When words are overused, they become lukewarm caricatures of their former meanings. The only "good" reason to overuse a word is the possession of a limited vocabulary.

People say “fuck” a lot because they literally don’t know what else to say. For example, you can no longer get arrested For the Unlawful Carnal Knowledge of another consenting adult, so you can’t fuck yourself anymore. So why tell another human being to go fuck themselves. You know they can’t do it. “Fuck” used to be one of the most powerful words in the English language. When you heard it, you looked up. Now nobody pays any attention.

We’ve managed to wear out “love”. Granted, “love” is an interesting word. If we spelled evil with an “o” instead of an “i”, then love would be evil spelled backwards. God is love. Some more love rot: “Piece, love, and soul”; All you need is love; Love makes the world go round, etc ad nauseum…

The music world is full of divas these days. Doesn’t take much to become a diva. Did you know that Beyonce is a diva? Yea, right. Aretha Franklin is a diva. Beyonce is a wannabe. It takes a long time above the high water mark to become a diva, just like it takes a long time to become a blues man. Some too-stupid-to-tie-his-own-shoe-laces TV commentator referred to the woman who won the 1st American Idol contest as a diva. No, fool, she’s an idol. A diva is an icon.

“Hero” is getting beat worse than a dead horse. It used to be that in order to become a hero, one had to do something heroic. Now all you have to do is put on a uniform. I’m a former Air Force officer. When I was in the military, I didn’t feel heroic. I was just doing my part, and I don’t think thank anybody would have called me a hero for that. Now, no newsperson or politician dares refer to any member (who isn’t being charged with a war crime) of our armed services without using the “H” word at least once or twice.

I can understand politicians, preachers, and pundits being afraid of not using the buzzwords that their constituencies expect to hear, but I get sick and tired of hearing the same old words used over and over again, and many times inappropriately, by people who are supposed to be eloquent.

 

Everyone on the floor just received an email decreeing a MANDATORY clean up of our cubicles. The extent of my housekeeping was wiping off my desktop to remove any dust that accumulated since the last time, maybe a week or two ago, that I cleaned it; and to discard my pop can pyramid.

People around me have dragged out big bottles of germicidal cleaner and are scrubbing like mad. The air is full of dust. I'm getting uncomfortable just being in this building. Most of my coworkers apparently only clean their pigstys when commanded to do so. No wonder they are always calling in sick.

I read an article in PS or somewhere that claims that the average toilet seat is more sanitary than the average desktop. I laughed when I read the article, but now I believe it, and it's definitely not funny. This is an office, not a construction site. There's no excuse for all this unhealthy filth. Um afeared, Pa!


 

I decided to switch the name of my Blog with the description of my Blog.

I think Hoik Ptui has more impact in the Blog list and Brain Drain is a fairly good description of the effect this Blog has on me.

Consider this post like one of those emails that comes from the head of the company announcing that this ivory tower ass wipe is assuming the responsibilities of this other bigwig butt plug, who will now be better positioned to assume responsibility for this, that, and the other thing.

In the end, it means nothing.
 

Subtitled : I THINKS, THERFORE I IS -- A black man's take on the Cartesianism of Descartes


My sweetie, the bombastic and somewhat somber Brit, and I are in the midst of an argument, and suddenly she wants to know why I'm always trying to be funny.

I was not even aware that I'm always trying to be funny. I can think of several times when I have tried to be serious. Or was it merely that I came across as being serious because I failed to be funny? What if she's right? And if she's right, then why AM I always trying to be funny?

I shall use the Cartesian logic of Rene Descartes to figure out why I always try to be funny. It ought to work. Descartes started with “I THINK, THEREFORE I AM” and proved the existence of God. "I think, therefore I am" makes reasonably good sense, although, before reading that sentence, it had never occurred to me that I might not be. And do I really need to be capable of reason to be self aware? I assume that the lowly octopus (I INK, THEREFORE I AM) knows that it's not really a part of the sea floor into which it melds itself so perfectly. If I am part of the cosmic whole do I really exist, or do I need some unique trait that separates me from the whole, rather like a skunk (I STINK, THEREFORE I AM) in a perfume shop?

