"'Fuck off!' is not a curse where I come from," Canuck tells Dubai court

The United Arab Emirates is a country [group of states, surely! Ed.] in which Islam is the dominant religion [the ONLY religion, surely! Ed.] Thus they have very strict laws against blasphemy, and even, it appears, against obscenity.

An unnamed Canadian man is on trial this week on a misdemeanor charge of having sworn at an Arab (Egyptian) local, a representative of Etisalat, a UAE-based telecoms giant. The service technician told a court in Dubai, "When I attended his complaint pertaining to one of our services and told him that there had been a delay, he got angry. Then he told me 'Fuck you' -- twice! -- and told me to shut my mouth!"

In his defence, attorney Uday al-Kazwini told the court his client admits using the phrase "fuck off" when speaking to the client services worker. However, he said, "My client is a Canadian citizen and 'fuck off' is not an insult in Canada ... but 'fuck you' is a curse and an insult. 'Fuck off' is commonly used when a person expresses themselves metaphorically and asks another person, who angered them, to walk away."

The defendant told the court he became frustrated with the worker's attitude when he visited the Etisalat counter at Mirdif City Centre to complain about not receiving his bills. The trial continues.

Walt wonders if the unnamed defendant is really a Canadian. Wouldn't a true son of the Great Not-so-white North have said, "Fuck off, eh, hoser!"?

[Expletive deleted] limerick

Walt and Len have been taken to task for their occasional use of a couple of the Nine Anglo-Saxon Monosyllables. This blog, they have been told, could be read by innocent children whose parents have lacked the wisdom to install filters to prevent viewing of "bad words".

[George Carlin said there are no bad words, only bad thoughts. Ed.]

I was just coming to that... George Carlin said there are 400,000 words in the English language, but only seven you can't say on TV. How's that for long odds, said Carlin -- 399,993 to 7! But times have changed. At least two of the seven are heard all the time in movies, and every now and then on TV. But in TV prime time, instead of the offensive "bad word", we usually hear a "bleep".

Could the same technique be used to censor text published on the Internet? Here is what would happen to a typical limerick if such technology existed.

There once was a man who [deleted]
Whose [delete] was so long, he [deleted]
[Deleted delete]
[Deleted delete]
And now he's [deleted] [deleted].

By M.C. Court, as told to Jay Jennings in "Even More Memoirs by Even More McCourts".