The obvious choice

Some things are so obvious that not even I, famous for my ability to state the obvious, feel the need to state them. But I do anyway.

Thing one: If you leave a bag of carrots beside a child playing video games, he will eat them. Same for a bag of donut holes.

Thing two: Movies with less profanity sell better than movies peppered with vulgarity. I'm sure somebody out there whipped off a quick #%@%#! after reading that report. I'm not sure why some people cuss. I used to, and I can't give you a one-sentence, good reason for it.

I quit swearing after realizing I wasn't really saying anything. Better to say nothing and figure out exactly what to say. And that's how we are raising our son, to figure out why he's happy, sad, mad, exasperated, whatever. Unfortunately, Hollywood has other ideas. We can't even watch network television without hearing two of George Carlin's seven dirty words, plus two or three more that weren't on that list but which are not ones I like to hear coming from my six-year-old.

And it's not only television, it's video games. Why do they have to go for that added "realism" of having soldiers cuss? Are game creators too short on creativity to figure one more thing out that would make their game great?

Back in the good old days, we had our violence and we laughed at it, like the Three Stooges or the old Warner Brothers cartoons. Who didn't howl with glee when the anvil fell on Wile E. Coyote's head after a half-mile fall off the cliff? And did he cuss afterwards? No. He held up a sign, teaching reading to young minds.

Yes, people curse, and why some (such as this writer) find it so offensive is a mystery I have no time to solve right now. Since I don't haunt a lot of public places, I can't remember the last time someone in public cussed where I could hear it. Come to think of it, I almost never hear any cursing outside of television.