Some Blog Site

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). I think it wasn’t run because he had something similar. I can’t check though, because the SCL site is broken for anything not on the front page.

I am on the conservative side of things when it comes to swearing. If you’re anything like I am, you refer to the martial arts actor as “Jean-Clause Van Darn” just so there is no possibility of confusion.

My upbringing may have something to do with my stance on language. After all, I’ve heard my father swear only once in my life.

It was at Christmastime, of all things. Dad had just finished setting up the tree and we were about to start decorating it.

However, the tree was not quite level and it started leaning. Dad spent several minutes adjusting and re-adjusting the tree so that it would stand straight. Finally, he had the tree where he wanted it and he stood back to make sure it looked right.

… at which point the tree started falling, which was not what my father wanted to happen As it was crashing, my dad voiced his now-famous exclamation:

“Moses!”

The Ten Commandments state that thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

The Ten Commandments do not state that thou shall not take the names of other Biblical characters in vain. I think that makes them fair game.

SCL has already touched on the point of swearing occasionally, but not the various lengths that people go to in order to sound like they’re swearing but without crossing the line.

And where exactly is that line?

Here are a few places it could be:

Based on the FCC
The infamous list of words that can’t be broadcast in the USA is a good place to start. But what about Christians in other countries? Or those who don’t speak English? The FCC doesn’t apply to them, but I bet most every culture has some taboo or extra-rude words that would be the equivalent. I think the Smurfs were the first to creatively get around the FCC by substituting the word “Smurf” for any stronger language.

Anything other than God’s name
The third commandment is an obvious line in the sand. I’ve known some people who use common epithets that usually involve God’s name, but they replace God’s name with the name of a “deity” from another religion. It’s amusing, but it got me wondering if that people could be considered to be praying to a false god, which would violate the first commandment.

Line? What line?
Some people think lines are legalistic and shun them. But if everyone thought that way, then SCL would have lasted about 3 days. SCL needs lines.

Normally at the end of a blog post, there’s a question to garner comments and responses. The first questions that came to mind for this post were “What are your swearing substitutions?” and “What are some of the crazier phrases you’ve heard?”

But then I started thinking about what kind of comments that would get, and I started to worry. So I’m not asking any official question here. Just write whatever comment you feel like writing, related to the topic of swearing substitutions.

But remember that Jon’s grandmother will be reading your comment.

And that’s the guest post I sent over to Jon Acuff about a decade ago. I hope someone gets that old site working, so we can peruse the treasures within.

In case you can’t tell, those are glass cruise ships.

Because there’s no better incubator of diseases than cruise ships.

The English language has provided us with a fair amount of modifiers and punctuation in order to make things clear. Confusion and humor come into play when people do not avail themselves of those items.

Exhibit #1: The sign in restaurant bathrooms that says “Employees must wash hands”

In the interest of saving printing costs, or because of laziness, or because of some other reason, the people responsible for the sign usually do not include punctuation or possessives. This leaves it open to the interpretation that the employees of the restaurant are responsible for washing my hands.

My guess is someone who likes to have fun with grammar pointed this out to management. Or perhaps management received a complaint from someone who did not get his hands washed by an employee.

Either way, I saw this sign the other day:

And I couldn’t help but smile and take a picture of it to share with the internet.

It was at a Red Robin, in case you want to support them for acknowledging poorly-worded signs.

It’s been a while since I saw any of the Teletubbies, so I assume the same is true for many of you. For those of you who do remember watching Teletubbies (regardless of if it was your choice), this may be of interest.

First of all, the still photo:

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Here is a construction tip for you:

Don’t confuse lintels with lentils.

My wife got me a shirt:

My kids were familiar with two of the three items. I need to introduce them to the 5.25″ floppy disk. I do have a bunch of them – they go with the Commodore 64. I’ll have to pull all that stuff out of storage.

We still use the VCR – there’s no way to watch Space Ghost Cartoon Planet other than the shows I recorded back in college. And most of our vehicles have cassette decks – the kids have listened to Evie and Keith Green albums in their original formats.

Here are a few images of Michael Buffer plus something other than boxing.

You may not know the name Michael Buffer (I didn’t either, before I started this), but you probably would recognize him. He’s the “Let’s get ready to rrrrumble” boxing announcer guy. And if you’re not a fan of boxing, you may have seen him in a car insurance commercial.

I thought about setting this up as a quiz, with the final word omitted until you got through them all, but I decided not to spend that much time on this, so you are on the honor system to scroll slowly and try to guess what these people or things are getting ready to do.

Ready?
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