h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'd like to be a bit less lazy, and it'd be nice to be a bit less paranoid too.........

Who told you I was paranoid?

Just one thing? Yeah, I'd also go for being more confident.

Could I just change my whole personality for a day to see what it's like?

I have one soul, do I get any change?

Getting rid of my inferiority complex.

I have come far in personal and professional matters in the past few years, but it takes one look from my brother to take me down. I'm even in therapy about it, but as long as I don't believe in myself, it wo'nt help.

Being so sweary.

Although someone at work recently said to me that they'd noticed I didn't swear. I just think that swearing in the work place isn't nice and I'd lose any job pretty smartish if I just swore all the time. I've been in trouble for swearing pretty constantly since I was 9 years old.

I do try to keep the swearing down, but it's difficult when I get annoyed because f**k and c**t are the first things out of my mouth. And I don't like it!!!!

if you stopped swearing at work, then you are already 50% there. congrats!
My mom and I get "creative" for swearing. for example, when a male driver cuts through our right of way, its "genleman" but with a very mean inflection maybe you can create your own swear words that other people won't understand?

if you stopped swearing at work, then you are already 50% there. congrats!
My mom and I get "creative" for swearing. for example, when a male driver cuts through our right of way, its "gentleman" but with a very mean inflection maybe you can create your own swear words that other people won't understand?

I did have a made up word that I used a lot if I had to swear in front of my son (normally at other drivers) but he grew up thinking that was a swear word anyway.

I can cope at work because I don't get so wound up by things. There's no men (well, there are men, but not *that* sort of men) or children there.

Warning thread drift I love the tale about the woman who drove her 5 year old to the nursey one morning instead of the usual arrangement where Dad drove. 10 minutes into the journey a little voice from the back seat enquired "Mum, where are all the d*ck heads and b*st*rds this morning"

More thread drift ....

On the subject of creative swearing .....

English, whatever its other merits, has as many disparaging words as one would possibly desire. The example that follows is from Sir Thomas Urquhart's 1653 translation of Rabelais' work Gargantua and Pantagruel, a translation that draws heavily on vocabulary used in Scotland in his time:

The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable to their request; but, which was worse, did injure them most outrageously, called them prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant- varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to eat of these dainty cakes, but might very well content themselves with the coarse unranged bread, or to eat of the great brown household loaf.

You don't hear invective like that any more ………..

I wonder how many of the epithets are on the House of Commons banned list

I think that many of them may be VERY appropriate for The House of Commons - or any political gathering for that matter

I don't know if this qualifies as a character trait. I started a post about it some time and was pleased to find that many share this 'problem'. Put simply: I can't smile on demand. I can't smile for photographs and I can't smile in any situation where one is supposed to smile.

You really can't smile on demand?I can but it never really looks naturalI wish I could change my compulsion to be early so that I can always be on time that is

My 'smile on demand' (usually asked for when photos are being taken) always leave me looking neither here nor there, more like a painful grimace than a smile.

Probably the trait I'd like to change is my difficulty in trusting people. Takes me ages, sometimes years, and sometimes it just never happens at all. And this makes me feel that I am being unfair at times.

az

Trust!I agree it is a bit unfair not to trust people but being over cautious is something else I would like to changenow I think of it there are a lot of things I would change...

and I would like to be able to sing. That would be nice. I think singing is a real talent. Also I would like to be able to do funny voices. In particular, I have always wanted to do porky pig.

I've always wanted to be a bit smarter or a bit thicker, either would do. In Belbin terms I'm a Shaper and have enjoyed an interesting and successful career because of it. But, at times it would have been nice to be content just plodding along and at others to have had the drive and persistance to get to the top, of err, something.

My tendancy to be too laid back and procrastinate.