One Over X News

The Taste of Words

I feel like I have been driving all day. Really, I guess I haven't. I had an 8 hour meeting in between the trip there and back from Kendall, FL (south west of Miami for those unfamiliar with South Florida geography). It is, with traffic and accidents and delays and all a 4+ hour drive each way.

Eighteen hours ago I started the whole process. I woke up even before my alarm went off, which is not unusual. I rarely ever oversleep unless I am sick or something else throws my biological balance out of whack.

First Digression:

If there is an 'out of whack', then there should logically be an 'in of whack'. Yes, I know it is an idiom and as such the same rules of language do not always apply but we are talking about logic not language. There is nothing logical about English...well very little anyway. If there is an 'out' there must be an 'in', right? There are the variants, whacked out and whacked 'in'(?) Each of them sounds vulgar enough to be removed by a censor, just out of principle.

Second digression:

Censorship - The Grammy Award winning Rock Album of the Year, Green Day's "American Idiot" has a couple of words bleeped out of the title cut whenever it is played on the radio. One of them is the 'f' bomb, of course. The other one is bleeped for being an inflammatory word unless the censor misunderstood it and thought it was the 'f' bomb. The line says "Well, maybe I am the Fag-got America." I am sorry but the tongue-in-cheek context of the lyric and the penchant for Green Day to satirize not only the world around them but their own musical commentary would likely prevent anyone from being offended. The song attacks how the media are conditioning us. They are also poking fun at the political correctness of those in power that offend us far more by their deeds and actions than their words. At least that is my take on it. And I know that the band may not have intended that interpretation at all - just like readers think that my Book 1 is a social commentary.

I guess I understand that censorship attempts to protect the 'auditory virgins' of a society. I just have an issue with who it is that makes the choices not only for the person with the power of the censor but for the list of things to be censored. It seems there should be a referendum for words that we agree are unacceptable. Simple majority rules. The Issue would look like this on a ballot:

In the referendum that the word f*@# is patently offensive and should be censored, vote yes or no.

I do not completely agree with the need for censorship these days. I have heard five-year-old's talk like proverbial sailors and I don't mean Popeye. They are not the norm but it is not quite as rare as you think.

The blame game goes like this: blame the movies parents take their kids to see, blame TV shows, especially cable TV shows, blame the parents for talking amongst themselves and with their friends and occasionally letting the 'f' bomb fly. We are all guilty. We are all to blame. So lets pretend that the world is a lot better than it is and maybe all the problems that we have will go away.

One a scale of big problems (1 to 10) where do you think the need for censorship falls?

I think that playing censor to what is and is not worthy of me or mine to be exposed to is its own sort of social brain washing. I have no trouble with my kids using every word they know to express themselves. I have explained to them that there are some people in the world that are offended more readily than we are so refrain from using those 'coarse' words in public, i.e. at school, in my store etc. They are mature enough to deal with the consequences of offending someone else.


I am against censorship because I do not think that anyone at the FCC or any other body appointed or self-selected has enough wisdom to override the prevailing wind de jur of political correctness. I do not like anyone imposing his or her taste, opinion or sense of morality on me or anyone else.

Yes, I understand that in a democracy my freedom ends wherre your freedom begins. I am just afraid that as the pendulum of 'good taste and decendy' swings to and fro there is way too much confusion created when our community standards are left to fall to protecting the most puritanical and sensitive minority. I have yet to meet a politician with Solomon's wisdom.

I get the concept of protecting the very young from the foulness of humanity's common parlance. I will say that sooner or later they will be exposed to it and eventually learn it through osmosis, from their parents, from their older siblings or from their friends. Making the words taboo or 'dirty' only fuels the fire of an inquisitive preschooler. In my estimation, the best that can be done is to inform each of our children as best we can how we must respect one another and realize that not everyone will appreciate the use of some words in their presense. If anyone is offended by anything that I say I want to know so that I can 1) apologize and 2) not use the language around them in the future. I do not need some bureaucrat telling me what is decent or correct. I do not need legislation making it a class c misdemeanor to drop the 'f' bomb in public. (I'm serious that was suggested in a place that I have lived.)

