You know you are getting old when:

[GHT]

For some reason profanity, especially the F-word, seems to bother me more nowadays when it never used to. I’m no prude and, God knows, I’ve been guilty of liberal use of the F-bomb myself, but now I find it kind of jarring.

A catholic priest, of all people, once told me that the origin of the "F" profanity came from an acronym. Back in the times when church and state law were one and the same, adultery was a crime and those guilty of this heinous felony were said to be: "Found Under Carnal Knowledge."

Whether that's true or not I have no idea, but it's such a good tale that I want to believe it.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

A catholic priest, of all people, once told me that the origin of the "F" profanity came from an acronym.

A black cassocked Jesuit no doubt.

Christian Brothers of Ireland jest that the only things never changed in a Jebbie said Mass
are bread and wine.

 

[tonyb]

For some reason profanity, especially the F-word, seems to bother me more nowadays when it never used to. I’m no prude and, God knows, I’ve been guilty of liberal use of the F-bomb myself, but now I find it kind of jarring.

Yeah, me too. It’s mostly used as an intensifier, but I find that it usually weakens an argument..

On the other hand, the next time I hear someone offer trite commentary along the lines of “If he had something of value to offer he wouldn’t resort to swearing” I’ll just say, “yeah, yeah, yeah, **** you.”

 

[LizzieMaine]

I admire and respect creative swearing. My 85-year-old mother has the mouth of a longshoreman, and when she goes on a rant it's like listening to a musical virtuoso at the height of her powers. But she was even better before she added the Big F to her repertoire. That happened when she went to work in a hospital in the early 80s. Apparently good old fashioned blasphemy, scatology, and aspersions on one's legitimacy had even by that time fallen out of favor.

 

[tonyb]

My Dear Old Ma rarely utters “taboo” words, but she does use the PG-13 versions — “heck,” “darn it,” etc.

The Old Man, on the other hand, seemed pathologically incapable of getting more than a sentence or two into one of his boneheaded monologues (an absence of subject matter knowledge was no barrier to a strongly expressed opinion on said matter) without the expletives spewing forth. But he didn’t use the “F” word. The why of that will always be something of a mystery to me.

 

[GHT]

“F***,” from a grammatical point of view, is so versatile, so useful, in that it functions almost all parts of speech. It can be a noun, as in: “I don’t give a f***." A verb: “We were f***ing.” An adjective: “Let me drive the f***ing car!” An adverb: “What are you f***ing doing?” It can be an interjection: “F***!” It can be used to modify a sentence in both positive and negative contexts. It is, in short, a grammatical wonder.

For all that, I agree that using any profanity just shows, at best, a lack of the vast context of The English Dictionary, at worse, ignorance of the richness of The English Language.

My own admission of the occasional f-bomb belies my love of The Bard. Yet, it would be misleading to call Shakespeare a prude. While refraining from vulgarities, he still manages to be quite crude through the cunning use of euphemism. If Shakespeare eschews the everyday swear, it is only, in my opinion, to venture into a more creative vein of obscenity.

It takes but a moment to commit to memory some non-profane insults that you have read, heard or even thought of: Here's a couple that I keep up my sleeve:
"You are/ he, she is: a filled urn of disappointment." "If ever there was an example of the poster child for pro-choice."

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

My own admission of the occasional f-bomb belies my love of The Bard. Yet, it would be misleading to call Shakespeare a prude. While refraining from vulgarities, he still manages to be quite crude through the cunning....

''And beauty, blemish'd once, for ever's lost....'' Shakespeare

''Word wizard absolute master Will whose majesty utterly divine begs pause to consider line
and moment itself read then digest page further yon wander wondrous.'' Br. TH Sloan F.S.C.

Despite his love for Shakespeare, Sloan took a merciless razor scalpel to Shakespearen dissection slicing through his mind, heart, and soul for a reasoned calculus cruelly summed
with cold unrelenting pursuit of truth. His knife is still inside my reach but the splendour that
is Shakespeare always demands nothing less than wonder.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

The other day I went on a twenty mile bike ride which isn’t very unusual for me. What was unusual was that night I woke up in excruciating pain from a severe cramp in both of my thighs. It was so bad that I couldn’t even stand or walk. Since I’m an avid cyclist I don’t think it was “unused muscles” and I’ve never experienced this before, at least not in my thighs which I find worrisome.

Today I went on another 20-mile ride and it’s 1:26 AM as I write this afraid to go to sleep lest I get another attack of the cramps like the other night.

