Color in dialog is underrated. In general, I don’t like extra verbage that doesn’t aid understanding, but I do like to be entertained. I appreciate wit and clever interplay between words, meaning and sounds during a conversation. Likewise, I tend to make attempts at injecting some joy of life into my speech whenever possible.

So, for example, I like to make exclamations: very binary and abrupt qualifications of opinion as if they were Einsteinian fact. Early on, in my teens for instance, this would come across as “That’s awesome!” or “That sucks!”. Lots of people do that - it’s typical. Then there was lots of profanity introduced. As I moved out of dorms and into cubicles, profane outbursts (eg “Fucking fucktastic , ass-grinding compiler! Why the fucking Fuck won’t you build this shit-stained code?!”) were brought directly to the attention of my good friends in Human Resources. Gradually, as I tried to reach a bit further to both convey my views and dynamic sense of sarcastic cloy, I branched out - but not too far. At some point I latched on to “That’s retarded” (better would be, “That’s fucking retarded”, but then I get in trouble). Not sure why, certainly bereft of originality, but there you go. I also liked to call things “Gay” or “Gay with an H” (as in G-Hay - sort of an extended, over-wrought pronunciation). Later I added “Gaytarded”. I have hundreds of other of these little verbal punctuation marks, but these serve the example well enough. The common theme here is that certain people will take offense. Which is a shame for both them and for me.

Over time I have had differing views on this situation. The most obvious is that it’s fucking gaytarded for someone to take offense at words that aren’t even being directed at them. The possible exception could be those who are gay or retarded or who have close relations who are either and who have also made the analysis that the subject of my description is in fact being derided and therefore with that derision is being made an unfavorable comparison to the state of being either homosexual, cognitively impaired or both. The other view is more complex in a semi-introspective way. Why is it that it’s the offensive words that are the most satisfying? By that I refer to those times when you really want to expediently stretch the expressiveness of an idea or just give breath to some pent-up frustration. I could just as easily say “I find that unappealing or inadequate” or “This falls short of my expectations”. But for some reason it’s much better to say something vulgar and/or obscene that people involved in the conversation or just within earshot might find off-putting.

Much has been written of the word “Fuck“, so I don’t need to go into it here. But making that quick little guttural sound is just so very satisfying that little else can be effectively substituted. My grandfather used to say “Dirty Name”. Somehow he trained himself, probably with help from physical punishment at the hand of various authority figures, to utter that little phrase if he stubbed his toe or broke his pencil. I dunno how he did that. I much prefer “Fuck”, or “Ass-pimple” or “Shit-butter” or “Dick-puss”. Apparently when the world offends me by allowing me to drop a transmission on my foot, or fails to prevent me from cross-threading a bolt into an engine block, I need to be offensive right back. Nothing else will do…