The second worst word in the English language

An exhibition poster at the Odeonsplatz subway station, Munich.

Did you ever know a gentlewoman—your former schoolteacher, or a maiden aunt—who felt coy about swearing, no matter how much she wanted to? Such a woman would never dream of cursing a minor frustration with a muttered shit! But she might happily say, in a ringing voice, merde! A foreign tongue made her vulgar thought rather more polite.

I'm beginning to feel the same way about fuck.

Now, we all know that fuck is a meaningless syllable in many languages, including German. But natives of other tongues have picked up a vague idea of its meaning, and the word has become rather popular.

Do non-native speakers of English, even the most skilled, really know how to use it?

"What a fucking day it's been!" I once declared to Master Right.

"Yes," he agreed, "It's been very fucking."

Since then, fucking has become my favourite predicate adjective. The day is fucking. The printer is fucking. The pump jockey at the gas station is fucking. Christmas is fucking.

I've brought all my interpretive skills to bear on the exhibition poster above. I'm still not quite sure what the artist was trying to get at.

Is he trying to say that beauty and hauteur go together? That fame makes you bitter? That that Marilyn Monroe would never have sex with anyone who rides the subway?

English is a long way from becoming the undisputed international language of business, diplomacy, science or academia. (They say, for example, that three-quarters of the world's tax law is written in German. And I believe them.)

But English has turned into the preferred lingua franca for the crude. Blame rock'n'roll.

The world really should make a thorough study of English vulgarity. Starting with that nasty little word at the top of the list. Fuck seems to be everywhere, but not its evil twin. Can you find it on the box below, for a Japanese CD rack?

French is the language of seduction; Italian the language of passion; German the language of precision; and Japanese the language of politeness. English....well, it found a different calling, I guess.

EDIT: To my esteemed colleagues in the office. Don't worry. You certainly know how to swear properly! With great skill and charm, I might add.

über me

Teaching the Germans to party since 2007. No, not that party.
The Honourable Husband proudly proclaims himself to be stateless, rootless, godless and gay. A fiftyish American-Australian chap, recently posted from New York to Munich. He and his Japanese partner regularly discover new reasons to think the other odd.

The Husband's Most Honourable

My Favourite Blasphemy
Those virgins were really pissed off when I reminded them how little sex they were having.
Ththththth!
Tough consonants for the world at large.
Viva Taxi Libre!
A night out in Barcelona, in which the Author barely manages to protect his bits.
The Einstein Memorial Turd
Why can't Einstein's birthplace remember him properly?
Fucking and Intercourse are Quite Similar
Have you done both? I have.
I do? That's Easy for You to Say
My skinny little gay wedding
A Poor Grasp of the Penis, If You Ask Me.
It's lucky that I can charm my way into a gentleman's pants, because I sure can't talk my way in. At least, not in German.
Should I trash the War Memorial?
Tale of a calendar that stopped.
Waking Up From the American Dream, Part One.
Citizens and consumers are not the same.
Sexual Lampoon's Tennessee Vacation, Part Three.
Cleanliness, godliness, and a raging woody.
Chance Encounter with an Old Friend
My reacquaintance with the vagina, after a long absence.
A dicky little ditty
Pure poetry. Not good poetry, just pure poetry.

A River of Stones

Click here to see the Honourable Husband's month of mindfulness, January 2012
The River of Stones is a fascinating web project. Buddhist Priest Kaspa and his fiance Fiona began it as an exercise in relaxed alertness—living in the moment and appreciating the world around us. They urge us to find a small item of beauty or meaning in the physical world, every day, and notice it. One need only write it down; if we share it, that’s our choice. I've chosen to share it—given my background and temperament, I need plenty of practice at watchful serenity. If you click on the link in the text above, you'll see the results. Click on the logo to find out how you, too, can participate.

Resistance is Useful

It's on again! Is someone dicking you around? Is your day filled with petty people tut-tutting you at every turn? Through no fault of your own, do you find yourself marching to someone else's tune? Strike back against the petty tyrants and oxygen thieves. For one day, let them kiss your sweet, fragrant buttcheeks. The Honourable Liberation Front has declared January 13 to be the Fourth Annual International Day to Bite Me. Join the movement, here!

