This is a truism, and a silly one. It's usually trotted out by people who are offended by "obscene" language, but don't quite want to admit that. After all, prudery does seem prudish and goofy in our modern world, doesn't it?

It's true that there are things more offensive and disturbing than foul language, but not everybody who uses obscenity is doing it for the sake of causing offense. Those who do are idiots, I agree, but that's beside the point. Mr. Highwind, for example, has provided us with a perfect example in the title of this node: Is it meant to offend? Primarily? Is that the point? Maybe, maybe not, I dunno. But it's funny and ironic, and it's a valid use of foul language. You couldn't get the same effect without that magic "motherfucker" there. Again: Remember the scene in Pulp Fiction where Samuel L. Jackson describes his wallet? "It's the one that says 'bad motherfucker' on it." That was a paralyzingly funny moment, thanks in large part to the Magic of Foul Language. Do these things disturb us? No, and that's not the point either. They're not meant to disturb. Then you've got definitively inarticulate, uncreative losers like James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, etc. ad fucking infinitum (see?! The Magic of Foul Language can make them tired old Latinisms shine!).

As for obscenity in common, everyday speech, there are times when it's appropriate and others when it's not. Language is like that: Use it wisely. There's no substitute for judgement. The Magic of Foul Language is a wonderful and delicate thing. Treat it right, and it'll treat you right, too.

Words like "fuck" and their variations can get tired, though, which is when we should make it a point to incorporate Shakespearean insults into our usual repertoire, as it were; e.g., "Thou reeky rump-fed barnacle!"

Fuck this shit. I mean, really, there are guys who can tell shit from shit, and to all those who don't...fuck 'em. Come on, the two other writeups are really fucked, 'cause they're just full of shit, and whatever fuckers who voted them up really don't know their shit.

Shit! I mean I can't believe the shit that cunts write who don't know the fuck they're saying. They don't really understand, do they, because they don't really want to come down to it, that they can't or don't want to tell the truth. So they go on with their mumbo jumbo shit, but really don't know the half of it. And they're full of shit.

Well, there's obscenity, and then there's obscenity.

Being from a more ruralified part of the United States, where people farm, and fish, and hunt - and the most sophisticated thing we do is to sell antiques to the tourists who come out here past Covington from Atlanta and beyond - we tend to have a more earthy view of life. Especially back in the older days, when sudden marriages were rather common, men chased their daughters' boyfriends shotgun in hand, and so forth.

I mean, even the youngin's see the bulls and cows, dogs and pigs doin' what animals do.

When you're that close to life and death, when you deal with situations where birth control was best described as a combination between a rapid exit and prayer, and when you done got caught with a girl in the hay barn the whole damn town knew about it, you develop a sense of humor.

And we got our jokes and stories as well, the ones you don't tell in the parlor, but out back away from the womens. And when you do tell them stories, or recall and recount just why you and Maw Maw got married in the first place, clinicalified terms like "penis" and such seem rather cold. I mean, that old joke about that feller who wouldn't sell his cow cause it had a twitchet like a woman, and the other feller says ah I can beat that, you should see my wife, she's got her a twitchet like a cow! I mean, that wouldn't rightly work with the v-word, now, would it?

Some words're like a comfortable pair of ol' boots that you wouldn't wear to church or in the house, but are mighty fine for a day wanderin' through the woods looking for scrapes and deer tracks.

But I'll agree with you there, sometimes we go to Atlanta, mostly to see the grandkids, and the language you hear in the music comin' out of these cars, the ones where the body's shot to hell and the rims are right shiny, and there's more power in the stereo than the engine? Them fellers talkin' a load of foulness over some clicky stuff made by a computer, makes you wonder how they were raised. There are times to be using words like that sure, but as a steady stream of commentary - like usin' a hammer to crack an egg.

As the Good Book says, "to everything there is a season". There is a time and a place for everything.