(Seriously, if you are offended by profanity then stop here and just go read the Peril or The Baptist pages.)
I recently sent a copy of The Baptist to a friend's work email as a pdf attachment. She didn't receive the email. She did receive an automatically generated message from her employer's Mail Sweeper programme.
This e-mail has been stopped in Profane Messages.
A report was attached to the message with the MIMEsweeper Analysis results. She printed a copy and took it to tea-break where the content engendered a lot of discussion. Irish tea-breaks are an occasion for great craic. The consensus was The Baptist contained a lot of action but not enough components to perform it. They discussed the parts of speech.
I've listed the report results below and I have to say that, whilst I didn't intend to write a profane novel, I can remember almost exact each and every page where the offending words occur.
It went a little something like this:
The phrase 'arse' was found at location 70126
and so on. I'll just share the count.
arse x 1
balls x 2
bang x 3
bastard x 12 (quite a lot of bastards, one of them capitalised therefore a pronoun?)
bitch x 6
bloody x 8 (how quaint that bloody should be a profanity in this day and age)
blow job x 1 (shouldn't I have hyphenated the blow-job?)
bollocks x 1 (shouldn't there be at least two of those?)
crap x 2 (okay UK and Ireland it's an expletive)
cunt x 3 (I do apologise, it's very rude word but, in my defence, it was, or rather they were, in dialogue. Not uncommon in Ireland.)
fag x 5 (this means cigarette in UK and Ireland and that was the intention)
fuck x 10 (no argument there)
fucker x 4 (I'm getting an idea for a Christmas song now)
fucking x 21 (in fairness, there is a lot of that going on)
penis x 1 (poor little lad, all on his own, but just goes to show it takes only one)
prick x 3 (oh, right ... well)
queer x 1 (surely acceptable as an adjective?)
sex x 7 (the vanilla version is profane?)
sexy x 2 (sexy too)
shirt-lifter x 1 (at least it's hyphenated, if homophobic, but anyhow it's dialogue)
shit x 11 (a fair amount of which was capitalised, perhaps a placename?)
shite x 1 (the Irish for above)
slut x 1 (so few?)
wanker x 1 (there's always one)
white trash x 2 (confused me, is that profane?).
Right, Christmas is on the horizon. So, in the spirit of the season, I offer:
The Baptist Twelve Days of Christmas
(I'll just go to straight to the last verse)
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Twelve bastards bragging
Eleven shits a fan-hitting
Ten fucks a flying
Nine fucking expletives (cheated, there wasn't nine of anything)
Eight bloody bus stops
Seven sex in the opens
Six bitches barking
Five ... fags ... a ... puffing!
Four fighting fuckers
Three quiet cunts
Two dangly balls
And a slut arse-wanker penis blow-job bollocks.
(That leaves a spare queer sexy shirt-lifter shite white trash, sounds like one of my characters.)
I'm sure we'll be hearing that little ditty on the radio.
All in the name of literary art, my dears.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you've enjoyed reading Ruby's blog then please sign up to Ruby's News for freebies, advance review copies of upcoming novels and occasional updates. Thanks!
Great post Ruby! :) Kind regards, Dean Lappi
ReplyDeleteThanks Dean, good to here from you!
ReplyDeleteThat's going to be going through my head for days, curse you.
ReplyDeletePlease, Susan, no cursing! ;-]
ReplyDeleteThis was a great post, I love the poem. People need to lighten up.
ReplyDeleteHappy Holidays to All!
Deb
You could have ZIPPED the file when it was sent. But (or is that Arse?) there's always some scum-filled wanker-sucker out to cause trouble. :)
ReplyDeleteBTW: If you were talking about Fucking, you needed to add Austria... I wonder if they'd stop that. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, d_o_m. I think they anyway would have managed to get inside my zip ;-]
ReplyDeleteI absolutely LOVE the new Christmas song!! Gonna have to share this one on my Facebook, as a few of my FB friends do their very best to make light of the pagan celebration the Christians stole and turned into a capitalistic rite. Except for the fat man in red. That came straight out of Russia, with love ;-)
ReplyDeleteOh and "white trash" is considered a perjorative (derogatory, bigoted, inflammatory) term here in the US, mostly due to the "white" part of it as segregating from non-whites. The preferred derogatory adjective is "trailer trash" since the white trash usually live out of mobile homes in trailer parks. Hmmm..amazing they've never been called Gypsies, then the Romani could object, too! :)
@Grrl, always good to get your colourful input! I've had to admit the Christmas fib to my ten year-old this year. She shone a torch up the chimney and said no way is a fat lad getting down there!
ReplyDeleteWhy do I have a feeling that song is going to be running through my head throughout the holiday season?
ReplyDeleteCindy, feel free to join our profane carol singers. Rehearsals 8pm every TFIF.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ronny. I plan to sing it door-to-door and earn a few quid!
ReplyDeleteThat is hysterical!! Thanks for the laugh!! Bloody mail sweepers - oh oopsy!! :)
ReplyDeleteHey, Emerald Isle, thanks for stopping by!
ReplyDeleteI guess I should wrap this post up now and put the thing away in the attic with the LBJ and his crib entourage. Maybe I'll just leave it up ;-]
Hilarious post, Ruby. I've just posted one mine on the same topic and then find yours here, also with 'WTF' cleverly used in the title. I mean really, what the fuck is up with that?
ReplyDeleteI would be very interested to see a list of the profanities which exude from my mouth on a daily, nay hourly basis. As a Phone Sex Operator, it's all just in a day's work. As a result, my Diary of A Rookie Phone Sex Operator is just riddled with such wonderfully colourful language. I love it! And your post! Floozie Hugs.
ReplyDeleteThanks Lucinda and hugs right back at ya! Maybe you should record some statistics? ;-)
DeleteRuby,
ReplyDeleteWell, your blog entry got past Websense, which is my work's filtering system. And your song fits well with the news we got today that because of the days we lost to hurricane Sandy, they are taking away three days of February vacation to make up the lost time. Whose (insert first day of Christmas from above) idea was that?
Thanks Matt. I'll be terrorising cyberspace with my profane twelve days again soon. I think this is what they call evergreen content ;-)
DeleteLOL! WQll, there is the issue of where your poor friend must work that they need to filter their employees minds... I believe a fellow named Orwell wrote about that once! Still, have a happy farging Christmas, OK?
ReplyDeletePublic service, Richard. Independent thought not encouraged ;-) Festive cheers to you.
Delete