Sephy’s Platzish

As an American, I’ve been brought up in a culture where swearing is considered almost a mortal sin. You never see anyone swearing on TV, and if you so much as utter a curse word in public, you’re looked upon as some kind of pariah who has no decency or intelligence. Either that or, depending on how foul your language is, a sailor.

Naturally, you would expect that I might be offended at someone who would swear, and would almost come to expect the words to be edited out, or bleeped, or somehow adjusted to take away the shock. And you’d be right. About a year ago, Snoskred gave me a link to an article (I don’t remember where it is, or much about it) which didn’t censor the word “fu*k”, and this offended me. So, I said something to her about my offense to it, and basically the discussion led me to understanding that it isn’t a mortal sin to swear, and that there are times when you can definitely do it. Though of course, there are times to not practice the art.

In fact, by the end of that day, I had built up the courage (yes, I know it sounds funny to think that someone has to build courage to swear, but I did have to) to actually say “fu*k”, albeit somewhat quietly and without much confidence. Slowly, I did start integrating the word into my mental vocabulary and also in some conversations; though I do still use “fill” words at times around my mother even though the times that I’ve let one slip nothing has happened. It’s probably because she swears every once in a while, most often on the road.

More recently, another word hit my radar screen - it’s one that you’ll hear from time to time down under, most likely in a pub when a group of mates get together. Now, if you are easily offended, I’ll add here that this word is Robin Williams’ least favorite swear word, and is one that is part of the original list of “seven dirty words” made famous by George Carlin. That word is “c*nt”. I have to admit that I’m still not 100% confident in the use of the word, but it’s coming to me quickly.

Recently, I’ve seen a couple of bloggers mentioning their use of swearing in their lives. One’s at Oh For Fun and the other at Memoirs of a Gouda. What’s in common with both of these posts is that they’re simply admitting to something we all do - use swear words from time to time.

Quite honestly, if you were like I was - offended by swear words - I have a couple of suggestions. First, don’t get offended, just let it go (unless it really *is* a place where you shouldn’t swear).

The second tip is to find yourself an Aussie friend. They’ll tell you that swearing is acceptable and something that is done all the time there, even on TV where people aren’t punished for using language on TV. Sometimes, during a racing broadcast, it’ll slip through and the announcer will say something totally obvious like “Well, that’s the heat of the battle there” and not outright apologize for the use of language. Here, if the same thing happens, generally the driver or person responsible will be fined by the sanctioning body.

I’ll let you go with two video clips here. The first comes from the first V8 Supercar race at Winton in Benalla VIC. Mark Skaife had just spun off the track and was chatting on his radio with his crew. I think the language is pretty clear, yet note the silence afterwards

Next, is this clip from the NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Bristol in March, 2006. It’s a bit longer cos I can’t clip the file as I used the wrong audio type. Note how quickly the announcer (Mike Joy) jumped in to apologize for the language. However, I believe that there were no fines leveed because this was broadcast over the team’s radio and intercepted by Fox.

So today my Mom had to go to the Post Office to submit her application for a passport for a once-of-a-lifetime trip that she’s getting to take this winter. She’s known about it for quite a while but as seems to be the habit around here, we have procrastinated until today. Even so, things got a little bit hairy when it came time to actually go to the Post Office to do it.

Now, you’d think that you could just go into any post office and say, “I’d like a Passport, here’s my filled-out application, birth certificate and identification.” However, that’s where we come to the first tip.

Make an appointment with your Post Office before you leave for there. Sure, we had checked at one point in time in the past to see when and where applications were being accepted. However, the Post Office that we were planning on going to was kinda far from where we were this morning. We had to head down to an appliance store to pick up our new microwave which works beautifully and that we only paid less than $40 for. The store’s about 20 miles to the south, and the Post Office that we were planning on going to is about 10 miles to the east of me, so I thought why not try to see if the Post Offices between the store and home had passport facilities.

The first step in this is finding the information about the Post Office, so I called the toll-free number for the Post Office and they had the option of “Passport Information” which I selected. Bad move. That was just telling me about how to go about applying at the Post Office, including the fact that you need two checks - one for the State Department and one for the Postmaster. I finally get back to the main menu and get to the post office information. Thankfully, I have a really good memory of Zip codes, especially the ones over like the whole of the region, so I didn’t have to fight with the voice recognition software with the name of the town that we were in at the time.