What about when I'm not thinking? Just today, I left work and drove home by the same route that I always take. I turned into my driveway without the slightest memory of what occurred during the miles between work and home. Did that lost road (I LINK, THEREFORE I AM) exist? Did I exist during that missing interval or at any time before the present?--which incidentally, just passed. I sense that some people go through their entire lives in a state of mental and emotional oblivion until, like the passengers of the Titanic (I SINK, THEREFORE I AM), some catastrophe propels them into a higher state of awareness.

Is thought proof of my existence, or merely proof of the existence of thought? Can I exist without thought in the same way I can exist without piano music (I PLINK, THEREFORE I AM) or wild and crazy sex (I KINK, THEREFORE I AM)? I can even exist without beer and soul food (I DRINK, THEREFORE I YAM). And now, I am, I think, at the solution. I don't TRY to be funny, but life is punny, and things just come out that way. I laugh, sometimes at the wrong times, but I wouldn't be...me...without a sense of humor.

I WINK, THEREFORE I AM.

 

Every time I turn around, somebody is imploring me to SAVE something. I think a lot of this "saving" this and that is just hyperbole. Can there really be that many things in the universe that are endangered?

I see bumper stickers that say "SAVE THE WHALES". Now I'm as fond of whales as your average elderly Japanese man, but a whale is pretty damned big. Do we really need THAT many of them? I am, however, for saving whales simply because I can't stand the thought of hurting one.

Then there's the "SAVE THE POLAR BEARS" campaign. Seems there are only a few thousand polar bears left in the wild. So what? As far as I know, there are no people left in the wild (probably becasue we're afraid of polar bears) and we're breeding like rats on Viagra. Polar bears have sometimes been known to eat people. I suspect that the "SAVE THE POLAR BEARS" campaign is only going to result in the "SAVE THE ESKIMOS" campaign.

But I am an animal lover, of sorts. I don't see the need to kill anything, except a few nasty germs and viruses, out of the world. What I really can't stomach is all this business about saving stuff that's already dead. I was paying a bill, and when I went to put the stamp on the envelope, there was, "SAVE A STAMP, PAY BILLS ONLINE". Why in the hell would I want to save a stamp? I don't care if they stamp out stamps forever!

Everytime I turn on the TV, some car salesperson is exhorting me to "SAVE MONEY" by rushing to their lot and buying a car right now. Dollar bills have the same relationship to my wallet that polar bears have to the wild : There are definitely not enough of them in it. But is money really an endangered species? Do these salespeople contribute part of my monthly car payment to the U S Mint for the care and feeding of greenbacks?

It's all a big scam. Many popular products and services claim to "Save TIME AND MONEY". If so many people are saving time and money, then why are we all running out of them both. We don't need to save anything or anybody. Nature and the wild will be just fine if we would just let them alone. There would definitely be more dollar bills in my wallet if I would just let them alone.
 

I'm going to jump into the discussion precipitated by Vivacious in her Blog "Catching Idle Butterflies" . I got into this when I read Mavis Moog's "Invalid Item"  reply. Any discussion about God is based on faith. It doesn't matter whether you're a believer or not. One side has faith in the seen and the other has faith in the unseen. There simply is no verifiable right or wrong, so why bother?

We bother because there is a big practical problem with Vivacious' position. To believe only in the unseen requires no logic at all(or common sense either). True believers can delegate all personal responsibility to some higher power or to the designated representatives of some higher power. Well anybody can speak to God--when there's no proof that anybody can't speak to God--and interprete the word of God as they see fit. So believers can engage in all sorts of behavior that is totally contradictory to what they profess to be be their faith, such as : "Thou shalt not kill", but we put on a government uniform (or the mantle of righteousness) and kill anyway. And it just keeps going downhill from there.

People who believe in the scientific method have faith that there is some order to the universe. There's no proof of that either, but when one insists on some sort of logical rigor based on observing nature, some destructive behaviors just don't make sense. And they don't make sense no matter what some holy man says. There's no need to run around crying "Why, God, why!" In the world of natural events, shit happens, and it doesn't matter if you're a human or a fly. In the world of human events, when shit happens, it's because somebody, not some god, is behaving badly.

