Yes, I know... any daily mail readers will be appalled by my language. But that's all it is: language. And, to prove that I'm not just choosing the title to shock, I have the following few paragraphs, a Shakespeare reference and the book of Stephen Fry's Planet Word documentary series, open on the "uses and abuses" chapter, beside me.
Writing this down in a post, I believe it would be useful to add at least an element of chronology... so bear with me if I don't. I won't pluck anything from thin air though. I shall endeavour to give it some sort of fanfare or other, as it were: (Ladies and gentlemen, new element to the tale!) might do the trick-- I'm feeling flamboyant. I am going to have to find a place to start though, so let's try this:
I love swearing. Obviously, like everything else from pizza to Sherlock Holmes, it has a time and place, but in the right situations (and for me, that's quite a lot of the time) it can be freeing, amusing, de-stressing and emotive. But very, very rarely can they be far more insulting than words like incompetent, obsequious, condescending, narcissistic, or even (dare I say it) the dreaded C-word: Conservative. So what is it that makes them unacceptable to say in front of, for example, teachers? If we're using any words to offend, it's not nice; but that doesn't apply to just swear words--words like the above (quite a way above) are also not nice. But, we'd get pulled up for dropping something and saying "Oh, fuck", whereas "Oh, dear" would be fine. According to Planet Word (well worth a read if you haven't already) this is cathartic swearing, and in my view it should be wholly acceptable. There's also idiomatic "I was pretty fucked up", dysphemistic "I need to piss", emphatic "I'm fucking annoyed" and abusive "Fuck you!” Obviously, abusive isn't so great, but in my opinion that's purely because of the intent behind it. The problem is that some people mistake all the other four for abusive... and that's where I get pissed off. Talking to someone and going "...and it's fucking irritating...", is using it to express opinions. Who are they to then go "Don't you swear at me!"? It's a choice of language, and it wasn't used to offend anyone...
But the approach to swearing I find most tiresome is summed up by Oscar Wilde: "The expletive is a refuge to the semi-literate". How can he presume to think, let alone say, that the intelligence of a person is diminished by swearing? It's part of the English vocabulary, Oscar, and not to celebrate it; not to use and enjoy it is to block yourself off from a whole world of expression and humour. Besides, in practical and scientific terms, he can't know everyone on the Earth who swears, so how can he imply that he knows all of their IQ's? And whether it is indeed "the expletive", which is after all a word of some variety of four-lettered-ness, that has lowered them?
"But words are words. I never did hear
That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear." (William Shakespeare)
Now, ladies and gentlemen, a new element to the tale!
My IT (Information Technology) teacher, fuelled by a strong belief that the current education system is too much like an assembly line (producing products suitable for jobs), decided that we were going to do lessons in IT that wouldn't be so much actual computing (heartfelt hallelujah from a technophobe) as projects exercising initiative, passions, and all sorts of things. I feel I should put in here that when he explained it to us, I was sat at the back of the classroom thinking "shit, I've no idea what I should be doing... he's been too vague, except for where he was telling us that the education system, that we've been part of for a decade now, is wrong...". But it turns out he hadn't actually told us what to do yet, so it was all fine. We ended up doing a mind map of passions. Mine included things such as "Anything of Stephen Fry's creation" connected to "making people laugh (or at least giggle)" connected to "Puns". Also "Learning" connected to "Geography", "Physics" and "anything of Stephen Fry's". And also included was, yes, "Swearing". This meant that I had a fucking fantastic time thinking of a plethora of swearwords, from sodding to bollocks to crap...
Anyway, shaking myself out of this plethora of profanities, the final intention of these mind maps was to chose our favourite topic, and entrust it to someone to do a presentation on. And I've been egged on to my friend, on the condition that she will present it, to chose swearing. I decided it was probably a good idea to ask my teacher if I could do it first, and he said it was brilliant, so here goes... And I'm sodding excited about it.
But this means I have to decide where I want the line to be drawn. Not that I'm so presumptuous as to think that it's up to me to decide, but I've made it clear that I believe that swearing in a cathartic, dysphemistic, idiomatic and emphatic is fine, and even abusive is no worse than non-curse words. But obviously there's age of and relationship to the swearee to consider. And the fact that, although I believe that they should be acceptable, it would be awful if they lost their impact. Four-hundred-odd years ago in Shakespearean times, insults like "False caterpillar" had a measurable effect. Now, an English lesson studying them reduced us all to giggles; I'd hate it if the multitude of swearwords we use now ended up like that. Imagine a classroom in 400 years time (if that is indeed still the preferred teaching technique, you never know, it might all be telepathic. Unlikely.) where a sniggering pupil puts up his/her hand and enquires "Really Sir? They actually got offended if you said fucker? Pansies..." So where do we draw the line? Is there a way to retain the impact of the swearwords if we were allowed to use them freely, or would that ruin it? Is the friction between "swearers" and "non-swearers" what makes it so delightful to use them? Is the taboo of the subject what gives it its humour? And most importantly, what is "false caterpillar" supposed to mean?