I finally get the address and number - they are on the street that we had just turned onto, but I still called ahead to see if they did Passports, but it turns out that they don’t. However, she was very polite and gave me about three or four other offices that did offer passport service, but not for the one that we had originally wanted to go to. So, I figure that we may as well check into the office that we wanted to start with. I get the number, and call them; the lady who answered the phone basically said that they did passports, but were full up for today; however they would be there Monday from 10-3. So, I ask if there are any other locations that could do it - she offers up the suggestion of going to, and I quote “ww dot state dot gov”. I wanted to say to her that uh, I’m on a mobile phone now and can’t get to the web why do you think I asked about other locations. So I haggled for a few more seconds, and said thank you and hung up.

At this point, I pretty much gave up and decided to call for the number of a post office that was kinda far away, but not really since we know the way there. It’s just the trip that’s long. So, I call them and the lady who answered (another friendly person) said that she’d check, and it turned out that they had a slot between 1:30 and 2 pm, and I said, that’ll work; gave them the last name, and was quite happy. The only catch was that it was 11:30. No worries though, we had to take the microwave home and stop at the store to take money out of the ATM (the bank we use charges something like $3 for using another bank’s ATM on top of any fees that they might charge).

So, it comes time to go down there, and I think - I better take something along to keep me amused because this might be a while, and that’s what I did. However, this does bring me to another common-sense tip -

Fill out your application in advance
Since my mom had actually filled out the application, the process was really quick. I figured that it would take 20-30 minutes, but I think it lasted only about 10-15 minutes, all thanks to having the paperwork in order (bad photo included) ahead of time.

So, now it’s only a matter of up to 4 months (though I’ve heard that they’re really being delayed) and the passport will be delivered by Priority Mail, provided that she’s approved. Somehow I don’t see that not happening considering the biggest legal trouble she’s ever been in is for going through a red light on a freeway on-ramp about 4 years ago (it was green when we went for it, and we got caught by an unmarked squad car).

And to add some irony, we decided to take a different route to the usual on the way back and wound up (thanks to a jackass going slow and turning on the road we wanted to go on) going through the outskirts of the city we were going to go to originally. We also managed to see this interesting piece of sculpture -

A quick photo today - we were out doing some errands today, and we decided to take the scenic route between point A and point B. Say what you want about fuel economy and the like, but it’s not too bad when you have a car that gets about 30 miles per gallon (or about 8 L/100 km). So, anyway, the scenic route passes by one of our many lakes in the area, which is kept safe in the following method -

There was also someone out waterskiiing, but the batteries went off just as we got around the corner to see them in the water.

I have French heritage and it took a phone book to tell me. Well, not exactly; it turns out that it was someone from out of town who put the information together. You’d think that if they, as they claim “work with every prominent member of the business community in the towns where we publish”, they might have tried asking some basic questions. For example -

* Is Baruch a French name?
* What’s the bigger event? A three-day picnic that raises funds for the local fire department or a celebration of an instrument played by a small group of people?
* Is there an ice rink available for use in winter?

Probably the most unusual thing is that, due to the nature of the two towns covered in this book being so closely linked (they share a school district, and maybe some community services offered through the schools), the people who put together the book labeled it “Town A/Town B 2007″. Of course, logic would dictate that you might change some of your templates to reflect the fact that you’re talking about two independent communities. Well, that didn’t happen, so you have lines like this -

In the style of hometown telephone books from an earlier era, our A/B Directory contains large type type and the names and numbers of your friends and neighbors in A/B. … If you look through the huge regional yellow pages, you’ll notice that there are not many A/B businesses listed as advertisers … they have little need to advertise to families 45 minutes away.

Well, there is a bit of truth there - the book does have larger print than other phone books, yet is no thicker than the white pages that cover these same communities that is distributed by the local phone company. It’s also true that there aren’t many businesses in my town that advertise in the über-regional yellow pages which covers all or part of 11 counties in the region. However, they are in the two phone books which cover our county, along with the two phone books which cover the same two towns.

The last minor error they made was that they decided to move a highway about 70 miles to the south, but aside from cutting some roads off on the map, they didn’t make too many mistakes. The good news is that they managed to figure out the right cable and telephone companies for the area.