"I DON'T CARE" vs. "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT"

distinctions

I don’t care about spelling bees. But give me a definition bee, a “difference between” bee, and watch how fast I run. “What’s the difference between these two terms?” And I don’t mean only denotation though that’s a good warmup: Difference between continuous and continual (both are functions of time but one’s a function of space too). I mean, when would you use this not that term? Where do you remember it from? What does one do better than the other? Just tell me a story.

First up:

“I don’t care” vs. “I don’t give a shit”

Eileen Myles has a poem called “On the Death of Robert Lowell.” On the death of Robert Lowell. I heard Eileen read it once and thought, Uh oh, serious.

The first line is: O, I don’t give a shit.

That’s the difference: Cares to write a poem to tell you “I don’t give a shit.”