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Summer, South-poles and Soporific Sciences
My Physics teacher is unanimously agreed to have to capability of making anything, anything mark you, boring. Including things like rockets and stars and stuff that is normally pretty cool--to me, anyway. So my friend and I take it in turns to at least try and listen to her and not drop off, and the other will doodle ninjas or some such in the back of their planners...or on the desk. Well, I say take it in turns, but it's normally me listening, and my friend doodling--see, if it's me doodling, it is very likely that the "notes" taken on the lesson will in fact be a written conversation between my mate and the people sitting behind us...probably with pictures of ninjas, initials, chocolate bars or some lyric or other to boot. The funny bit is, we can get away with this airyfripperage, because my physics teacher has a habit of standing at the front of the classroom and talking for lord knows how long, (And here's the thing...) with her eyes shut. It got to the point where an extremely tall and rather, for want of a better word, noticeable guy (Nearing six foot and he has extremely bright, ginger hair) in our class managed to do the whole of the Macarena (360 degrees and all!) without her seeing. Although, there was one point where we were doing a Mexican wave around the classroom and she opened her eyes... oops. So everyone had to stand round the room, and we all had to do a Mexican wave--this tied in nicely with our next topic...waves.
And, speaking of waves, physics and such, an interesting revelation revealed itself (as they tend to do) the other day. You know geography, right? and the Antarctic? Well, chances are you won't know the Antarctic personally, but hey ho. Anyway, for our lesson one day we had to research job vacancies for the BAS (British Antarctic Survey), and I found one, here, and thought "Hey, these qualifications seem pretty familiar..." Turns out, Lunchista Fille's Maman (Or just Lunchista, as it happens), is actually qualified for a job modelling radiation belts in Cambridge, for the BAS. Learn something new everyday...Meaning that, as Lunchista is currently slightly and on varying degrees mainly unemployed, she could, if desired, go for an interview. Actually, written down, it probably looks slightly mundane, but it was surprising at the time, honest...
And then Summer came! All thoughts of Antarctica banished (Until I wrote this, which kind of broke the pattern...) we made a stop motion animation involving peaches and solar battery chargers. I'll explain a bit, shall I? It's to go with silly lyrics that have been written that go with the song "peaches" by the stranglers, about Solar panels (or our one is, the original...well, isn't really). And while we were filming said film, a letter came in the post about a "Happiness Centre" in the moors, said to "Bring peace and joy to peoples lives, helping to understand their struggles and assists in restoring harmony and balance..." etc, etc. etc. I dunno about you, but it sounded funny and a bit airy fairy to me. It almost certainly costs a bomb, so any peace, harmony and joy you experience there will immediately be negated by the stress of paying the bill.
Then, we looked at the list of activities. Some of them were understandable; Shiatsu, I've heard, is very relaxing and all that. Some were probably scams: Astrology Readings and Metamorphic Technique sounded particularly fake.
And then Summer came! All thoughts of Antarctica banished (Until I wrote this, which kind of broke the pattern...) we made a stop motion animation involving peaches and solar battery chargers. I'll explain a bit, shall I? It's to go with silly lyrics that have been written that go with the song "peaches" by the stranglers, about Solar panels (or our one is, the original...well, isn't really). And while we were filming said film, a letter came in the post about a "Happiness Centre" in the moors, said to "Bring peace and joy to peoples lives, helping to understand their struggles and assists in restoring harmony and balance..." etc, etc. etc. I dunno about you, but it sounded funny and a bit airy fairy to me. It almost certainly costs a bomb, so any peace, harmony and joy you experience there will immediately be negated by the stress of paying the bill.
Then, we looked at the list of activities. Some of them were understandable; Shiatsu, I've heard, is very relaxing and all that. Some were probably scams: Astrology Readings and Metamorphic Technique sounded particularly fake.
And then the corker: Hopi Ear Candling. Any ideas?
Monday, 2 May 2011
Holidays, High flying and Historical Happenings
Well, it's been an incomplete couple of weeks school-wise, hasn't it? We had the Easter Holidays, then three days of school, then there was four more days off! (Including the weekend) I'm not complaining, obviously...
The holidays were, of course, an excuse to be out of the house and cycling to, in and around various forests not unimaginably far from where we live. My favourite was a forest we don't often cycle to, but it has lovely views of trees, flowers etc--there isn't much actual forest, but the ride there and back is lovely, and it's an opportunity to chat and take photos. Jokes that would be utterly nonsensical to any innocent passer-by ensue as a result of our chatting, and that's good fun too: our newest one is all of the places around us beginning in Acaster:
Acaster Malbis
Acaster Selby
"I cast a stone in t'lake and it 'it a duck" (This only works in a broad Yorkshire accent)
...told you, they make no sense whatsoever if we don't tell you the background story, which we normally forget. Another thing we did due to the holiday was the High flying: we did one of those go-ape things, which is an absolutely excellent thing to do on a Saturday...or Sunday...or...well, anytime, really. It was knee-knockingly terrifying at first, but here's a tip: When you're going on the zipwires, go into a sitting position in the harness; it means that you can just lift your legs up and let gravity work. How 'bout that, eh?
