Dirty Words

Happy Groundhog Day!

When I decided to start a weekly blog, I announced it on a certain social media site (that’s worth about 5 billion dollars) and a friend of mine asked what the blog’s rating would be (as in “R” rating). Asking me about my blog’s rating is just like saying, “I’m not going to read your blog if it’s got dirty words in it.” I know she didn’t specifically say that, but I could feel it through my computer screen.

It reminded me of a time long ago when I invented my own dirty word that I could say in front of anybody and not get in trouble. I thought it up with a friend of mine that I used to work with. We shared a similar sense of humor, and he thought the idea was great. The word was “dingus.”

You could use dingus for anything:

“That guy’s a real dingus.”

 “Shut up, dingus!”

“Hey, look at my dingus.”

You get the idea. I don’t know why we liked it so much. Maybe because it started with the letter “D” or because it ended in “gus.” We used it all the time in front of other people we worked with, and they would just laugh and laugh. That confused us because… it was our inside joke.

It turned out there was a guy who worked at that same place (over 2,500 employees, three shifts spread across 20 buildings, chances were good you’re not going to meet everybody) whose last name was Dingus.

So much for our dirty little secret word. We decided to quit using it before the joke (and HR) was on us. I finally ran into the guy. He kind of looked like a dingus.

This brings me to a reality TV show that I know you’ve all watched: “Finding Bigfoot” on Animal Planet.

My opinion of reality TV shows is this: they are NOT REAL. They are all scripted one way or another. But not “Finding Bigfoot.” That show is real… because those stupid bastards are actually searching for Bigfoot.

Those brilliant Bigfoot hunters have invented a word they use quite liberally throughout the show. The word is “Squatch” (derived from Sasquatch… get it?). They use it as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, you name it.

“There’s a Squatch in these woods!”

“These woods are very squatchy.”

“He was walking squatchly.”

“I’ll be back, I gotta take a squatch.”

If there is a Bigfoot, or if there are many, many Bigfoots across the United States as they claim (would a herd of Bigfoots be called Bigfeet?) you would think they would be finding and stepping in big piles of squatch. But they don’t.

Last, but not least, I want to give a big shout out and a rousing “Hellfire!” to my buddy, Carl Bach, from New Lebanon, OH. He used to run the now defunct www.newlebanonohio.com back in the day when I was an anti-establishment hipster before it was hip. He made me infamous and gave me my start with a weekly humor column. Carl, this Bud’s for you!

Happy Groundhog Day!

When I decided to start a weekly blog, I announced…

Okay, lame “Groundhog Day” movie reference.