Thanks a lot.

With all the tough times right now, and probably ahead as well, many people will have to dig deep to find things that they can say they're thankful for this Thanksgiving. But in the spirit of the holiday, I'll give it a shot, without getting all sentimental and crap. I mean, sure, I'm thankful for my kids and their health, I'm thankful for my family and friends, blah, blah, sentimentality...Oh yeah, I'm thankful that I have a job, a good job, that I really like...(You reading this TMX?)

But what about those other things? You know, the small things that make life more interesting. Well, here's my fervent prayer of thanks:

Dear Lord, thank you for my mother's uncanny ability to never cease to amaze me. Not by any herculean efforts or wondrous deeds, mind you. No. I'm thankful that she's a bottomless pool of priceless witticisms that provide me with lots of stories to tell. Like the other night, she was talking about a distant relative that died at the age of 52. She said, "Well, you know, he smoked like a fish." What do you say to that? I asked what kind of fish smokes that much.

Thank you for granting me kids that hate the Jonas Brothers. I didn't expect my son to be caught up in that putrid preteen pop that is sending girls into a frenzy. But I'm really happy that my daughter turns her nose up at the madness. Sure, she's into Hannah Montana and the whole High School Musical insanity, but I'm glad I don't have to hear any of that Jonas Brothers slop as well. Hell, she'd rather listen to the Rocky Horror Soundtrack, and I'm pretty damn thankful for that.

Thanks for the washer and dryer in my apartment. I know you didn't put them there, you have bigger fish to fry (smoking fish, maybe?) But thanks for giving the landlord the foresight to do so. I've been to laundromats and they are the gathering place for every person who has had bed mites at least once in their lives, along with a friend or relative in prison for murder, a home on wheels or one that should be, or has shit stuck in their teeth from dinner...two weeks ago. That is, at least for the laundromats I've been in. Other people may have a different experience. They may be thankful for the fact that their laundromat attracts Home and Garden readers looking to launder their fine garments, while sipping soy double non-fat chai mocha-frappe-lattes from Starbucks. Bully for them.

I'm thankful that I don't have a third nipple. That's just damn weird. Why would you do that to some people, God? Do any of the Jonas Brothers have third nipples?

God, I'm thankful that you had the foresight to create cheese. I really like cheese. The other night, I was in a supermarket, trying to decide what cheese to buy. Should I go with the sharp New York cheddar, or the Colby? Such decisions are never to be made on an empty stomach, because I wound up buying both, and since I'm the only one living full-time in my apartment, I now have two bricks of cheese in my fridge for no one else but me. I'm sure I'll manage to get through them, but I'm not sure what will come first. I'll either run out of crackers or my colon will be bound up tighter than a geisha's feet. So, also, thank you for Fiber One cereal.

Thank you for allowing me to realize if I smell funky. I assume I don't, since no one has told me that I do smell funky. I got on the train the other day and a guy sat down three rows ahead of me. Notice, I said three rows. Not next to me or directly in front or behind me. But three rows ahead. He was a pretty normal looking guy, not your lawyerly type, but not a some sort of street dweller either. But he had a smell. It wasn't the BO smell of a rotten onion that's been under the counter at a hoagie shop smell. It was more like a moldy closet full of old pee diapers kind of smell. Anyway, I'm thankful I don't smell like that.

Finally, thanks for helping me get through another posting on my blog. I really, truly want to write more, and I plan on being more frequent with my updates. I'm just thankful that people seem to enjoy what I write. At least I think so. Actually, I hope so. I'm kind of afraid that if I don't have people reading what I write, I'll wind up sleeping in a laundromat, smelling like bad cheese and smoking like a fish. And we don't want that, do we?

Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving and all the best to you and yours. Whatever yours may be.

Curses!

So it's fourth grade, and a bully named Louis "Italian Last Name Goes Here" kicked the schoolbag out of my hand and sent it flying into the street. I turned around and called him a 'fucking asshole.' And thus my infatuation with cursing began.

Anyway, I got punched by Louis for calling him a fucking asshole, which he totally was, and I'm sure he grew into a bigger fucking asshole, because let's face it, people never stop being fucking assholes if they're one as a kid. I've come across many. Maybe they don't kick your schoolbag out of your hand, but they find other ways of maintaining their fucking asshole status. I'm sure that prick you work with now was a prick in high school. And that bitch who lives next door to you was a bitch in kindergarten. All that aside, my dropping of the "f-bomb" after school that day was the first big cursing moment I can remember. And as nervous as I felt after doing it, knowing full well I would have to confess it the following Saturday, it was also quite a rush. I had expressed exactly what I thought of that fucking asshole right to his face. Simply calling him an idiot or a dope or a poophead or something fourth graders used back then was not enough. Even just calling him an asshole did not sum it up for me. I went for the gusto. I had opened up a whole new vocabulary. It was expressive, angry and topped with a great big dollop of anti-establishment.

