Asterisk assessment

Thank God for asterisks, that’s what I say. Not the French fella with the ‘tache, now, I’m talking about the little snowflake yokes. Where would we be without them? In serious poop, that’s where. We’d be living in a world gone mad, a world without rules or structure, where anyone can just pick a word off the top of their head and go around, you know, using it to make themselves understood. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Asterisks are the elite troops of language, always ready to parachute in and throw themselves on the live grenade that is an inappropriate series of letters. Here, I’ll show you how it works. ‘We had a great day, even though it was f**king freezing.’ Did you see that?! Wow. I’d barely made it to the next word before they descended. No hesitation, no hand-wringing. They don’t think, asterisks, they just act. Never a thought for themselves. All they care about is making sure that you, gentle reader, are safe at all times. It’s amazing, really. I mean, you might think that putting asterisks into a dangerous word would make no difference. That your brain would have no say in the matter, that it would have to take note of the decommissioned letters regardless of how well they’d been concealed. That you’d still end up reading ‘f**king’ and being warped forever. Just shows you how wrong you can be, doesn’t it? I repeat: thank G*d for asterisks. And yes, I am aware that it’s the lowest form of wit.