good langauge – sillysocksonfriday

Ya Nincompoop!

nincompoop (plural nincompoops)

(derogatory) A foolish or silly person. [from 16th c.] synonyms ▲quotations ▼Synonyms: dunderhead, fool, imbecile, nitwit,
gaby, hammerhead, putz; see also Thesaurus:fool

It seems that insults or slurs are subject to fashion and context.

“You little monkey” is often heard from proud mothers beaming at agile, mischievious infants. However, it is a gross insult for dark skinned people, particularly hulking great sportsmen!

As an African I am keenly aware that the K-word is a definite no word and is felt as a terrible insult by black Southern Africans. Yet Afrikaners frequently referred to their own chubby little children as klein kaffertjies, as a sign of endearment.

I recall some years ago yelling out in exasperation “O you baboon!” at a rugby game when one of my son’s team mates dropped the ball, missing a certain try.

After the game, I was delicately taken to task (I usually gave lifts to the players and was a faithful fan). It was said that exasperation was acceptable and they were happy for the exchange of hairdresser for baboon.

I suppose one should not use even that as exasperated critique at a rugby match these days….

I am sure if I called my wife a cabbage, she would resent it, yet in France it is a term of endearment.

In a change of direction we see that Sam Kerr, who has an Indian grandmother, was arrested for calling a cop a stupid white bastard.

I wonder which word makes it an insult ?

There is a whole list of ethnic slurs in Google for almost every country or ethnicity: quite enetertaining reading and in a way an account of history.

Identity slurs have become a political weapon, capable of being exaggerated and sensationalised until the fallout stuns the nation. How did simple words get so over inflated into righteous causes? You bitch is not a nice thing to say; you black/white bitch is a mortal sin, likely to entrance the nation for a week!

Back in the day, if one was insulted, one returned the insult or biffed the insulter on the nose or walked away. Now we huff and puff and the house is blown down by the selective Mother Grundy zealots determined to impose their values and solutions on our world. And the media pumps it up with suitable tones of horror and barely suppressed outrage.

What happened to “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words will never harm you”??

It really is a matter of choice – but there seems to be so much ado about nothing!!

It is time that the nanny response to such small stuff is shelved and we need some brave politicians and editors to say so.

Ya piddle nishers!

Thoughts during this week

I have just realised that it is Friday and I have not written anything… some may say that is a relief – I acknowledge that I have been ranting lately!

So just a random spray of thoughts.

My week has been dominated by the reading of The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith who you may know is also JK Rowling.

It is a detective novel about a cult/religion which bewitches and fleeces many people. The description of the religion, its dogma and rituals and ability to ensnare intelligent people provides a detailed, thought provoking literary artefact. The worlds of the wizardry in Harry Potter stories and Tolkien’s Middle Earth come to mind.

Her depiction of the ease with which our fellow humans are beguiled and converted to blind faith is all too real. The fact that new cults and religions flourish faster than second hand car salemen retire is a tragedy and clear indication of the need for meaningful spiritualiy in today’s world

There are estimated to be more than 45 000 Christian denominations with new prophets and witnesses, each with their own interpretation of the Christian God. This suggests religion has been a fertile field for creativity … and a comfortable living?

The story includes the experience of a beloved relative developing dementia, which provoked urgent thoughts about personal life plans and wishes …

Rowling is a serious social commentator and a literary treasure – I love her work.

Onto less valuable artworks…

I wrote this nearly 4 years ago about Married at First Sight:

What morally bankrupt, banal, conscience-less executive producer agreed to that? How can these people justify the immoral drivel they feed into people’s heads . Tempting people with TV exposure and cash to perform questionable, objectionable, offensive and immoral ceremonies is disgusting.

Do you remember the film of the Depression-era dance marathon of the desperate for the amusement of spectators:“They shoot horses, don’t they?” Why don’t they re-open the Colosseum in Rome and feed Christians to lions?

Finally, I despair that it is so easy to divide societies so easily and so damagingly … the Australia Day furore just deepens the chasm opened by the ill-considered Voice referendum.

