Anyway, while waiting at red light on the corner of Washington & Lake (pointing south) street another van, an electrical company, turned south onto Lake Street. Well the driver of the Van from Brad’s Heating and Cooling attempted to flick off the driver of the other van. I found this to be wholly inappropriate and made his company look very bad. I don’t know if maybe it was his friend and he was just being a guy and that was his way of saying, “Hi, how are you,” or if it was a bitter rival, in any event I took issue with his action for two reasons.

The first was the reason stated above and the second was the he didn’t give an actual flipping of the bird. As an example of what I mean, here is a photoshopped picture of President George W. Bush with the fake bird.

You see how the thumb is extended on the side. I get annoyed when people do this. If you feel the need to go through with this obscene gesture,

actually flip the bird. If you feel that the situation calls for that gesture or for obscene words to be used, people should just go all the way. I don’t like the act of flipping the bird and I try not to swear too often, but when I do, I let it rip and make sure there is no doubt of my intention.

In the movie My Fellow Americans, Jack Lemmon’s wife has a good quote regarding this.

The end of the quote is cut off and the basic gist is, If you’re gonna say the f-word, go for the gold.

The question still remains is swearing okay? Well, the blog The Art of Manliness posed the question, “Is it Manly to Swear?” The general opinion seemed to be it was manly to swear in certain situations but that less was more. One user named Ben posted my favorite comment:

With that being said, users also agreed that euphemisms for swear words should be used, which is in line with the theme of this post.

In conclusion, I say don’t swear. Expand your vocabulary. If you have to swear, go all the way!