Your faithful correspondent likes to consider himself a man of the earth despite being raised in a working class suburb on the West Coast of the United States. My forebearers were all from either the South or the Southern Midwest, and a whole bunch of them were sodbusters and at least one was a cowboy and farrier. To be of such lineage is akin to the British boast of being of yeoman stock.
We were taught that cursing is bad. This was probably a result of a Methodist/Baptist theological heritage. Taking the Lord's name in vain was forbidden. Using the F word and all it's permutations was forbidden. Scatological terms were barely tolerated during times of extreme stress. But scatological terms were earthy terms. They were barnyard words not used (at least at that time, in public) among the gentry, and in those days the gentry set the standard instead of the lowers as is now the case. The word "bulls**t" was not considered a curse word. It was a catch all word meaning nonsense, lies or just general worthlessness. Sometimes it meant all three at the same time.
I have, since I got out of the Navy back in the days of Zumwalt, tried to not cuss for the simple reason that cussing revealed a poverty of vocabulary. I'm not the most articulate guy in the States but I figured that I could come up with a socially acceptable maladictive word rather than using the the commonly used profanity.
The ever lovely Lady Nib, a woman of taste, delicacy and discernment, has recently informed me that I have been using profanity on this blog. The examples she has given are the words "hell" and "bulls**t" last used in the entry regarding Texas Hold 'um. In deference to my dear lady wife I will try my best to avoid the use of those words despite the fact that the latter has become such a staple of the common language as to mean something different than its constituent elements.
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