I always wanted to find an fucking excuse for fucking swearing on my blog. And now thanks to digg I’ve fucking found one. There’s a great fucking article at TNR on Why We Curse, adding to the debate from a psycological and historical perspective. Fucking brilliant.
Here in Australia swearing is part of the national psyche, culture and language. Who can forget the Where The Bloody Hell Are You? tourism campaign (you can see the original uncensored advert online) that caused so much controversy across the world due to the use of the word Bloody (the word is standard language here and is not even a swear word)? It even got the advert banned in the UK, and the bloody Yanks tried to ban it, but in an act of pure bloody genius, Tourism Australia made the news headlines across the world with the advert and so got the advert played for free on all of the news channels, including the BBC.
Of course, Aussies thought this was hilarious and spoofed it themselves, as you can see here, on the Chasers’ War on the ABC, for the traditional Pom*-bashing when getting ready for the Ashes 2007 Series (btw … 5-0 … lol) and in a recent advert for Chicken Kiev where a young girl shows how she learned how to swear.
Of course we do have standards -its very rare you’ll hear the “c” word anywhere, but everywhere you go you will hear people refering to others as fuckwits or telling them to ga’an get facked mate.
* Pom is Australian for “English Person” and not a racist term, but part of the language. Much debate exists on its origin, but its commonly accepted to stand for “Prisoner of Her Majesty” or “Prisoner of Mass Origin”. But, to be honest, its more accurate just to say that its just an acronym for the full phrase Whinging Pommy Bastard.