Nach Links

My guide to the homosphere, including the blogs of quality queers. Be gay the Honourable way!
Coming out of the safety of the closet was easier for me than coming out of the mindwarp of the church. This page has plenty for the godless and groovy, including Mojoey's incomparable Atheist Blogroll.
People often ask about life as an expat. The experience is different for everyone. Here, you'll find stories and advice from my favourite modern-day immigrants.
The motto of a certain well-known advertising agency is Truth Well Told. The authors behind this link need no reminder that a well-told truth is powerful. They prove it. Of course, tales well woven, and jokes well cracked earn a berth here, too.
The online world will revolutionise social history. The stories of ordinary people were once hidden. Now, we can share them with the stroke of a key. Many bloggers (such as Neil Kramer and A Free Man) have encouraged their readers to interview each other, share their stories and record them for posterity. Here are the interviews I've participated in.

To Elvis fans, schade.

Sorry to disappoint, but Deutschland über Elvis, is not an Elvis Presley fansite. The title is a pun on the German national anthem, Deutschland uber Alles. Presley fans curious about his G.I. stretch in Germany (1958-1960) should whack elvisforever.de into BabelFish and follow the link to Elvis in Germany. It contains some extraordinary photos, and the story of a rumoured Munich mistress.

February 2012

Bookage

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged (Penguin Modern Classics)
A user called Theta9 on LibraryThing summed it up. "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Helen Garner: The Spare Room
The people we love can be infuriating and self-destructive, especially when they're sick. How does a carer continue to care? This tale quietly rips your heart out. Nobody describes the minutiae of every day life with the same clarity and symbolic force which Garner brings.
Victoria De Grazia: Irresistible Empire: America's Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe
A beautifully written treatise on how Europe became middle-class after World War I, under the influence of the USA. The mercantile community in those newfanged Rotary Clubs, were considered racy and radical. Thomas Mann was a Rotarian. No shit.
Byron Sharp: How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know
If you're a marketer, get your hand off it and buy the damned book. Your job is simpler than you think.
Rudolph Herzog: Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
The author, son of film-maker Werner Herzog, traces the jokes people told abou the Nazis in order to prove that most people knew the nature of the regime. To me, this slender collection of political humour shows that there simply weren't enough jokes cracked, not that there lots of sly jokes which showed a public spirit of resistance. The funniest and cruellest jokes, ironically, often came from Hitler's victims themselves.
Sean Condon: My 'dam Life: Three Years in Holland (Lonely Planet Journeys)
Sean has an ear for the cadences of modern, media-warped speech. He has a heart for the subtle humiliations which life deals out to the ordinary bloke, and he retalliates by humiliating the famous in return. A genuine, new, and distinctive voice in literature. He's also a pal, so buy his books. A lot.
Bill Wasik: And Then There's This
Boy, have I had it with Tipping Points, Flat Worlds, and anything 2.0. So imagine my delight when one of these so-called business books turns out to be a gem. Wasik is a gentleman adventurer in the world of new media. An amateur pundit with a day job as a rock journalist, he dips a toe in the water of viral culture every so often, and manages to beat the pros. He was, after all, the man who invented the flash-mob. Name one other writer on cyberculture who starts his book by quoting John Stuart Mill. That's class.
Thomas Doherty: Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934 (Film and Culture Series)
It was six years between the birth of the talkies and the enactment of the draconian MPAA Production Code in 1934. But in those few short years, Hollywood relased some of the most subversive, racy and cynical movies it would ever make. The parallels with our own time, as the forces of censorship stir again, are frightening. the cover shows ten items which the Production Code would never allow. Among them, an inner thigh, wickedness unpunished, drug use, consumption of alcohol that is not essential to the plot and the mockery of religion. I ask you: what's left that's worth making movies about?
Herodotus: The Histories (Oxford World's Classics)
Herodotus was the Perez Hilton of Ancient Greece. No gossipy detail misses his evil eye. Pericles? Don't get him started...
Tony Hendra: The 80s: A Look Back at the Tumultuous Decade 1980-1989
This book was written in 1978, as a joke. It is read, in 2009, as an historical document.
Peter C. Whybrow: American Mania: When Too Much Is Not Enough
How being a nation of immigrants messes with American heads (and waists). Incredibly insightful.
Mrs. Dorothy Parker: The Portable Dorothy Parker (Viking portable library)
She's a total bitch. But you knew that.
P.J. O'Rourke: Republican Party Reptile