Since there's no way to prove who's right or wrong, it's a crap shoot either way, but there is a middle ground. You can simply choose to believe in God, because there's no logical reason not to. If you're an asshole, your god will be the god of assholes. If you're a decent sort, your god will be the god of decent sorts. I don't know of anybody who doesn't create God in their own image anyhow.




 

Is Kim Jung Il the coolest dictator on the planet or what? He has, in spades, the one quality essential to all dictators : he's short. I think it's important for a good dictator to be short. A short dictator is always meaner than a tall one. Look at Napoleon, Franco, Hitler... The list just goes on and on ad nauseum.

Of course Kim is a loose cannon, but can you blame him. He probably feels a little self conscious.

Kim has every right to shoot off rocket powered phallic symbols if it helps him feel like a big man, and what's the use of being dictator if you can't be mean? Let's help him be nice. We're always sending negotiators that are taller than he is. Let's show him some love by sending him a negotiator that he can look in the eye, say Tattoo from Fantasy Island.

 

I used to do a lot of reading while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store. I don't remember the names of the rags, but there would be great stories about space aliens, babies born weighing 500 lbs, people who were half human and half something else, and so on... I would never spend my money on that junk, but it was fun to read while waiting to pay for a loaf of bread.

Now the only junk I see is stuff about celebrities. I don't care about Jen and Angelina. An why do these grocery store rags refer to Jennifer Aniston as Jen, but they never refer to Angelina Jolie as Angie? That is strictly a rhetorical question because I don't give a hoot about either of them.

Why would anybody think that I should care about the wives of Brad Pitt. I didn't care about these people when they were alive. I certainly don't care about them now that their TV shows have been canceled. I'm sick of all this celebrity worship, because it's crowding out all the good stuff. I see Jen and Angie and Brittany plastered up all over the place, but when I see them, I feel estranged from American culture. What about the bat boy or the 500 pound baby?

Space aliens could be hanging by their toes (if they have toes) from the chandelier of the White House and we wouldn't know it.
 

Saaay! Do I detect a hint of skepticism regarding my claim in my last post "Happy 4th of July" that the United States of America is the world's oldest democracy? WELL, WE ARE!!

I'll grant that our system of government is derived from the British system, but there is that king and queen business. Britain was TECHNICALLY a constitutional monarchy at the time of the American revolution, so we are now the world's oldest democracy.

There were other democracies, such as the Athenian, that started up and died out. They don't count because they're dead democracies.

Actually the U.S. is a democratic republic. But only lawyers and historians care about that distinction. So we are the champions, my friend. We are the champions...

 

I feel priviledged to be a citizen of the good ol U.S. of A. I hope we're around for another 230 years. Our nation may be the most important effort that humanity has ever undertaken.

We are the world's oldest democracy. We are one of the most open societies in the world. Despite some backpedaling, we generally advance the cause of human rights. And we do these things despite being a society based on greed.

If anything ever brings down the USA, it will be our culture of greed. We have enough, but we have been trained that enough is never enough. We must always have more and bigger. We acquire based on prestige rather than need. We generate more waste than the planet can recycle, and we are running out of easy access to more resources to comsume. Dwindling resources are pitting us against the world and, more and more, against each other. There are 300 million of US now. We cannot expect to consume the world resources at the rate we do and live in peace.

Unfortunately, a lot of people think of the United States in terms of what we have, rather than who we are; or even better, who we could be. We live in a country where each and every person has the freedom to look inward and to ponder how to be a better person. We also live in a country where we are too distracted to look inward. We harry ourselves.

We are terrified that we will not be able to give our kids a BMW, so we don't give our kids attention. We have less and less time for friends, for family, and for ourselves. We terrorize ourselves and we are becoming better terrorists than people.

On this, our nation's birthday, I should take time to consider what it means to be an American and how fortunate I am to be an American, but unfortunately, I have to work.