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Why A Reader Wants Me To Get The "F*ck" Out Of Here!

Tim, a man of great taste (in that he is a fan of my website!), wrote in to give me a gentle telling off for featuring a swear word in the title on my main page. Here is our discussion...

Tim wrote:

Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 21:11:11 -0800
From: Tim
Subject: Home Page of wilywalnut
To: wily[at]wilywalnut.com

Dear Wily,

You are excellent at communication skills and I question why you have utilized a "fucking" in your main page. I send your link to many intelligent people and find that technique to be well beneath your level of Life and attainment.

Please consider changing this to something more appropriate for you and your friends and potential friends. I enjoy every one of your emails and look forward to getting them each day but I would hate to see them open in this manner!!

We just published our webpage of our first group of green products to make things last. We have many more innovations coming soon but these will pay the bills and fund the next generation of products. I will keep you posted! I thought you might like to see what some of your friends are up to out here!!

Tim
Houston, Texas
 
http://www.serveonspecialtychemicals.com/

 

Here's my reply, defending my profanity!

From: Wily Walnut
Subject: RE: Home Page of wilywalnut
To: Tim
Date: Sunday, January 4, 2009, 4:14 PM

Dear Tim,
 
Thank you so much for your email and for your gentle admonishment.
 
My reasons for using "F**k**g in my title were:
 
1. An expression of a particular energy. Totally amazing or totally fucking amazing? To me the latter has more oomph and expresses some of the harder energy that is needed to break through to your creative being.

2. Attention grabber at the end of a headline, like the sound of an Indiana Jones whip lash!

3. Awareness of age-range of most of my readers - 18-35.

4. A disinterest in verbal taboos. To me a word is a word. It is how it is imbued and the intention behind it that makes the difference.

5. Acknowledgement that most people are slightly hypocritical in their denouncement of bad language. None of us like it as a staple diet but most of us resort to it when we stub our toe. It's a perfect outlet at such times.

6. As a warning shot across the bows that some of the material on my site discusses ideas that some might find offensive. Death, sex, God... etc and that I am not afraid of expressing myself in the common vernacular.

7. Just because I can. :)
 
I have no level, no attainment, I am what I am. A word is a word. Merely a sound. Not something to be feared or despised because it has become associated with people, experiences and attitudes that you fear and despise.
 
A very good exercise is to take the worst word you can think of and say it over and over with love, until you can say it with as much love as you would say 'I love you' to your sweetheart, mother or child. You unhook all your previous negative associations with it, and turn the curse into a blessing. It's an interesting and enlightening process. It doesn't mean you are then going to use it with your sweetheart, mother or child! You are just changing it in your mind. Becoming free of that particular bit of 'idea violence'.
 
Now I've spouted some of my justifications, let me acknowledge your reasons for pointing it out.
 
I don't think I have ever used any swear words in my email letters, however, I can see that some people might find it a bit much to be hit with this in the first sentence of landing on my website. So I have amended it. It is a lazy syntax and it has lived on there long enough so I've given it the old heave-ho!
 
I consider myself very lucky to have friends like you who care enough to take the time to point this out as a potential issue. Thank you. And I am grateful that you have shared with me some of the amazing innovations you are making regarding the sealants and bonding agents that will protect and preserve wood and stone and help to make things that last and serve for a long time.
 
May I again thank you and wish you the best of success, happiness and fulfilment throughout 2009 and beyond.
  
Wily

To which Tim replied with great humor:

Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 18:19:19 -0800
From: Tim
Subject: RE: Home Page of wilywalnut
To: Wily

Hi Wily!!

Happy New Year again! No need be discrete in saying anything to me. I have no taboos and will not tap out of any conversation no matter how unusual it may be to my senses! I have been through your wonderful eclectic site and never have I been offended, that would be me reacting poorly to a challenge. I have been daily prodded to do better, to think deeper, to wonder why I have been able to utilize telekinesis a few times when very sad or angry and not be able to find the "switch" for a voluntary implementation of that power. Please do an article on why everyone wants to bend spoons. Is it perhaps because it ran away with the dish?? Baffling!! Yes, I have a silly often scatological humor which exceeds most peoples tastes!! You would no doubt be amused at some of the things I say!!

