Swearing

I'm not the type who swears a lot.  Some comedians, like Andrew Dice Clay, make a big routine of every second word being unrepeatable, but it doesn't seem so funny to me. (Dirty nursery rhymes?  How old are you, eleven?)

Which reminds me of a joke from long ago.  A father said to his son, "There are two words I don't want to ever hear you saying!  One is 'swell' and the other is 'lousy.'" The son said, "OK, but what are they?" (My mother told me that one.)

I have to admit that George Carlin's routine sometimes makes me smile.  I'm talking about his "The seven words you can't say on TV." Of course, everything he said was funny, like the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman ("The temperature today is 68 degrees at the airport, which is pretty stupid, because I don't know anyone who lives at the airport!") and "Stuff" and Baseball vs. football" and "It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe in it!" He got pretty cynical in his later years.

When I was little Ann Remy was the host of a local TV station's Saturday morning kiddie show Miss Ann.  Years later she was interviewing my sister Moira on TV after the latter returned from a stay in Russia.  Moira says that during the commercial breaks Miss Ann was telling dirty jokes!

I know quite a few dirty jokes, if you ever want to hear them.  Remember "Mommy, Mommy" jokes? ("Mommy, Mommy, why would pirates hide their treasure in the zoo?" "Shut up, kid, and search the lion pit!")

I once saw a cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker around 1930.  It showed a mother and daughter at the dinner table and was captioned with this exchange: "That's broccoli, dear." "I still say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it!"