Herself is away this week, on the otherside of the continent, grandson tending. The house is quiet in an empty way…

Say No

Generally speaking people feel uncomfortable objecting to something somebody says or saying “no”.

The desire for social acceptance and fear of causing disappointment or conflict lead us to agree, even when it’s against our best interests. Some of us were brought up with expectations of obedience. Saying “no” to a parent was exceptionally hard; an older sibling would likely give you a thick ear!

So we learned how to express our refusal: often by persistence, pleading, begging and tears. These tactics sometimes worked with Mum. Dad’s response was invariably: “what does your mother say?”

By saying No, I am challenging your power, intimating you are wrong and I am right, disappointing and inconveniencing you, embarrassing you.

The reluctance, discomfort and often fear of saying no is the playground of bullies. Standing up to our teacher, boss or parish priest is almost as difficult. But if successful, a “no” reaps rewards and enhanced respect.

The most challenging “No” of all, is the one you say after having said “Yes” many times before… when there is an expectation of “yes”

Hurt feelings, guilt, shame, embarrassment, sadness, anger and rage are common reactions to a refusal. Here in Australia, the rejection of the Voice referendum has seen all those emotions and more.

Saying no means we need to be able to discriminate – to be to tell the difference between different options and select the right one. We should also learn how to signal our position before being asked, if possible.

For some time I have been uncomfortable with the increasingly commonplace Aboriginal “welcome to country” ritual foisted on audiences; particularly the increased emphasis on this land being “ours”.

I believe it is commonplace before meetings in government departments and even in some churches.

These “welcomes” are not endearing Aboriginal cultural practices; they are in fact political statements which challenge the status quo in Australia.

High Court v Commonwealth 1993: … there is no justification for “the notion that sovereignty adverse to the Crown resides in the Aboriginal people of Australia”

The referendum message does not seem to have got through to the vociferous minority. The special treatment of people on the grounds of their ethnicity has been rejected.

Thirty percent of Australians today were not born here, they have different cultures – they are rightly expected to assimilate and contribute to our society.

The message is: You can say “No” to stuff you didn’t agree to, even the ‘touchy-feely ‘ ethnic and gender stuff.

Question the justification for unnecessary welcomes and cultural, ideological changes in your workplace.

Say ‘No”.

Bombast

I suffered a bruise the other day … to my ego.

For some reason the word came up in a conversation with my daughter … and she laughed! We were talking about the Afrikaans word “windgat”, which is not a compliment and indicates someone who is loud, flashy and probably drives a car with two big exhausts.

We pondered on that; I was forced to admit that some years ago in South Africa, I was called a windgat* by colleagues at work. It was probably because I was a loudmouth and sometimes confronted their conventional awe of authority. Fortunately, I usually knew what I was talking about in industrial relations and in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!

She asked what the English equivalent might be, so I Googled it.

Oh dear!! Bombastic was the word!

ostentatiously lofty in style

synonyms: declamatory, large, orotund, tumid, turgid rhetorical

given to rhetoric, emphasizing style at the expense of thought

That was why she laughed! She recognised me!

Bombast was the cotton padding used in clothing to make the wearer appear more substantial.

I do admit that I have a love of language and have been known to use big words and I avoid the banal like the plague – but I have never owned a car with big exhausts.

So, it is necessary for me to embrace and practice humility !

Banal is a strange word which I shunned in my younger days as it made me feel queasy somehow. Probably because of the -anal sound. But in fact its not ‘bay nal’,- it is pronounced ‘buh narl’, much more reflective and condemnatory sounding. Synonyms are: bland, corny, dumb, hackneyed, mundane, stupid, trite, vapid …

Ooops! There I go again ……

*windgat literally translates as windy a***hole

The mysteries of sex

Hopefully the title has lured your interest and you read on. This is about an older man’s resistance to change and opposition to the incursions of identity politics into history and life as we know it.

