no "offensive"
words are present which makes one wonder how one
got such a concept of "offensive"). Since no one used the
word in question in this "forum" (I have to assume that the
word is the f-bomb unless there is something about unicorns
that I'm missing; then again it could have been a subliminal
flashing of the word Voldemort, I mean "he who should not
be named"), I don't understand was the fuss is.
I focus on this because I recently wrote a book review of a
dictionary and went back to read Kurt Vonnegut's review of
the "Random House Dictionary of the English Language
(the Unabridged Edition)". In his review he cites another
reviewer which I quote:
|When Mario Pei reviewed the savagely-bopped third revised
|edition of the "Merriam- Webster" for The Times in 1961, he
|complained of the "residual prudishness" which saw excluded
|certain four-letter words, "despite their copious appearance
|in numerous works of contemporary 'literature' as well as on
|restroom walls." Random House has satisfied this complaint
|somewhat. They haven't included enough of the words to allow
|a Pakistani to decode "Last Exit to Brooklyn," or "Ulysses,"
|either--but they have made brave beginnings, dealing, wisely
|I think, with the alimentary canal. I found only one abrupt verb
|for sexually congressing a woman, and we surely have Edward
|Albee to thank for its currency, though he gets no credit for it.
|The verb is hump, as in "hump the hostess."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/lifetimes/vonnegut-dictionary.html
We can't and we shouldn't make believe that certain words do
not exist -- that would just be fubar -- but when playing in someone's
backyard, I guess that one has follow their rules, no matter how
silly they are. I think back to my teachers in college and grad
school and note that their use of the English language spanned
the spectrum, from prudish omission of any "questionable" words
to the almost constant dropping of f-bombs (the female Ph.D.
who supervised my first semester teaching rat lab found it impossible
to say a sentence without at least one or two f-bombs in; it was
the most amazing use of language by a psychology professor I
have ever witnessed; a male philosophy professor with a similar
habit taught the undergraduate course in logic that I took
and confessed that maybe he used the f-bomb a little too much
because when he took his 4-year old daughter to playground
and she chased away some pigeons, she said as they flew
away "F'n pigeons!").
In closing, I have a feeling I know someone who is going to get a
DVD of "Team America" for Christmas. ;-)
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
On Apr 24, 2014, at 5:21 PM, Stuart McKelvie <[email protected]>
wrote:
Dear Tipsters,
I am afraid that when I reached the photograph I quickly closed the
site.
I don't see a place for that kind of language on this forum.
Not funny (to me at least).
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