Watch It Bub, I Got The Earwax Out

The English language.

In the hands of someone with minimal brain cells, makes sense twenty-five percent of the time and makes one scratch their head the other seventy-five percent of the time.

In the hands of someone with lots of brain cells, makes sense one hundred percent of the time and allows the person to insert entire leg into mouth in ways too numerous to mention, but we're sure gonna try.

For those of you who had read my profile all those many, many, many, many months ago, one of the things that I brag about is this: I also have, what has been often referred to by both my friends and enemies, "a sharpness of tongue." Which basically means that I can dish it out on a very personal level if need be.

Which really means that I can offend people with my mouth without thinking thrice about it.

Case in point. I have a habit of using seriously offensive terms to stereotype people from time to time, and I make no bones about it, because for the most part, I am not politically correct (although the only concession I've made to that point is the term "developmentally disabled"). I do try, however, to be conscious of my surroundings, and so censor myself when the situation calls for it.

On more than one occasion, I've had to apologize for my poor choice of words because a particular someone whom I respected took offense to it. Sometimes the apology is accepted and nothing more is thought about it, and sometimes, the apology is accepted but the damage done can't quite be undone. But it hasn't stopped me from using it though. On the contrary, I now confine those particular phrases in question to either my short stories, or the occasional humorous stories between co-workers (whose real life experiences have shown me that there are people who are actually like that in the world today).

But for the most part, I try not to use them in my blog posts, because although I do have a mouth that oozes witty sarcasm to the nth degree, sometimes using a thesaurus is better than using those phrases.

Sometimes.

On the times that I felt the need to get my point across by using those particular phrases as opposed to using a thesaurus, I had to come up with a way of letting my readers know that the post they were going to read was chock full of offensive language.

Thus, the disclaimer (click here for an example). Early on, I used a disclaimer for some of the more volatile posts that have made it from my brain to the computer screen, because while I normally don't use that kind of language while blogging, there was the need to give people the option of opting out from reading the post.

After a while, I stopped using the disclaimer, simply because I stopped using that kind of foul language in my blog posts (except in my short story blog, where I stuck one of those funky pages in that you have to answer yes to, in order to access it). But sometimes, it's good to resurrect the disclaimer, because although I do enjoy making people think, I don't want them to think about what I write for the wrong reasons. I rather have them think about the content, as opposed to a particular word or phrase.

How about you? Do you practice the art of self censorship to any kind of degree on your blog? Or do you say, "This is how I am, take it or leave it"?