Back in the day, say 1960’s and 70’s when Germaine Greer was shaking the tree and ruffling the entrenched privileges of patriarchs, a “trannie” was a transistor radio.

Now there are arguments between medical philosophers in “The Lancet” about politically correct gender terminology

The streaming company Twitch recently said it would use the term “womxn” in order to be more gender neutral in its language.

“But LGBT communities online called the change transphobic because it suggested trans women were not women.”

I think I grasp most of what the LGBTQ anagram stands for.

A 2011 survey in the US suggested LGBTQ’s make up about 10% of the population. Of course each group are all different with different demands and there are variations within each grouping e.g.: Transgender people may identify as heterosexual (straight), homosexual (gay or lesbian), bisexual, asexual, or otherwise, or may decline to label their sexual orientation.

This has become quite confusing for some of us. What do we call these people, other than saying ” one of those LGBTQ types... “?

I have a few suggestions which might help:

The tensions over who can use which toilet could be eased by renaming public conveniences as urinals and non-urinals and by increasing the number and privacy of toilet cubicles which could be open to anyone.
Allow males into breast feeding/ baby care rooms only to change nappies (that will keep them out)
Instead of ‘people with vaginas‘,or ‘people who menstruate’ congenitally heterosexual women could be re-labelled as wombmen
Trans males who have had surgery to acquire female conformation could be called ginamen
Trans females who have had surgery to acquire male conformation could be called cockerelles
Female Bisexuals could be callen whimen, males could be bisons
Unaltered transgender people could be called cocktoos

I would like the word gay to be returned to its original usage, describing happy, merry and frolicsome behaviour. I get that queer and other labels may be unacceptable, so maybe they could be called otherlovers. In line with that, pansexuals could be called anylovers …

No hurt is intended but if it is felt, it certainly couldn’t be more than the hurt felt by the the world of women who have been told they no longer can be called females or ladies and must change their nomenclature.

Of course sarcasm doesn’t help other than to perhaps signal discomfort at the disproportionate reactions in social media against those who question the rationale or proposals advanced by identity politicians or proposals that the whole be changed to accomodate tiny minorities.

Never mind buying a pig in a poke – be glad it’s not a goat like Paddy McGinty’s .

Nobody writes poetry quite like the Irish.

My grandfather was baptised in Killaloe and it was thought that perhaps the absence of a christening robe might have been due to this goat!

This poem is far better when sung, so I have included a video and the words, so you can then sing it to yourself.

Paddy McGinty’s Goat

Bert Lee and R.P. Weston, 1917

Noble Lies

Please forgive me – I was wrong to suggest that post truth, alternative facts and all that stuff was outrageous. It seems that it was all my fault for not believing.

Post-truth resides not in the realm of the production, but in the realm of reception. Lies, dissembling, spinning, propaganda and the creation of bullshit have always been part and parcel of politics; what has changed is how publics respond to them.

Facts are social constructions. We construct facts to convey information about the world. They are always relative to the overarching paradigm: facts in one paradigm are not recognised as facts by adherents of alternative paradigms.

Obviously the sin lies in our gullibility. Being gullible means:

easily persuaded to believe something; credulous, over-trusting, over-trustful; trustful, easily deceived/led, easily taken in, exploitable, dupable, deceivable, impressionable, unsuspecting, unsuspicious, unwary, unguarded, unsceptical, ingenuous, naive, innocent, simple, inexperienced, unworldly, green, as green as grass, childlike, ignorant; naive, foolish; unsophisticated; unsuspecting; wide-eyed; being a sucker; believing; easily taken in; easy mark; falling hook line and sinker; green; kidding oneself; mark; silly; sucker; susceptible; swallowing whole; taken in; taking the bait; tumbling for; unskeptical….

Perhaps innocent would be an appropriate summary.

Hmmm! Obviously no longer a virtue!

This is an edited version of a longer article by Colin Wright in ‘The Conversation’

It seems that the action comics of our youth about Social Justice Warriors (SJW) were wrong too. These days according to Wikipedia, SJW is “a pejorative term for an individual promoting socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, multiculturalism, and identity politics. The accusation of being an SJW carries implications of pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction and being engaged in disingenuous social justice arguments or activism to raise personal reputation, also known as virtue signalling.”