I also use holidays as an excuse to make a cake: Christmas cake, Easter cake, etc. This one was new: we adapted my favourite recipe, given at the end. I put in coca powder and replaced the apples with pears, then decorated the top with Easter eggs and butter icing, and it turned out pretty good--and as an added bonus, no-one got food poisoning! (Oh, by the way, keep an eye out: I'm trying to include at least one spherical object in each post...I'm sure apples count as spherical, and Easter eggs can be honoury spheres for now, can't they? Well...)
The reason for this rather fluctuating amount of school is, partly, the Historical Happening of the post: The Royal Wedding (Not Historical at the moment, but just you wait!), where they gave us a day off on the Friday. My family, admittedly, did watch a decisively minimal amount of the actual wedding on the actual day, but we did watch a bit, if only just for form's sake. (The day off on the Monday was Mayday bank holiday.) I tell you what though, I am liking Princess Catherine: She wanted living trees at Westminster, and the had the obey bit cut out of her vows...well, she seems cool to me, anyway...
Now, here is the aforementioned recipe, it's an Apple Charlotte:
You'll need:
1 beaker of self raising flour (sorry, it's beakers for this one)
1 beaker of caster sugar
4 eggs, beaten
Cinnamon to taste
Two medium cooking apples
making the cake: Preheat the oven to 200 degrees c
mix everything except the apples together (The order doesn't matter at all, but I normally do sugar and eggs, then add flour and cinnamon, if that helps...) until it's smooth
pour it into a greased cake tin, then put in the apples
put it in the oven and leave it for half an hour, or until it's done (go figure...)
A handy test if you're a novice like me: Stick a fork in the middle and pull it out again; if there's mixture on it, it isn't done. If you're not a novice, I apologise for wasting your time.
The holidays were, of course, an excuse to be out of the house and cycling to, in and around various forests not unimaginably far from where we live. My favourite was a forest we don't often cycle to, but it has lovely views of trees, flowers etc--there isn't much actual forest, but the ride there and back is lovely, and it's an opportunity to chat and take photos. Jokes that would be utterly nonsensical to any innocent passer-by ensue as a result of our chatting, and that's good fun too: our newest one is all of the places around us beginning in Acaster:
Acaster Malbis
Acaster Selby
"I cast a stone in t'lake and it 'it a duck" (This only works in a broad Yorkshire accent)
...told you, they make no sense whatsoever if we don't tell you the background story, which we normally forget. Another thing we did due to the holiday was the High flying: we did one of those go-ape things, which is an absolutely excellent thing to do on a Saturday...or Sunday...or...well, anytime, really. It was knee-knockingly terrifying at first, but here's a tip: When you're going on the zipwires, go into a sitting position in the harness; it means that you can just lift your legs up and let gravity work. How 'bout that, eh?
I also use holidays as an excuse to make a cake: Christmas cake, Easter cake, etc. This one was new: we adapted my favourite recipe, given at the end. I put in coca powder and replaced the apples with pears, then decorated the top with Easter eggs and butter icing, and it turned out pretty good--and as an added bonus, no-one got food poisoning! (Oh, by the way, keep an eye out: I'm trying to include at least one spherical object in each post...I'm sure apples count as spherical, and Easter eggs can be honoury spheres for now, can't they? Well...)
The reason for this rather fluctuating amount of school is, partly, the Historical Happening of the post: The Royal Wedding (Not Historical at the moment, but just you wait!), where they gave us a day off on the Friday. My family, admittedly, did watch a decisively minimal amount of the actual wedding on the actual day, but we did watch a bit, if only just for form's sake. (The day off on the Monday was Mayday bank holiday.) I tell you what though, I am liking Princess Catherine: She wanted living trees at Westminster, and the had the obey bit cut out of her vows...well, she seems cool to me, anyway...
Now, here is the aforementioned recipe, it's an Apple Charlotte:
You'll need:
1 beaker of self raising flour (sorry, it's beakers for this one)
1 beaker of caster sugar
4 eggs, beaten
Cinnamon to taste
Two medium cooking apples
making the cake: Preheat the oven to 200 degrees c
mix everything except the apples together (The order doesn't matter at all, but I normally do sugar and eggs, then add flour and cinnamon, if that helps...) until it's smooth
pour it into a greased cake tin, then put in the apples
put it in the oven and leave it for half an hour, or until it's done (go figure...)
A handy test if you're a novice like me: Stick a fork in the middle and pull it out again; if there's mixture on it, it isn't done. If you're not a novice, I apologise for wasting your time.
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