Mainstream media is catching on to the power of blogging in many ways, but one thing they haven’t embraced is prolific profanity. At the LA Times book blog Jacket Copy, I don’t write FUCK or SHIT or any variants thereof.
Which is perhaps why I am inordinately tickled by cursebird. It’s a site that captures all the profanity-laced tweets from twitter and spools them out as fast as they happen. Some tweets are simple, yet obscure — “this shit is taking entirely too long” says what it means, but leaves you wondering exactly what shit — could it be a line at a store, a bus home, a breakup? So many possibilities. Others are far more specific: “thank fucking gawd. sarah palin didn’t know that africa was a continent or who was in the nafta agreement http://tr.im/w9r jesus.”
There is appreciative — “Listening to ‘Death Letter’ from Son House’s Original Delta Blues. Un-bloody-believably utterly bastard brilliant.” There is oversharing: “Can I ever have a phone call w/Brad where I a) don’t have to explain the fucking obvious b) aren’t accused of being a bitch c) don’t cry.” (Does Brad follow her, you think?)
I like these tweets that imply a bigger story. “Spent the afternoon buying shitty old bikes from a city warehouse, to be welded to a giant pineapple.” Was the curseword necessary? Probably not. Do I want to know more about the giant pineapple and its welded broken bikes? I kinda do.
But then there’s this (about manga): “I fucking hate Hidan for killing Asuma but I can’t help but like how foul-mouthed he is.” It’s a loop of profanity — the cursing fan, the foul-mouthed character, the cursebird watching it all.
