think about the curses

*** WARNING: explicit language  ***  if you might be offended, click here

You know what? There are a lot of people who curse. I know that was not too new at all, but there are on the contrary only a few people that actually think while they are cursing.

Wait, I can prove this to you:
What do you think of first when I say phrases like these?
"Oh, look at that old hairy bitch!"
"He is burning a fag!"
"Man, you sure look totally gay today!"
"Did you see that fat ass of the woman?"
"That's sure an old faggot!"

So what did you think? Let me guess. You probably thought that I was cursing, right?
I mean, bitch, fag, gay, ass, faggot are curses, all right. But most people, especially if English is not their native language, tend to forget that these words have a totally harmless meaning as well.
Bitch for example is just another word for a female dog!

So in the Camp where I worked at the kids tried to be super smart. I mean, they were cursing all the time anyway, so we tried to tell them: "You are supposed to keep your cursing to a minimum". We figured that we cannot forbid them cursing, we did try to cut it down at least.

So then some smart kids said after calling someone a bitch: "But bitch is not a curse. It is a name for a female dog!" "Well, good then" I said "would you like it if someone calls you a female dog?"

And a lot of their curses don't make much sense anyway. I mean, just take one sentence I really heard a lot in Camp:
"Where the hell is my motherfucking shit?!?!" Imagine someone in Germany screaming from top of his lungs, red in his face, sweating all over: "Wo zur Hölle ist meine mutterfickende Scheiße?" Just try to picture that: How can a bunch of shit possibly fuck its mother? What is the mother of shit? I don't know. And I am pretty sure you don't know either.

So I said that we tried to cut the curses down to a minimum. We know that this is hard for the kids, but fortunately there are a lot of substitutes for curses.
Some of them are almost as popular as the real curses, because about every parent teaches their children these words instead of the curses. For example "What the heck" instead of "what the hell", "darn" instead of "damn" or "shoot" as substitute for "shit".
Some we made up like "motherfluffing" for "motherfucking". But if the kids say "Hey motherfluffer, I beat your ass", that doesn't help any.

And you can use any word as curse anyway. Curses are either used to express your anger or simply to make another person angry. With the kids at Camp it usually was a well-balanced combination of being angry and therefore making another kid angry too.
I recall one kid that always said "What's good, what's good?" I mean, the question "What is good?" is certainly not a curse. But if you stand right in someone's face, about two inches apart, all muscles tight, red in your face again and yell "What's good, what's good?" it sure works pretty good to make someone angry.

Of course cursing in public is a slightly different matter.
Imagine yourself standing in the middle of Times Square, New York City and yelling all the cursing you have ever heard and even some you just made up standing there. I guess it will be then just a matter of time until someone beats you up. Or they will just take you away.

Some people, however, make good money cursing in public.
Take Eddy Murphy for example:

In his first movies, in the beginning of the Eighties, cursing was actually all he did on the screen. He is just standing in front of a huge red curtain facing the audience and talks. Talks for at least an hour and in every sentence there is at least one "fuck" and one "shit". The people pay to hear him making jokes and cursing. So that is all good? Well, there is a small downside to it. People in other countries see Eddy Murphy's movies as well. Some of the people learnt their English only from TV and movies like the ones that Eddy Murphy makes. So when these people come to the United States for the first time, walking around in California, on the beach, wherever and are so lucky to spot Eddy Murphy somewhere. Then they don't say: "Hi, Eddy Murphy, how are you?", no, all they do is saying "Hello Eddy, Fuck you, Eddy. I know you. Motherfucker, Eddy."

Other people make money with cursing too. Take the rappers for example, especially the Gangsta Rappers. One famous song at Camp was "Jigga, my N****" from Jay-Z. It looks like this, at least on the CD cover, because people do not like it too much having to pass all these curses in a record store.

Well, the lyrics of the song are somewhat like this:
"Jigga, what's my motherfucking name? Jigga!
And who I'm rolling with, ha? My nigga!
Ah, ahaha, betta get it right,
niggaz betta get it right,
bitches betta get it right..."

So the chorus consists of 19 different word and four of these words are curses. 4 out of 19. That are 21%. And this gets funny when it comes to radio stations. Since every kid is able to listen to the radio, the stations in the United States have to make sure that there are no curses in the songs.

The song from Jay-Z sounds then like this:
"Jigga, what's my *BEEP!* name? Jigga!
And who I'm rolling with, hä? My*BEEP!*
Ah, ahaha, betta get it right,
*BEEP!* betta get it right,
*BEEP!* betta get it right..."

That does not sound too cool, right? My personal guess is that these people curse this much on purpose. Look at it this way. When the song in the radio only sounds like your fax machine because of all the beeping, then the people might be more likely to buy the CD without beeping. Right?

So after all, it looks like cursing is just another way to make money. Think about it! Because there are only a few people that think while they are cursing there are only a few people that make so much money with cursing.

Well, I figured it out. Excuse me while I gonna make some money.

© 1999 robert kneschke

In our English AP class everyone was supposed to deliver a speech to the class last year. But since I was at camp that time I had to make it up this year. So this is the speech I made in September 1999.
As you probably can see, there is really a lot of input from camp. I also took the part from the Eddy Murphy movie "Raw". All the overexaggerating or figures of speech are just technical devices in order to improve the tension of the speech.
Well, it worked, I got an A.

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