O' Rourke says he's a Republican, but he appears on NPR. A (political) party animal. His viewpoints, in large measure, suck. But I bet he mixes a mean Gimlet.
Mary Karr: The Liars Club
Like Nick Flynn, another poet tells her tale of childhood neglect and abuse. The portrait she paints of her star-crossed parents, held together by lust and divided my tragedy, will bring you to tears.
Nick Flynn: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir
How does it affect your soul, if you're working in a homeless shelter, and your dad checks in? And you have to throw him out for bad behaviour? A gut-wrenching tale of family dysfunction, emotional torture, and (yes) vanity. Flynn is a poet, and he tells his tale in a way that's morbidly beautiful.
Muriel Spark: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The relationship between a gifted student and a truly inspiring teacher is an intimate one. So intimate, the student and teacher can resemble two lovers, with their intrigues, passions, and potential for betrayal. Spark's cool, detatched style is at odds with the simmering emotion that runs through this tale of adolescent self-discovery. It makes her story all the more heartbreaking. A masterpiece.
Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist
Dali once described surrealism as the chance meeting of a fish and an anvil on an ironing board. As a modern surrealist, Leyner provides plenty of anvils, but the fish are somehow missing. A dozen eskimos in bowler hats have just rung the doorbell, and I must get my llama to make them hot fudge sundaes. Do I make myself clear?
Bruno Schulz: The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)
Magic realism at its best. Also seek out his Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass.
Japan Travel Bureau: Japan in Your Pocket: "Salaryman" in Japan No. 8 (Eibun Nihon Etoki Jiten)
Perhaps the funniest book on Japanese culture ever written. And it's meant to be serious. Did you know that the highest ranking executive gets the safest seat in a taxi? I didn't, until this book explained all those silly details of business etiquette. Special section on how to curse your bucho.
Dana Thomas: Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster
A staggeringly well-written book from a former Washington Post fashion correspondent. The many hundreds of billions of dollars which passes through the hands of the luxury goods industry has not trickled-down to the people who actually do the work. Once proud brands tarnish their reputations by badge-engineering. A merciless expose of luxury marketing, but one which respects the artisanal ideals which spawned the industry in the first place.
Gore Vidal: Myra Breckinridge & Myron
Today, Vidal concentrates on scathing essays and scandalous memoir. But you'll find his best work in his early satires. Myra Breckenridge tells the story of a ball-busting post-op transexual woman who wreaks revenge on the millieu of B-list celebs and wannabes who spurned her as a man. This short book carries not an ounce of fat; every word packs a punch. It is, without doubt, his masterpiece. The sequel, Myron, runs longer, and is just a little too aware of its own cleverness. Irritated at a Supreme Court decision on censorship, Vidal replaces each of the proscribed nine dirty words with the names of the Justices themselves. Oddly, the judges all seem to sport names which suit the purpose. I am especially fond of the name for a vulgarity which refers to the female genitalia; Justice Whizzer White.
Michael Heyward: The Ern Malley Affair
This is so post-modern, it makes your head spin. In 1940s Australia, two would-be poets Harold Stewart and James McAuley grew tired of rejections from avant-garde literary journals. As a lark, the two composed what they thought was were silly parodies of the prevailing modernist school, and submitted them under an assumed name to Angry Penguins, a new journal published by the Adelaide dandy Max Harris. Harris said they were brilliant. The (real) authors revealed that the poems were frauds. Or were they still brilliant, even if the poets responsible never intended them to be? A fascinating artistic morality tale, which still stirs arguments in Australian academic circles.
Chad Kultgen: Average American Male: A Novel
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Drop me off on Mars, OK?
Robert Whiting: You Gotta Have WA (Vintage Departures)
Prospective expats often ask me for tips on doing business in Japan. This book, which tells the story of American baseball players recruited to Japanese clubs in the eighties, proved the single most useful guide to how a Japanese organisation works. Richard Whiting is a sportswriter who has spent most of his career in Japan, and carved a niche for himself explaining the curiosities of Japanese team sports. Check out his most famous work, The Chrysanthemum and the Bat.
Alice Miller: The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting
I have suffered through endless therapy sessions, support groups, and self-help books which proclaim the abused must forgive their oppressors in order to find peace. Alice Miller calls bullshit on this quatsch, and shows that victims make better progress if they do NOT forgive their abusers. I concur.
Philip Roth: Portnoy's Complaint. (Vintage)
A seminal work. In more ways than one.