I will tell you a story as an example and hope that from it you get my point as to how silly and fruitless it is to attempt to shield a child. I grew up in a church going Baptist family. I was a poster child for the sheltered child syndrome. My parents never cursed at home - well they would use the word sh*t which offends some people, I guess but that was it.

I was six-years-old when I visited a public restroom at the Clark County Fair (Ohio), an attraction definitely designed to attract and amuse the young. I first learned the word 'f*@#'. I saw it written prominently and frequently on the wall of a public restroom, but it was the usage above a urinal that amused me and sticks in my mind even to this day.

It said: "What the f*@# are you looking up here for; the joke is in your hands."

What is a word?

It is a verbalization of a singular discrete element of a thought that when expressed is hoped that the conventions of learning a language will permit communication between the speaker and the listener. The transference of the intended meaning of a thought to another person who is receiving the message largely depends a lot of variables that the senders depends on the society to accomplish - such as basic language education, social education, moral education and perhaps even a warning never to read anything that someone like me may have written.

Words once expressed are like a genie escaping from the lamp or all the evils that issued from Pandora opening her box. I have no idea where the expression 'letting a cat out of a bag' comes from but it is damned near impossible to put a cat back into a bag once it is free and I am in total awe of whoever put the cat in there to begin with. I'll bet that they wore a suit of armor.

Expressing a word may be a similar thing. It is very hard to ever retieve a word from public discourse. If it was something stupid that you may have said I'll bet you even try defending your own stupidity for a time. I know I have. Then again I am stubborn.

Very recently I had an episode with Jina, actually a couple of days ago. I was not in the mental state to deal with her on anything near a rational level. She said some things that triggered responses from me and I said some things that were hurtful to her even if I fully believe they are true. I am brutally honest if you will recall from previous posts.

One of the mysteries of humanity to me if how and why people that used to love one another so much could ever become such apparent adversaries. I have never intended to hurt her. Maybe I have hurt her and I will allow that as I have ignored her for work because work was necessary to support the family and that she perceived that as ignoring her.

I have ignored her for writing the books which she has NEVER supported except to ask me if they have been selling. The irony here is that she told me we needed a computer and once I figured out how much easier a computer is to use as a word processor, I was camped out manually digitizing page upon page of typewritten and handwritten text.

Lately I have been thinking about my life and how people have used me, or rather how I have allowed people to use me. I generally have known when I was being used. I may have been deceived briefly but at some point I realized it and decided whether to continue to permit the use or just fade away. Shy, generally quite people like I still tend to be may determine that 'being used' is a small price to pay for having at least some social interaction.


I really feel like I was a meal ticket for Jina, a way for her to get here to the States, stay here, become a citizen and be with her friends that were already here. I know that is completely cynical and there is more than ample evidence to the contrary. That is how I feel, though. She used me, which is okay because I didn't really mind.

She is a good mother. She cares about what happens to the kids. Our children are fantastic. All things aside I have been there for them lately. It was something that I took an enormous loss of pay in order to accomplish, something that she forced me to decide. It is something that I do not regret.

It would be grand to have money and not have to worry so much but I kind of think that I am in good company, that there are more people hurting economically and just getting by than there are people that are well healed. I even dare to say that a lot of people pretend that they don't have money problems.

Money is not a huge motivator for me. I only need what I need to survive. Therein lies the essense of the problem that I have with Jina. She has never understood that about me. Yes I am very bad at managing my own money.

I guess I feel sorry for the situation that she is in. As I have said countless times though not necessarily in the blog, you cannot stop having feelings for anyone that you have loved. Jina is the lady that I married. She is the mother of my children. We just aren’t clicking on all cylinders and haven't been for a long time. That is a problem between the two of us and for the most part we have kept the kids out from in between us. On Sunday, Rob played the peacemaker. He did a good job. He should be a politician and I should bite my tongue for saying that.

The rest of it is way too personal to get attention in a blog. There are some private matters that cannot be open season.

Having to eat words is something that people are not apt to ever do. The worst words once expressed must by their nature taste very bad, really.

(Disclaimer: Self censored, just in case and just because I rarely use the words that I have censored except when necessary to underline the natural speech of a character. Also if you will note from my profile Green Day is one of my favorite musical artists.)


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posted by Unknown @ 9:43 PM