In earlier times, I guess I would have had to wash Connery's mouth out with soap for his latest linguistic forays, but living in the now gives me only one weapon with which to fight his parroting of my own blue slips: distraction.
For some time now, Chip and I have been trying to replace--admittedly without much success--our, shall we say, colorful stubbed-toe expletives with the names of celebrities. We got the idea from the British exclamation "Gordon Bennett!" which A Dictionary of Slang helpfully tells me was the name of a 19th century British-American playboy:
"The use of James Gordon-Bennett's name as an expletive possibly bears relation to his outrageous lifestyle and involvement in newsworthy stunts. Imagine opening your daily newspaper and reading yet another news item telling you of his latest antics, and as you begin to express incredulity with a "God Almighty", you restrain your publically unacceptable language and instead say..... GORDON-BENNETT!"
But for us, "Gordon Bennett!" just doesn't have the rhythm that we like. Our favorites are "Ewan McGregor!" and "Scarlett Johannson!". Which explains why my son has been running around Livingston today shouting, "Oh my Ewan!" Beats "Oh my fuck!" any day.