Strong Language

*** Warning: This post contains strong language. ***

"There's more than enough money in the goddamn budget for a three percent increase" declared Senator Jacqui Lambie yesterday, referring to her call for higher wages for Australia's Defence personnel. 

It's probably unusual for a politician to use such strong language in front of the media, although Senator Lambie is playing the parliament game using her own set of rules, most of which she makes up as she goes along.

Her use of "goddamn" to describe her feelings about the federal budget found me considering my own use of fruity language. Would I have described it as "goddamn"? I wouldn't, but "goddamn" is not a word I use. It's not that I don't swear; I've worked with truckies, wharfies and roadies. I just don't swear all the time.

But I love a good swear. Letting fly with an inventive string of expletives can be liberating and creative and expressive and cathartic and fun. Swearing is for special occasions; it can even be event or person specific. Employing four letter words as general descriptors is lazy and ultimately self-defeating. If you say fuck all the time, what do you say when you hit your thumb with the fuckin' hammer? Ow?

Profanity has been around forever. You'll find it in the Bible and in the works of Shakespeare. Our own Prime Minister Tony Abbott uttered a well-publicised "shit happens" while talking to defence personnel about the deaths of their colleagues. The tidal wave of criticism that followed was far more about context and attitude than it was about the language he used. Former PM Kevin Rudd was well known for his willingness to share his feelings without censoring his choice of words, and comedian Billy Connolly owes much of his stage act to his sweary-Scotsman persona.

It's possible that the Brits are the best at swearing, and the posher they sound, the better they swear. Just imagine the Queen, Nigella Lawson or Sir Patrick Stewart swearing a blue streak - and I'll bet that at least two of them do! Consider the Oscar-winning brilliance of Colin Firth in The King's Speech. 

Acclaimed British actor Dame Judi Dench admits to a bizarre hobby. On set she does elegant needlework featuring really rude words, and presents them as gifts to her co-stars. 

Corinne Grant has a rage index, which she describes in her recent must-read opinion for The Hoopla. Her prolonged aaaaarghs, and associated levels of rage are as joyous as a really good swearing session, and much more refined.

My late Grandma Queenie, a devout Presbyterian from a more genteel era, had three - and precisely three - levels of profanity. Bloody was the word for minor annoyances, like when her Canasta game was cancelled at the last minute and she already had her step-ins and stockings on. Mid level incidents, like breaking her favourite Royal Albert tea cup and saucer in the sink, would earn a heartfelt bloody bugger. The big kahuna of Grandma Queenie's delicate blue-tinged vocabulary was shit. I imagine she said it a few times when I wrote off the car at age 20, or when her young grandsons dug up her 'onions' and proudly presented them to her as ready to cook. (They were the tulip bulbs she'd planted just days earlier.)

But I've had a shocker of a year. The combination of testing personal challenges and the political antics of the Abbott and Newman governments has forced me to re-calibrate my personal list sweary-meter. No longer will a slightly hysterical Hugh Grant-esque fuck-fuck-fuckity-fuck do. With the assistance of Twitter and the Hipsternet, I've even outsworn Bill Nighy's magnificent turn in Love Actually: Fuck Wank Bugger Shitting Arse Head and Hole. I have an entirely new and improved lexicon of vulgarity, ready for any occasion.

Here, with apologies to Grandma Queenie, is my Top Ten:

10. Bollocks/Balls - useful in many mildly annoying situations, like when you spill coffee on your white linen shirt on the way to work.

9. Pants - for when your favourite television show is cancelled.

8. Shit - for when you realise that the fairies who unload the dishwasher are on strike.

7. Arse - usually related to cars and flat things: flat battery, flat tyre, flat petrol gauge.

6. Fucking Hell - for when the cat vomits on Mum's carpet

5. For Fucks Sake (abbreviated to FFS) - usually used on Twitter when a politician or troll has said or done something incredibly stupid.

4. Arsehat - used to describe Eddie McGuire, most real estate salesmen, and some annoying but harmless celebrities.

3. Douche-canoe - the noun to describe the politician or troll who has prompted the FFS; someone of the magnitude of Malcolm Turnbull explaining cuts to the ABC.

2. Fucktrumpet – Used exclusively to describe Joe Hockey.

1. Solid Gold, Fur-lined, Ocean-going... - used to preface any of the nouns above to multiply their intensity.

I'm yet to find a swear word or pithy phrase appropriate for life's genuine disasters. Redundancies, car crashes, most of the nightly news are just too horrific for the same old words we use every day. The current hipsterish comment "I can't even" suggests I'm not alone with that dilemma, although it too is becoming trivialised through overuse.

Sometimes silence is the most eloquent response.