Words Of Our Lives

Apparently words have expiration dates on their usefulness or popularity.  An august journalistic body known as the Associated Press came out with some changes to their style guide, which a lot of other journalists and even normal people use as a reference for spelling, grammar, etc.

It seems they have decided to drop the words "Islamophobia" and "homophobia" from their roster of Mighty Fine Words.  The reason that they gave was that the "-phobia" suffix was too close of a reference to a psychological disorder and they don't want people to think the words have anything to do with mental illness.

I've always felt homophobia is a mental illness anyway, so I don't understand what the issue is.  It really irritates the life out of me that people discriminate against gay people only because of their choice of who they love.

Gay marriage is not a threat to any form of traditional "heterosexual" marriage.  I'll tell you what are threats to traditional marriage:

Stupid people who have no business getting married and spend the rest of their time fighting each other are a threat to traditional marriage.

Idiots who get married and divorced multiple times like they are changing socks or something are a threat to traditional marriage.

Serial baby-makers with minimal or non-existent parenting skills who bring way too many innocent children into their crazy dysfunctional world to abuse, neglect and abandon, thus ensuring the next couple of generations will be equally as screwed-up, are a threat to traditional marriage.

Disgusting pigs who cheat on their spouses at the drop of a hat are a threat to traditional marriage. The 50% divorce rate bears this out.  Compared to them, the lesbian couple down the street who have lived together for 30 years is not a threat.

Some people are against gay marriage because of their religious beliefs.  To them, I say keep your religious beliefs to yourself.  Anyone is entitled to believe in whatever god-delusion seems to complement their personal agenda, but what one is NOT entitled to do is inflict their beliefs on their fellow citizens.  Believing in something doesn't make it true, and it doesn't give you the right to dictate to other people what they have to believe.

Fundamentalist Christians would scream like stuck pigs if someone tried to pass a law making them believe in Buddha or the Easter Bunny.  Idiotic brain-dead Tea Baggers howl that Sharia law is being imposed in various parts of the United States.  They would pronounce it an abomination if someone tried to force the teachings of the Qur'an on them, but think it's perfectly okay to force the teachings of the bible on their neighbors.  So much for their "love thy neighbor" crap.

Fundies also like to assert that their bible is the literal word of their god and it contains specific prohibitions against homosexuality.  The book of Leviticus is most frequently cited in this case.  Leviticus also contains a lot of other preposterous nonsense about shellfish and wearing certain fabrics, but the fundies pay no attention to that.  This cherry-picking of what you are (or are not) going to believe from the bible shows the worst kind of selfish intellectual cowardice there is.  Either you believe in the bible completely, 100 percent, or you don't believe it at all.  There is no middle ground with religious faith, especially when you're trying to ram it down other people's throats.

Since I'm just as qualified as anyone else, I'd like to throw out a couple of popular words and phrases which have outlived their usefulness and relevance, assuming they had any to begin with.  So, these are things which shan't be said any longer, thank you very much:

"YOLO" - or "You Only Live Once," a cryptic tag line which is used to justify any manner of unacceptable or obnoxious behavior, under the premise that life is short and we should be allowed to try anything once.  Basically a free pass for stupid behavior that doesn't involve death or widespread destruction, YOLO takes its place next to the execrable "It is what it is," a vile little Mobius-strip of circular anti-logic which is the linguistic equivalent of throwing your hands up in the air and passively surrendering to the idiot gods which rule this life.

"Double down" - or actually, lying again.  This came into prominence during the last presidential election when a Republican made a completely absurd, blatantly untrue statement, and when called on it, merely repeated the same bullshit more emphatically.  It is a consequence of Republican supporters who freely and willingly release themselves from the confines of logical argument - which has been used successfully for thousands of years since the ancient Greeks - and instead embrace the stupidest lies and fabrications imaginable because they sound good to them or at least, on the surface, appear to agree with their agenda.  Repeated endlessly on faux-journalistic crapfests like Fox News or by repulsive mountains of sweaty flab like Rush Limbaugh, Republicans and Tea Baggers discard facts as if they were articles of clothing soiled in a septic tank explosion, and will gleefully endorse any kind of ridiculous claptrap as long as it seems to reinforce their personal prejudices.  As someone once said, "You are entitled to your own opinions, but not entitled to your own facts."