One last point on the main header...... again it is not to me or others who have tasted of your thoughts and enjoyed your sharing of wisdom and links, it is to the new viewer who gives three seconds or so to see if this site interests them. OMG!!!! I may have clicked through and not become a Wily nut and missed out on so many adventures so far!! We market too and though I've been told we CANNOT underestimate the intelligence or the desire for crass comments from the general public I believe your target audience is a bit more cerebral and need a line like "Aliens grabbed my penis while I was asleep last night"!!! Well, how about "Traditional thought patterns and the scientific method declared obsolete in the 21st century."? Ah, I've wanted alien sex ever since the Star Trek spoof scene where the line goes "eeeeewwwww, that's just not right"!!!! Just not right somehow seemed just right to me so you are coming to realize it was not from a censuring attitude I wrote to you. I want more people to know about you and have sent a good thirty to see your site and did not want them to see Matt Furey though he is a master marketer!! I have often uttered "Totally fuckin' AMAZING" as we go through our experiments. We are also working on some interesting electromagnetic machines that hold promise. One of our scientists is a PHD chemist/EE who is indeed TFA!!!

I will with your permission steal the phrase "I have no attainment, I have no level". As I tell people I know absolutely nothing because the more I know the more I know my ignorance of what CAN be known!! Yet I still thirst for every tidbit and grab it like a chicken after a junebug! I guess I am over your age group, I am 56 and have not yet reached adolescence! I am sending all ages to you including scholars from China going to school in Lund Sweden (20 years old and do better papers in English, their third language, than most here do in their primary language) Teach Spanish to our kids? Heck we cannot teach English! I also have a group of students in Hondurus who are enjoying you. Keep this up and you will be a rumor in your own time!! I have studied Spanish for the last five years and can get along OK but I need six months away from English!

I have found in the past if I repeat a word enough it loses ALL meaning, have you had that happen? I question everything and tell my friends that 80% of what we hold to be inviable truth will be laughed at in a century. Our doctors, quacks, our physicists like flat earth people but that's OK, just don't get ossified and close your mind to new thoughts! I have a real interest in forward looking and enjoyed that link.

Well, thanks for your time. That's the most precious thing we have to share. I am hoping you can touch many more lives. Thanks again for all your effort and I hope you realize how valuable it is to me and my small group of Thinkers!

Keep up the great work!
Tim
Houston, Texas

To which my reply goes as follows...

From: Wily
To: Tim
Subject: RE: Home Page of wilywalnut
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 17:42:40 +0000

Hi Tim,
 
Wow, what a fantastic message! I've just got in from a long walk in the snow (spookily listening to a Matt Furey audio!), face a-glowing, and I was quickly warmed by your email. I was immediately struck by the thought, "I want to read more of what Tim's got to say."
 
You have a terrific sense of humor and turn of phrase that I would love to see immortalized in print.
 
Beauty of the internet is the freedom it gives you to share your thoughts, ideas and insights with others, and to find an audience around the world who connect with what you have to say and how you say it. Something to think about...
 
Your enthusiasm is contagious and much needed. There are people desperately waiting to hear what you have to say! They may not know it yet but they are!
 
I feel the world is missing out in a big way if we don't get that suggested headline out there -- "Aliens grabbed my penis while I was asleep last night"!!!
 
(I love it! And eerily true :-0 -- they needed to "bone home"! )
 
Sounds like you are pretty busy though doing serious life changing work. Electromagnetic machines? You the new Tesla? Hope so! Mucho needed!
 
I'm so grateful to have you on my side, and very much appreciate the referrals. Hope I can justify the recommendation.
 
Wishing direct lines to the Cosmos for the Texas Thinkers!
 
Your friend,
Wily
 

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Wily Walnut is the headbrain at http://www.WilyWalnut.com   , your top resource for unleashing the genius within, becoming infinitely creative, intelligent and brilliant in all that you do!

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