A half-hearted ode to the F-word

A few days ago, I read a post by Gotham Chopra on Intentblog, which appeared to be an ode to the F-word. The "Fuck" word, for readers who've been asleep for the past 50 years. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the post, and I agree with it entirely. In fact, Gotham Chopra put into words a few of my own thoughts regarding the F-word. As readers of this blog might have noticed, I am not one to scrimp on the expletives. I like to use the F-word, among others, I use it whenever I can, I use it so fucking often, sometimes I use it for no reason at all, and then, when I go back and reread what I've written, I find the placement of the word has no relevance in the scheme of things at all.

But, coming back to the post in question, as I was saying, I admired the intent of the author and his benevolent treatment of my favorite word in the English language, but throughout the post, I found one extremely conspicious discordant note. I noticed that the author had not used the actual word in the entire post even once. To be fair, he used it by cloaking it in characters and using it in sentences like "What's the f#$@%^& point, I was left wondering" and "Oh f#$@$%# contrare, mon frere I say to that." (whatever that means). But, I was left with the question, that if your entire post is a poem dedicated to extolling the wonders of the word "Fuck", why in God's name would you write F$#%^ everytime the word needed to be uttered? You see what I'm saying here?

It's like, if Sanjeev Kapoor on his television show, after describing in verbose detail the gastronomic sumptuousness of mutton, later demonstrated the recipe for Mutton Kolhapuri using a soy based meat substitute.

So basically I have one question for Mr Gotham Chopra. If you love the F-word so much, and are willing to have it's child, why then are you so ashamed to spell it as it is meant to be, why are you covering it with an aluminum foil of ascii characters? Don't be coy, man.

I personally feel that the F-word is needlessly discriminated against. What with the beeping on television, and the ascii charactering on the internet and what not. But I also realize that part of the magic of the F-word is it's aura as a forbidden fruit, an anti-establishment rebellious persona. And it is this aura, or persona of this word that makes it an effective tool in verbal jousting or unilateral polemicizing. If the F-word were to gain acceptance and respectability in the main-stream, then it would probably lose it's sheen, it's biting edge, which we employ to express strong emotion. And, sooner or later, it would drop out of the English language because of disuse.

It's a dilemma.