While it’s always been possible to check out who links to me by combing over the logs recorded by my Web server, I’m glad that services like Technorati exist. They do all the dirty work of seeing who links to whom, and it’s a great way to discover new blogs you’d otherwise miss. Every day, I use Technorati to see which blogs are currently linking to me as well as the context in which they are doing so.
One such blog — with which I was unfamiliar until today — is See The Donkey, a blog owned by one Lee Zanello, a Canadian currently teaching English in Osaka.
(I have a very special relationship with Osaka, Kyoto and southwestern Japan. Kansai International Airport, which is in the area, is my traditional stop-over airport for my trips to Manila. My visit there, almost five years ago, marks the beginning of a period where my life got incredibly interesting after a couple of years’ worth of doldrums and has stayed that way. I may have to write about it sometime.)
According to See The Donkey the Symantec Web Security software behind which Lee surfs at the office refuses to allow this blog to be seen. Instead, it displays this little message:
This page will not be displayed because it contains prohibited words or it has exceeded its tolerance of questionable words.
What the fuck?!
(Oh c’mon, you knew I was going to say something like that, and I’m sure you still smirked.)
Yes, I do swear on the blog from time to time, but only when appropriate; sometimes it’s necessary when quoting someone, and other times, a swear word is le seul mot juste. That being said, I also feel that if you overdo it, either in your speaking or your writing, you’re simply admitting to the world that you’re an inarticulate boor following the path of least resistance in Anglo-Saxon word patterns. I don’t mind if people swear, but I do worry that many of my friends seem incapable of switching to a more polite mode when necessary.
(It’s true about swearing being the path of least resistance: someone once wrote a program that created random three- and four-letter words, with the probability of letters appearing being set equal to the frequency of their use in the English language. The “seven words you couldn’t say on TV” came up a lot.)
C’mon, Symantec, am I really that potty-mouthed? Is this some kind of payback for the time I told a room a Java developers that Symantec Visual Cafe was not software to be tossed aside lightly, but hurled away with great force?
Poopyheads.