 

[GHT]

The other day I went on a twenty mile bike ride which isn’t very unusual for me. What was unusual was that night I woke up in excruciating pain from a severe cramp in both of my thighs. It was so bad that I couldn’t even stand or walk. Since I’m an avid cyclist I don’t think it was “unused muscles” and I’ve never experienced this before, at least not in my thighs which I find worrisome.

Today I went on another 20-mile ride and it’s 1:26 AM as I write this afraid to go to sleep lest I get another attack of the cramps like the other night.

Muscle cramps are caused by a combination of factors including muscle fatigue, electrolyte depletion and dehydration. The treatment is threefold: Firstly, conditioned muscles less chance of cramping, as a regular cyclist you can tick that one off. Secondly replace electrolytes.

Electrolytes are minerals in your blood and other body fluids that carry an electric charge. Electrolytes affect how your body functions in many ways, including: The amount of water in your body. The acidity of your blood (pH) Your nerve and muscle function.

Finally, drink plenty of water. The composition of sweat is mainly sodium chloride but replacing other electrolytes will tend to buffer the loss of sodium.

Replacing body salts and sugars will help, as will magnesium oxide and calcium. You can put a pinch of salt in water and drink it. As for sugars, natural sugar like honey is much more preferable to the supermarket refined sugar.

Explaining your muscle cramps and how they occur would be best done with a pharmacist, or even your doctor. You don't want to be overdosing on magnesium.

 

[tonyb]

… an advertisement here on the FL is for a local undertaker’s enterprise.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Secondly replace electrolytes.
Electrolytes are minerals in your blood and other body fluids that carry an electric charge.

American sport drinks like Gatorade provide electrolyte replenish.

 

[GHT]

… an advertisement here on the FL is for a local undertaker’s enterprise.

It doesn't surprise me. They will hardly find the competition stiff. Will they last? Remains to be seen!

 

[Edward]

The local undertaker in the town where I was a Saturday boy at the hardware store years ago used to advertise his pre-pay funeral plans as "Pay Now, Go Later".

@GHT - the for unlawful carnal knowledge it, I believe, what's referred to as a 'backronym', the etmology of the word being rooted in, as memory serves, Anglo-Saxon. It is an amusing one, and somehow fits better than 'see you next Tuesday' as a euphemism for a rather different profanity.

 

[GHT]

The local undertaker in the town where I was a Saturday boy at the hardware store years ago used to advertise his pre-pay funeral plans as "Pay Now, Go Later".

@GHT - the for unlawful carnal knowledge it, I believe, what's referred to as a 'backronym', the etmology of the word being rooted in, as memory serves, Anglo-Saxon. It is an amusing one, and somehow fits better than 'see you next Tuesday' as a euphemism for a rather different profanity.

That is so true Edward. "See you next Tuesday," is just as vulgar, as the profanity that it represents.

The undertakers humour, "Pay Now, Go Later," is a gem. I did wonder if using the term, 'remains' would go unnoticed. I might have guessed that you would be on the ball.

 

[tonyb]

There’s a slew of insurance companies over here in God’s Country aggressively marketing a type of life insurance that might more accurately be called funeral insurance. “Final expenses,” they call it, somewhat euphemistically, and surely you don’t wish to burden your survivors with that now, do you, Grandpa?

No health questions! Your acceptance guaranteed! Plans starting at $9.99 a month!

The most obnoxious advertising campaign features a personable seeming fellow named Jonathan, hawking Colonial Penn’s “Nine ninety-nine Plan.” He advises us to heed the “three P’s” for buying life insurance on a budget.

“What are the three P’s?,” asks an older woman playing a would-be customer.

“Price, price, and price,” says Jonathan. “A price you can afford, a price that will never increase, and a price that fits your budget.”

So Jonathan, just WTF is the difference between the first P and the third?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Jonathan, at least, is a better late-night-TV insurance salesman than Joe Namath. Which isn't saying all that much.

All television insurance advertising should be banned, along with pharmaceutical and ambulance chasing shyster ads.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And speaking of the latter, there's a car parked across the street right now with a full-body advertising wrap showing the grinning face of a certain prominent Boston ambulance chaser. I guess that's one way to avoid accidents.

 

[tonyb]

…

All television insurance advertising should be banned, along with pharmaceutical and ambulance chasing shyster ads.

I fear that train left the station long ago. It was within our memory when lawyers considered such crass commercialism beneath the dignity of the profession. That seems almost quaint now.

And now health care providers are getting into the act in a big way, maybe not the individual providers themselves, but certainly their practices and the larger commercial entities operating hospitals and clinics.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Listening to America on my old mp3-player in railcar, imagining asking kids, if they like America and they would ask: Who's that??

 

[steve u]

If you were old....You'd ask what's a mp3-player.
No cell phone either for me. Walkman...nope. never