Dad Gum

Today's Father's Day.  I wrote my dad a letter.  I know that sounds kinda lame, but writing is sort of my thing.  So there's that.

There's nothing better for your life than a dad who does what a dad's supposed to be.  Like be there, and live a godly example for you to follow.  Not that I'm gonna be a doctor like him.  It's not as simple as that.  But yeah, my dad's pretty much my hero.

Unfortunately I spent a lot of my eloquence on the letter.  Unless I'm stealing the witching hours after midnight, I usually only have so much well-thought-out prose before it dilutes.  Okay, I'm pretty much just pulling that out of my ear, but I kinda feel like if I start waxing poetic about my dad and Father's Day here it cheapens it somehow.

If you have a dad who's treated you right, let him know.  I'm not a dad yet, but I can tell you it will mean the world to him.  And yeah, I know there's not a lot of time to do it officially for Father's Day.  Well, you don't have to contain it within a day.  I don't celebrate and thank God for saving me on Resurrection Sunday alone.

Homestuck is good.  I kinda wish there was a way to get around the more crass elements of it so that I could share it with some of my friends who (rightfully, in my opinion) don't have the patience for that sort of thing.  It's one of those dichotomies I think a lot about sometimes, the different spheres.  I have a whole group of friends and family who don't use "swear words" or other vulgar language, not because they're holding themselves back, but because their dialects don't include those words in such places.  And then there's a whole culture out there that has a very hard time imagining a day without dropping an f-bomb somewhere.

This goes into that whole "swearing" topic.  I use quotes around the word "swearing" because I don't feel like the culture's been using the right word.  Yeah, I know words like damn and hell are curses (or "cusses"), and there's the more disrespectful variants involving the various names by which people refer to our Creator which are like curses compounded with going against the direct instruction of the being who invented you (incidentally that's not a useful argument to use on an atheist because, you know, they don't care if they're offending a God they don't believe or care exists).  But that oh so colorful word that still has nominal ties to sexual activity, and its counterpart about feces with the hissing and the fun hard "t" at the end, those aren't curses.  They aren't exactly swearing either.  I don't have any interesting in swearing by human waste, or by the procreational act.  Incidentally, I ascribe to the not-swearing-at-all let-your-yes-be-yes-and-your-no-be-no philosophy, so you don't hear me promising things very often, let alone "cursing things out."  I do have a habit of using the word "freaking" in several variations, and sometimes I call things "crap."

There's a reason "swearing" exists.  You want to verbally vent your frustration, or to punctuate the degree of awesome you just experienced, without the use of the word "very" taking over everything.  Or "quite."  Or, you know, any other word that means "to a high degree."  Because for some reason English speakers (or at least a lot of us) have reached a point where we feel like those words sound cheesy.  There's also reputation to uphold, and for many "cursing like a sailor" gets them a reputation for toughness, that you're someone you don't "f" around with or else.  Or something.  I think there's this idea like if you want to be taken seriously you should slip some of the commonly accepted vulgar parlance into your dialogue once in a while.

And then, those of us who don't use that sort of language, and don't have that idea about it, have a hard time taking you seriously.  But I think that's what some people want, too.  They talk that way because the people they want to be with talk that way.  It's the language of the culture, and in wanting to fit in, that's what they say.  Not that it's totally a conscious choice.  I read too much Homestuck at once and all the sudden I find myself censoring what I'm typing because there's stuff in it I don't want to be there.  It comes naturally.  It's part of, you know, the way our brains are wired.  It's why the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in life with people who speak it, not to sit alone in a room studying it.

There's a reason I only speak English.

I have kind of a roller-coaster model when it comes to this phenomenon.  Sometimes I don't bother with thinking deliberately about my idiolect at all, and sometimes it gets to be the most important thing in the world.  Those moments don't last too long, but it happens.  I'd like to make my language more of my language, my way of speaking, than just a product of who I spend time with.  It's a bit of a Sisyphan struggle.  But I try.  What can I say, I'm a stubborn kid.

-shrugs-