The everlovin' Profanity Reduction Campaign

I am considering cleaning up my act, or rather my mouth, my potty potty mouth, just a tad.

While it's highly unlikely that the fuck word will ever leave my vocabulary entirely, I realized that it would behoove me not to fling profanities around as casually as I am wont to.

Along the lines of potties - and who knew these photos would be useful? - part of our tour of Ephesus, an amazingly preserved ancient Greek (then Roman) city in Turkey, included a Roman bath house.

One thing I learned was that faced with a Roman toilet, Nick cannot resist. He forced me into this photo. It is the kind of picture I hate.

He couldn't wait to pose for this one.
Anyway. The reduction of the filth.

Here's what prompted it. As many of you know, last month I wrote this fuming post about Comcast's terrible service and our ordeal trying to get cable back. I used variations on fuck a number of times in the post. It was, overall, a rather profane rant.

And as it came to pass, a very nice woman at Comcast headquarters read the post that very day and emailed me. She said, basically, that she wanted to apologize for what we'd been through, and to correct the situation.

She said, and I quote, "I’ll MAKE SURE the next appointment is handled better and to your satisfaction (no peeing involved, I promise)."

I'm not kidding about the "no peeing involved" part of the sentence.

Because, you know, there had been the part where I mentioned Nick's voiced fear that the next Comcast person would not only not help restore our cable, but would in fact urinate on his rug.

So. We got this email promising to make things right. And to take this higher up in the business, as part of a discussion on business practices. Which was awesome. And mortifying.

Because honestly? If I were writing a letter of complaint to a corporation? I would never, ever, use one profane word. Nor would I refer to an employee as a douchemonkey or fucktard or anything of the sort. And I wouldn't bring up any of the ridiculous statments my husband tends to make.

I may have a mouth like a sailor, but I'm not profligate with my epithets in just any situation.

And so I replied thanking her for contacting me, and saying that we had intended to write a letter of complaint, and I appreciated her writing first. I assured her that my letter would not have included any profanity or disparaging sobriquets.

Because, oh, cringe.

She was very good-natured about it, and said that while the situation was horrendous, my delivery was great and that I write well.

Which was nice to hear. But still. What if this post got printed out and passed around as an example of a complaint?

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

And so I am on this Profanity Reduction Campaign.

I'm looking for satisfying alternatives. The problem is that exclaiming "fuck!" or "cocksucker!" is just so satisfying sometimes. And I tend to write like I speak. Words like "everloving" just aren't as fun to say. But I am casting about for some good ones.

It's going to be a slow process.

Oh, and you know what was wrong? With the cable? Comcast had in their computer that we didn't actually get all the channels that we pay for. It took someone coming out to the house to physically look at our bill and call the office to go through, one by one, the channels we are supposed to get, to restore them.

This kind of situation really does make you want to say fuck fucking fuckity fuck a lot lot lot.

If one did that kind of thing any more.