Satire: Hu Dat Lin and the Quest to Offend the Planet

In which Hu Dat Lin achieves enlightenment and perceives the truth of the statement, "There are no w**ds."

First off I need to inform readers that I did not choose the title or subtitle of this guest post. Responsibility for such preambles is wholly in the hands of the Turtle Paradise staff, who painstakingly compose with an eye toward maximizing clicks, and therefore readership. I wish in no way, shape, or form to offend anyone, and I've certainly never been on a quest in my life unless I count the time I visited The Big City, only to discover a disturbing paucity of public toilets. Nor do I claim to be enlightened. I contribute guest posts only because I desire an arena in which to share my unique perspectives on gardening and life in general, and a chance to show off my vocabulary. They also thought it would be amusing to illustrate my writing with photos of certain growing things that are the subject of this post. Rather than take offense I invite you to chuckle politely as I did.

This week I had a major epiphany. Two actually, if I include realizing that the psychopathic outlaw in Godless was also an imbecile in Dumb and Dumber. The second and perhaps more important revelation led me to conclude that there really are no w**ds, or more accurately put, there are no w**ds if I don't want there to be w**ds. Allow me to explain. As you probably know we have entered a period in history in which the human carrying the ‘XX’ chromosomal configuration (formerly known as woman) is no more. She (sic) has been erased with a clever syntactical sleight of hand. Where she (sic) once stood we now observe ‘chest feeders,’ and ‘front holers.’ Perhaps you prefer the term ‘penis lacker’ or ‘uterus equipee.’ Regardless of your nomenclature of choice, you've probably noticed how efficaciously these linguistic devices disappear the targeted individuals.

Witnessing the ease with which an entire class of humanity was made to vanish inspired me to try something similar with those pesky thingamajigs in the garden. You know what I mean—those plants that you fervently wish weren't there. Sorry, I can’t actually name them because doing so might bring them back into existence just when I've succeeded in banishing them etymologically.

If you're still unsure what I mean, perhaps these replacement phrasings will clue you in:

• compost components

• mulch makers

• the recently uprooted

• chickens' salad

• the ‘W’ word

My monikers perhaps lack the panache of ‘ovary owner’ and ‘pussy possessor,’ but at least I've made an attempt at alliteration. And, at least temporarily, the annoying little buggers have completely disappeared, as if by magic. Now you must excuse me because I need to get out to the garden forthwith to make sure no more of those bothersome doohickeys have sprouted. They're extremely stubborn and liable to find a way to circumvent my semantic solution!