Archives For language

we need political correctness like a fish needs a bicycle

September 9, 2004 — Leave a comment

we have become slaves to the thought and language police and lost sight of the most basic and abiding of principles; respect each other, not because we have to or because someone said to, but because it`s the right thing to do.

the rise of political correctness, organisations that appoint themselves to police things for the greater good and the decline of personal responsibility and common sense are intricately tied together. common sense doesn`t seem all too common any more. i`m trying to figure it`s because we stopped using it and allowed people to make decisions for us or if we just used it all up.

we need to stop relying on other people to tell us right from wrong and learn to differentiate for ourselves otherwise there is going to come a time when we`ll believe whatever is told to us and unquestioningly accept it as the truth.

oh wait, isn`t that where we are now?

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billions of blistering blue barnacles

May 13, 2004 — Leave a comment

there is no bad language. there is inappropriate language, but no bad language. there is a time and place for everything. i`m sure there are people who go through their entire lives without uttering an epithet, bully for them. i have an above average vocabulary, but sometimes there is nothing as satisfying as letting a few choice expletives fly.

there are none that i find particularly objectionable or unconscionable and used in combination they can be quite entertaining. i`ve realised different english speaking cultures have attached different currency to some words. in the UK, `cunt` is a purely a descriptive adjective, in Trinidad combined with `mother`s`, those are fighting words, in the US it seems to waiver but mostly on the unappealing side. i try not to use it as a epithet, because i worship at that altar. in Jamaican culture the worse thing you can say to someone revolves around the word cloth or `claat` as it`s pronounced and refers to a menstruation rag.

when i was in high school i had an altercation with another student which resulted in my cursing him out in an English class, what made this interesting is the reaction of my English teacher, who took the opportunity to teach us about inflection. it was he who taught me about inappropriate language and how we say something, sometimes matters more than what we say.

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