"Fiscal cliff" - Hopefully this is something we won't have to hear about after December 31st of this year.  Completely fabricated, man-made and unencumbered by any form of reality, it is not really a "cliff" but rather a slope or slide.  Come January 1st, 2013, the entire country is not going to plunged into a dark, fearsome recession.  The banking system won't collapse and the internet won't go belly-up.  With no action from our wonderful leaders, taxes will go up and everyone will start screaming poverty, especially the so-called "job creators" (who, by the way, have been really incompetent in creating jobs over the last two years), but the cliff is really a stepping-stone to the next Armageddon-du-jour in modern American life, the debt-ceiling negotiations upcoming in February.   That will be another round of batshit-crazy political posturing and self-flagellation which serves no useful purpose other than to deceive the low-information majority of American citizens into believing that Congress is actually doing something valuable to justify their existence.  Which is the biggest scam of all.

And no, I'm not getting rid of the term, "batshit-crazy."  I still love using it and it's so very appropriate for almost any occasion.

They're Only Words....

I am an unabashed lover of language and words. Words are like mini-paintings to me, little nuggets (or capsules or bullets) of whatever emotion you need to convey. They can be elegant vessels of beauty or hateful globules of venom, whichever you want. They can be as focused and precise as a laser beam, all deep rich color and concentrated singularity, or they can be as broad and expansive as a rainbow across a stormy sky. Words are tools that can be used to build or to destroy, with equal facility. They can float and glide across your lips like the breeze that carries the fragrance of orange blossoms everywhere this time of year, or they can be spat across the room like little darts of vengeance and animosity. Here are a few of my favorite words, and some of the reasons why they fascinate me.

"Vituperative" (adj., verbally abusive) - This is one of those words which you can use just about anywhere and not a lot of people will know what you mean but it will sure make you sound intelligent. And in this style-over-substance culture we live in, often appearance will do just as well as reality. You can wildly misuse this word and no one will really notice or care. You can say, "Wow, these fresh strawberries sure are vituperative," and someone will say, "No kidding, try them with whipped cream!" Or, "That dress makes you look really vituperative," and they say, "Stop it, you're just saying that to make me feel good." Nothing is more fun than using an obscure word with a very strong negative meaning and have someone think the exact opposite.

"Desiccated" (adj., dried up, dehydrated) - This is a word that says what it means. It always makes me think of some bleached bones half-buried in the desert dust with the arid, hot wind blowing across them. I remember first encountering the word as a child reading an Isaac Asimov story, where two scientists got into a heated argument and one scientist called the other a "desiccated old fossil." At the time I thought it was the most awesome insult I had ever heard and the receiving scientist would be scarred for life and never recover. However when I used that phrase on actual people they were much less impressed.
USAGE NOTE: Words with a double-c in them should be avoided, e.g., "desiccated", "vaccine" and "saccharine". Words with a double-u in them are erudite and scientific-sounding, like "vacuum" or "continuum". But for God's sake STAY AWAY from words with a double-r-plus-h in them, like "catarrh", "diarrhea" and "hemorrhage".

"Quagmire" (n., a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position) - This is a word with a not-so-nice meaning that sounds like it should be really funny. It almost sounds like it should be "quackmire" and mean a meeting place for a social gathering of ducks. Someday when I complete my transformation into a cranky, ill-tempered old curmudgeon (something that people say will happen in about a week and a half) I'm going to tell everyone my name is Chester T. Quagmire, just to be disagreeable. I really like the word "curmudgeon", too, but we're going to let that one go for now.

"Lavender" (n., a pale purple color) - I like this word because I have so many pleasant memories of childhood connected to it. There was this children's song I learned early in Catholic school that had the words "lavender blue" and "lavender green" in it. I know "lavender green" is kind of nonsensical, but somehow in the context of the song it totally fit. I loved that song because it was one of the few songs the nuns taught us that didn't have some kind of religious reference to it. I also loved "My Country 'Tis Of Thee!" until I learned it was a total rip-off of "God Save The Queen!" As a child when I visited my grandmother her bathroom was a lavender color and she always had a bar of Camay soap near the bathtub. I loved the delicate, wistful floral scent of the soap. I associated it with her and I really loved my grandmother. She also had a bar of Palmolive soap near the sink, which is the only thing that could have made it more perfect. Lavender, the color and the word, is all good to me.

"Pristine" (adj., not spoiled, corrupted, or polluted) - A simple little word with a precise, uncomplicated meaning. Says what it means. All fresh, clean and natural, like a pristine lake or stream, or an unspoiled pine forest. One of my favorite songs of all time is Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair/Canticle." This song is absolutely pristine and perfect. It also has a line which goes, "tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground". That is awesomely pristine. Some words are just perfect little packages, just the way they are.

These are just some of the words I love, I'll be posting more on an occasional basis as I think of them. Maybe someday I will be known as a desiccated old curmudgeon with lavender underwear caught in a pristine quagmire of his own vituperative(ness). Just thinking of that sentence almost made my head explode but it was so worth it.