I've probably offended someone already. Go figure. There's a lot of people in this big ol' world of ours that feel threatened by a small string of letters.

Of course, there's a lot of people who say that any person of intelligence can find a better way of expressing themselves than resorting to profanity (actually, these are generally the same people who are offended in the first place). I state that any person of intelligence could recognize an offensive word for what it is. A word. Not a gun being pointed at your head or a wild man-eating beastie, but a word. There're an awful lot of dumb people out there.

In essence, I'm not doing this to offend anyone - as shocking as that might seem at the moment. I guess what I'm really trying to do is illustrate how we take the most inane things to extremes.

Woo. I love to play the part of the demagogue.

Memory fails me about most of the specific details, being how a good portion of my mind has sufficiently atrophied, but I remember a couple of months ago there was a guy who was arrested for profanity. Seems this dude was boating in shallow waters - which was tipping the canoe over repeatedly. At one certain juncture, this guy uttered one of those oh-so forbidden words - and a small child happened to be within earshot.

So this guy gets arrested, taken to trial, and convicted. Because of something that he said. Does this sound like censorship to you?

And what about the children? It isn't like they aren't using these words anyways, outside the prying ears of any concerned adult. Kids aren't as blind or as innocent as anyone likes to believe. No one was emotionally scarred. No one was hurt. The extent of the whole episode was probably a small child giggling, a flabbergasted woman, and a man who now has a criminal record.

And for some reason, people think this is okay. Personally, I'm perplexed. To think that the cop who fined this guy could be harassing someone who deserved it - you know, one of those mean and viscous types of criminals. Like jaywalkers and litterbugs.

I'm going to start this with a revelation that was bestowed upon my person by an imbecile. Would it interest you to learn that the correct definition of a nigger is an ignorant person? Or that gay is a pseudonym for happy. Or that fag is a state of tiredness brought about by hard work? Or that a faggot is a small bundle of sticks or twigs?

It may or it may not. Of course, we're all familiar with the vulgar argot of these words. I wonder who the genius was who gave these words their modern definitions. I can see it now... gosh, that homosexual looks happy... stupid gay guy. Yeah. Now that would offend me. The last guy who told me I looked happy is now eating all his meals through a straw. Damn nigger. I wasn't even smiling.

Then, through the wonders of human intuition, we discovered a whole new batch of offensive words that had to be done away with. Painful, hurtful, demeaning words like garbage man. And housewife. And blind. And deaf. Just once, I'd like to see a blind person stand up and scream 'I'M NOT SEEING IMAPIRED, I'M FUCKING BLIND!!'. That'd make my whole day.

We spend so much time trying to not say the wrong thing to the wrong people that we make up the damned stupidest words to take there place. Domestic engineer indeed.

Well, it's a bit late for that by now...

But like I think I said when I started this, I'm not trying to offend anyone. I don't have to - people get offended all by themselves. I hardly have to try. I bet some of you are still reeling from the blatant use of the word nigger in the last section - of course, you saw that and missed the whole joke there. I'm not surprised in the least.

And then there are those of you who saw it for what it was and probably laughed at the witty satire (or groaned at its predictability).

And finally, there are those of you who might have missed the joke entirely and said 'Yeah, stupid niggers'.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that a word is just that. A word. What meaning we assign to it is merely a matter of personal taste, dependant on one's own personal experience and belief.

I have a .wav file on my hard drive that humorously depicts the word 'fuck' and its myriad of uses. Indeed, there isn't a more versatile word in the English language. I wonder what it meant before we gave it all those definitions...