We must have shifted into a new paradigm without realising it! That explains Trump, Brexit and Zuma!

Irish Poetry: Humour, Rhythmn, Ryhme and Reason

Delaney’s Donkey

Now Delaney had a donkey that everyone admired,
Tempo’rily lazy and permanently tired
A leg at ev’ry corner balancing his head, delaneys donkey
And a tail to let you know which end he wanted to be fed
Riley slyly said “We’ve underrated it, why not train it?”
Then he took a rag
They rubbed it, scrubbed it,
They oiled and embrocated it,
Got it to the post
And when the starter dropped his flag

There was Riley pushing it, shoving it, shushing it
Hogan, Logan and ev’ryone in town lined up
Attacking it and shoving it and smacking it
They might as well have tried to push the Town Hall down
The donkey was eyeing them,
Openly defying them
Winking, blinking and twisting out of place
Riley reversing it,
Ev’rybody cursing it
The day Delaney’s donkey ran the halfmile race.

The muscles of the mighty never known to flinch,
They couldn’t budge the donkey a quarter of an inch
Delaney lay exhausted, hanging round its throat
With a grip just like a Scotchman on a five pound note
Starter, Carter, he lined up with the rest of ’em.
When it saw them, it was willing then
It raced up, braced up, ready for the best of ’em.
They started off to cheer it but it changed its mind again

There was Riley pushing it, shoving it and shushing it
Hogan, Logan and Mary Ann Macgraw,
She started poking it, grabbing it and choking it
It kicked her in the bustle and it laughed “Hee Haw!” laughing ass
The whigs, the conservatives,
Radical superlatives
Libr’rals and tories,
They hurried to the place
Stood there in unity,
Helping the community
The day Delaney’s donkey ran the halfmile race.

The crowd began to cheer it. Then Rafferty, the judge
He came to assist them, but still it wouldn’t budge
The jockey who was riding, little John MacGee,
Was so thoroughly disgusted that he went to have his tea
Hagan, Fagan was students of psychology,
Swore they’d shift it with some dynamite
They bought it, brought it, then without apology
The donkey gave a sneeze and blew the whole lot out of place

There was Riley pushing it, shoving it and shushing it
Hogan, Logan and all the bally crew,
P’lice, and auxil’ary,
The Garrison Artillery
The Second Enniskillen’s and the Life Guards too
They seized it and harried it,
They picked it up and carried it
Cheered it, steered it to the winning place
Then the Bookies drew aside,
They all commited suicide
Well, the day Delaney’s donkey won the halfmile race.

Once, twice, three times a lady!

My sister, who is a Sistah if you know what I mean, takes offence at the usage of the fwmale power word lady, to wit: The common use of lady referring to woman is pretentious, bourgeoise, obsequious, euphemious, ignorant and incorrect.

That statement of facts is a perception, not factual, and is contentious.

Dictionary.com states the origin of the word woman was Old English wīfman, equivalent to wīf female + man

language: a feminist guide states ‘lady’ was the female analogue of ‘lord’, and it can still be a title for the wife or daughter of an aristocrat. But it has undergone a process known as ‘semantic derogation’, where the female term in a male-female pair gets downgraded in status. ‘Lady’ was initially downgraded to apply to bourgeois women as well as aristocrats. Later, it became a polite way to refer to a woman of any social class.

Usage in society changed: formerly ‘woman’ was regarded as demeaning and ‘lady’ was the term of courtesy; now ‘woman’ is the designation preferred by some modern female adults. The word ‘lady’ has been perceived as a classist tool to divide society.

I remain divided. When I use the word ‘lady’, I do not intend it to convey disrespec women are already strong t for a female. However, I would not be respectful if I persisted in addressing my Sistah as a lady, so I will avoid doing so; but I reject her right to require me to do so generically to all women.