As a Catholic school student, we were made to believe that cursing was a sin, that those words are bad. I would go in the confessional and do the regular rundown of sins, "I lied, I cursed, I disobeyed my parents, I made fun of others..." I'd probably give the same rundown of sins if I set foot into a confessional again, just out of habit. I'm sure the priest would wonder why a grown man is confessing about disobeying his parents. But as a kid, I started to wonder what the big deal was about. I wondered why certain words were considered bad. Was it their meaning? I mean, shit is poop, so why isn't 'poop' considered a swear word? Why isn't intercourse, penis, anus and so forth? If I called Louis a fornicating rectum, shouldn't that be just as bad as 'fucking asshole?'

After that big fucking day of reckoning, I remember hanging out at my friend's house, sneaking into his older brother's room to listen to his comedy albums. (Albums are what we had before CDs, iPods, MP3s, cassette tapes, etc. And no, they weren't made of stone.) He had Cheech & Chong, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor. But our favorite was George Carlin. We had all seven of those dirty words memorized. Other kids knew all the players on the Phillies or Flyers. We knew the words that could give Sister Jamesita a massive coronary. It was one long nasty string of filth that rolled off the tongue. Shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfucker AND tits. Oh, Lord, my grandmother is now spinning in her grave. But my dad is probably laughing up there in heaven. I know that in later performances Carlin discussed dropping 'motherfucker' from the list stating that a language expert called him on it, saying it was "a derivative of the word 'fuck.'" And I wonder if Carlin would have added some words to the list if he were still around today. Sorry, I digress from the fucking point. Carlin was brilliant in how he made those words just words. They are only words, after all. Words can't kill or maim. So what the hell is the goddamn problem?

Probably one of the reasons I enjoy 'The Big Lebowski' so much is the script. Almost 250 uses of the word 'fuck.' Each one placed brilliantly in the dialogue for maximum impact and character development. I'll never understand why people complain that there are too many curses in movies and comedy. "Oooh, did there have to be so many curses? Why was that necessary?" Well, as a writer, I'm a slave to naturalism in dialogue. Real people talk that way in every day life. Everyone curses, whether it's to release some anger or emphasize their point. Thank you Clark Gable for not going with, "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a pigeon's patootie."

My dad used curses pretty freely, and he was a decent church-going Catholic, who I'm sure is up in heaven right now (if that's where us good Catholics go). As we got older, I remember him even using the word 'fuck' around us. Never around my mother. She would've had a fit. In fact, my mother is not very good at swearing. She'll throw in a random 'shit,' 'damn' or 'hell,' but it just doesn't sound right coming from her. I don't think I'll ever hear my mother call someone a 'fucking jack-off.' Which is probably a good thing. She has her own pronunciation for certain words, like 'prawn' instead of 'prune' and 'Ofrah' instead of 'Oprah.' I can only imagine the confusion on someone's face if my mother called them a 'facking juck-off.'

Today, I enjoy the emphasis those words bring to my vocabulary. As with most of us, driving is always the perfect time to pull out the foul language. "Did you see that idiot cut me off!" is just not as powerful as "Did you see that fucking douche bag cut me off? Stupid prick!" Do I feel the urge to run to confession every time I let a vulgarity rip? Not anymore. I'm thinking there are a lot of worse things I could be doing to get myself into hell than just splashing a few fucks, damns, shits and douche bags into my everyday discussions.

There are some curse words that I find more amenable than others. I guess we all find our favorites. As I mentioned, I do like "douche bag," and I'm guessing because it's not as common as some of the others. It has a certain grossness to it that some of the others don't offer. I also like to throw words together to make new, interesting combinations. It's like a linguistic game for white trash foul-mouths. You know, like shit-sucker, ass-moocher, fuck-knocker. Of course, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

Bottom line, Carlin was right. They're just words. My kids have heard them. My son has dropped a few f-bombs already. They hear them in music, movies and on TV. And while I don't want them to turn into a couple of little trash-mouthed trailer park rugrats, I can't expect them not to use what's become pretty much part of the American lexicon. As long as they're strategically placed, in context and not too over the top. I don't think I'll ever want to hear my fair-haired little princess calling someone a shit-sucking douchebag. Although I'm sure she would make 'shit-sucking douchebag' really adorable.