In Continuum.

A True Vulgarian

I cannot deny the fact that my blog has been filled with rather angry posts lately, and while there are certain individuals who enjoy my random complaints and bitching of life, I am sure there are others who are sick and tired of my seemingly endless woes. The truth is, this period of time hasn't been too smooth for me, but I am dealing with it one step at a time. Issues with various people have been pulling me down, but I guess dealing with them has become part and parcel to this whole fiesta called 'Life'. Amidst the angry posts however, not a single word of vulgarity can be found, which must have been the topic of much wonderment for some. It is true that these days, vulgarities have taken over our lives even more swiftly than - say, Internet. It is almost impossible for people to slot a random vulgarity into their sentences, like how we may place punctuations in our essays. The truth is - like it or not - vulgarities are here to stay, no matter how much you want to deny it.

Jonno once said to me over the net, something about how I have no need to resort to vulgarities to express some of my emotions. Well, Jon, you are wrong. I do resort to them, and pretty often at times. The only reason why you do not read them here is because I save them under drafts, and I understand that I have readers under the age of eighteen around here, or those who are easily offended by crude languages, or anything that begins with the letter "F", or any word that rhymes with the word "duck". I have run my blog through a blog rating website once, and what it does is to check your blog for keywords like "blood","death","kill", or anything that may be related to violence, depression or vulgarities. My blog is officially R-rated, because of excessive use of words related to violence and profanities. So you see, I do resort to vulgarities as well, along with all the male population in Singapore who has been to the army before. To have blurt out a vulgarity is like contracting foot rot in the army, everybody gets in somewhere down the road for sure.

I remember when I was still in grade school, I was first introduced to the idea of vulgarities. The problem with grade schools in Singapore is that you are exposed to students from every facet of life, and you inevitably get the really crude, really pissed off friends as your classmate. Sometimes you wonder what is there to be pissed off about, especially when you are barely ten years old and your life revolves pretty much the classroom and the soccer field. But there were a lot of angry kids out there, and I remember a bunch of them shouting languages at another bunch of kids, a language that was neither English nor Chinese. I was confused when I first came to Singapore, because the people here spoke a language that I did not particularly understand. It was a blend of Chinese and English, mixed together like a drop of ink in milk. I later learned that the language is known as "Singlish", and it is probably the most crude language you can find out there, combining the best and the worst of Chinese, English, Malay, Tamil, Hokkien and Cantonese all into one. That was the language those children were screaming to one another, and I was sitting there at the bench, completely fascinated.

I alo recall the first time I ever said a vulgar word, and it wasn't even because someone purposely stole my favorite eraser with the American flag printed on the surface, or if somebody else flicked their dried snort onto my face. I was just walking home from school when a friend caught up with me at the covered walkway that led out of the school gates. He asked me, with that look of enthusiasm on his face," Hey, what is 'Super White' in Chinese?" Being a Taiwanese, I was expected to know these things at the fingertip. I told my friend what I thought the translation was, and they started laughing their heads off as if I just told a joke. I then realized that the translation of the words sounded vaguely like the Hokkien version of a woman's body part. Every vulgarity during that period of time pretty much revolved around body parts anyway, and I have no idea why the students made such a big hoo-hah out of everything. "Why not the fingers?" I asked, and they laughed even harder.

Before we were all formally introduced to the world of vulgarities, the vocabularies involved were rather limited. At least for me, words like "stupid" or "idiot" were vulgar enough to offend anybody out there, at least for me. Those were the words my parents told me never to use on others, because "It takes one to know one", they'd say. Of course, they were also the ones who told me that crossing my eyes too often would make them stay that way forever, which never actually came true. But whatever my parents said, I followed. I never was the kind of kid who bothered too much to be rebellious, or wanted to stand out in the family in the wrong way. So when my grade school friends starting yelling those words at me, I found myself running into the corner of my brain to cry ever so softly, my innocent heart hurt by those angry and infuriated words. It was as if I did something wrong, something horribly sinful to my fellow schoolmates back them, that they had to use those foul words on me. But I soon found a way to fight back, I soon found a way to feel less like a failure and more like a warrior.

I scolded back, and amidst the vulgarities and the middle fingers I found myself fitting into the crowd in a very strange way. Of course, the variety of vulgarities never strayed too far from smelly body parts, and I never understood our fascination with them either - and I never will understand. In those days, those words were still pretty much a taboo amongst friends, and somebody saying those words would automatically be labeled as being crude, uneducated, bad, or even a bad influence. But of course, slowly but surely, those boys and girls are going to be exposed to even more vocabularies about body parts, and learn that there are probably ten other words for the organ that is positioned between the legs of every human being. It's rather fascinating how people actually came up with those names one fine day, so many days ago. That person must have looked between his legs and went," Hmm, I should start giving you different names, because the technical name is not vulgar enough!"

As we grew older, we become numbed to those words. They become a breeze that blows pass our ears, or an advice from parents that falls upon deaf ears. This is especially so for the boys, when being exposed to the endless repetition of vulgarities day in and day out. If there is a dictionary made for the army, more than half of it is going to contain vulgarities, or a combination of known vulgarities that don't make sense at all. Terms like "Fuck Spider" was heard for the first time in my army days, and I still wonder the logic behind the name. If there is a holy city for vulgarities, it must be in all the military camps around the world, because that is the only place where you can scream vulgarities as loud as you can, and not be judged by others as being crude or a bad influence.

That is the case for people these days as well. I mean, vulgarities have become such a common way of expressing a certain emotion, that you cannot run away from them in movies or music, or even modern literature. Censorship does help to a certain degree, but there really isn't a point to block out a certain word in a song on the radio when we all know what word it is referring to. Everybody knows what "**** you, bitch!" is in a rap song, and nobody is going to look at you and say," Hmm, I don't know!" unless they are completely ignorant, innocent, or just plain stupid.

To me, vulgarities have become pretty much a way of expressing a certain emotion. I'm not exactly a fan of vulgarities that involve body parts, but at least the F-bomb is a pretty useful word in my books. I mean, there are times whereby emotions are just way too overwhelming, that no other words would give it justice at all. So you drop the F bomb and watch as the earth explodes into a giant crater. That is when you understand the power of the F bomb, and realize that that was the right word to use. I suppose the F word really is just another adjective, replacing words like "very" or "extremely". I remembering hearing an audio file on the internet, spoken by a man using a fake French accent to describe the origins of the F word. It was hilarious when I first heard it, but I guess the origins do not matter much anymore. It's just like saying," Where did the word 'extreme' come from?" Sure, all words have Greek roots, Latin roots, German roots, etc. But to me it is just another word, it really doesn't matter if you use it, but rather how you use it. If you treat it like a punctuation more like an occasional expression, you have serious issues. Seek help.

So am I a true vulgarian? Maybe. It really depends on your definition of a vulgarian. I prefer to say that I am expressive of my emotions, and sometimes run out of vocabularies. I just find that vulgarities have a certain sense of...wholeness, like a perfect circle somehow. I might be over-romanticizing vulgarities, but at least I am not shunning away from those that speak of this language. They are just words really, get over it. Humans gave meaning to words, and who knows? The word 'bunny' could have very well turned out to be a vulgar word, too.