That is my choice.

Emily Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward wrote in 1873: Burn up the corsets! … No, nor do you save the whalebones, you will never need whalebones again. Make a bonfire of the cruel steels that have lorded it over your thorax and abdomens for so many years and heave a sigh of relief, for your emancipation I assure you, from this moment has begun.

download I can’t fault her viewpoint and admire her radical standpoint. Women are in no way inferior beings and I wholeheartedly support their rights to equal treatment and demands for the removal of impediments to social, economic and political and any other type of equality they seek.

Womens’ struggle against centuries of cultural domination is justified.

Most men educated in the European norm agree, I am sure. Not sure about African, Arab or Asian men, though.

I did continue but in retrospect, discerned that what I wrote was not respectful, so I cut it out.

cartoon

What’s okay?

Most of my readers know me for a delicate, sensitive, if not always sensible sort. I must confess though, that I am given to slightly warm feelings when irked in particular, by banal, inappropriate or feeble utterances.

seeing red

So when I heard a television talking head describing some deed, word, action or inaction which I do not recall, as “not okay”, my hackles rose a tad.

However, being a man of experience and some sagacity, I approached the matter with my usual caution; something whispered in my mind: Beware! Here be dragons!

What did it, was the not okay bit. Not okay was not okay with me: it is banal, bland, fence-sitting, wishy-washy, bunny hugger drivel. It is the other end of the spectrum of revolting language usage from awesome!

Before I slip into full rant mode and start frothing at the keyboard, let me say that I did some research into okay. The word apparently originated in the US (where else?). It was the initials of a facetious folk phonetic spelling abbreviation for ‘orl korrekt’ representing ‘all correct’. It was absorbed into the common usage as a verb, adverb, noun, and interjection and spread worldwide.

It has morphed (not sure about that word either) into one of the English words most utilized in all languages.

I was flabbergasted to discover that 14 September is R U OK? Day.

That nearly set my fuse off too! Just invent a cause and appropriate a day! You can start a website, market merchandise and away you go! Hmpfff!

Just in case you missed it, today is National Chipotle Day – May 5th is dedicated to the chipotle, a smoked, dried jalapeno pepper. I kid you not!

Anyway, back to okay/not okay. R U OK? Day was started by the relatives of people who had committed suicide. Its purpose is to encourage people to check on their loved ones by asking them that simple question. In this context not okay is a sad, terribl ok ok e and terrifying condition in which to be. I strongly endorse the practice of checking your loved ones’ mental strength. Asking shows you care and provides an opportunity for a release or a cry for help.

What I object to is that the expression not okay has been incorporated to signify anything that may not meet the rapidly replicating rules which require society to behave in such a way as not to miff anyone who might be sensitive about something. Like, it’s not okay to call some behaviour gay (or a person gay unless he/she is…).

Ever since I saw West Side Story in the 60’s, the word ‘gay’ has been one of my favourite words. ‘Gay’ used to mean cheerful, cheery, merry, jolly, light-hearted, mirthful, jovial, glad, happy, bright, in high spirits, joyful, elated, exuberant, animated, lively, vivacious, buoyant, bouncy, bubbly, perky, effervescent, playful and frolicsome. Now tell me that is not a delightful word!

If you check the lyrics online now, you will find that the word ‘gay’ has been scrubbed from the song and replaced with ‘bright’. Is that okay?

Do the gentle, inoffensive, protectors of those that they think may be easily bruised, have the right to change the language icons of our past, because gay now refers to things homosexual. Why has that lovely word been appropriated for the exclusive use of such an historically fraught set of people?

Granted, buggers was not a nice label, nor was queers or poofs.

Dearie me, I do get easily distracted.

What I want to say is that not okay should not be used when there are many, far more appropriate words such as indelicate, offensive, awful, inappropriate, unacceptable, extraordinary, extreme, bad, abnormal, impolite, unreasonable, bloody rude …oops!

Here is a little guide – hope it helps.

Different-forms-of-saying-Okay

ok in bath