Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Curse words %^*><#!$&!

CAUTION: May Contain Vague and Non-Vaguean References to God.

Reading of this blog may cause extreme itching by anyone allergic to God or who may be agnostic or atheistic in their non-beliefs.

I thought about titling this, the 7 words you can't say in church, but my respect for the late and great George Carlin prohibits that plagiarism. He was truly a genius with words and word-play. If it is true that the pen is mightier than the sword and that as a reference to the power of words, well Mr. Carlin was a ninja samurai (which at some point in my life I want both words in my job title).

Anyway, you're spell bound to see what I am up to in this version of the Mynd. You're dying to know if I am going to curse in my blog...AND after the God disclaimer. I cheated and I already have cursed in the last paragraph... See if you can find it.

I'll bet my buddy Richard after checking on his pregnant dog and even after his long day searching for edible fungus, he'll find it, although perhaps not.

Dick... Bitch... Shiitake mushrooms... But

Damn, I mean Egads!

Before all the feathers become unglued and people start calling me, let's talk about belching. Would your mom have let you get away with it at dinner? Unless you're Chinese, my guess is no. That's the business side of a backhand making it's way to a face near you. In China, slurping and belching are considered acceptable forms of indicating your appreciation for good food... No, explaining that to mom WON'T help.

Words are words and nothing more.  Rush Limbaugh says "Words mean things" and in the context of a paragraph he is right.  Let's take a look at the reasons we might not be allowed to curse.

1. Mom says it isn't OK. - Well, I can probably stop here for a lot of people.  What Mom says is the law when you are growing up.  Of course, like seeing the Police speed down the road with their kids in the car, hearing Mom curse suddenly opens up a world of possibility.

2. Society says it isn't OK. - P-lease Playa, if anything Society is moving in the opposite direction.  I think about the things that you saw in movies when I was growing up.  Now I have to endure Paul Bettany's behind in a PG-13 movie.  Attempts by Tipper Gore to censor the music industry seem to have just made it worse in that "hey, we can put this little sticker on our album and say whatever we want" way.

3. God says it isn't OK. - Well, I'll admit to not being a bible professor, but I haven't seen a list of words we shouldn't say.  God is pretty clear about using His name in vain.  Frankly, I haven't found asking the creator to send someone to eternal damnation in His name has ever worked out well for me anyway.  The Bible talks about a concept called "edifying" which loosely translates into, 'into an arse, doeth not make thyself.'

So Words mean things in combination with this concept of edifying roughly translates to "Scott, you're wrong in your premise."

Carter: Do YOU understand the words that are comin' outta my mouth?

I'd like to wrap this all up in a nice package with a bow for you.  Welcome "condition of your heart" as a concept.  So before you hit your thumb with a hammer and say 'SUGAR!' or 'DANG!' and long before your co-worker does something brainless and you cry out 'SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!' let's stop.  We aren't buying it.  We KNOW what you meant to say. Do you think that calling the guy who cut you off Jerk, Idiot, or Imbecile is any better than one of the words you didn't say?  It is the condition of your heart light and airy, or heavy and hurt?

My message today is that when someone says a curse word, measure the light and airy, and when they cry out an obvious "non-curse" measure the heavy and hurt.  Don't automatically be a Jackwagon.  Yeah, I said Jackwagon!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Insomnimaniac

My best ideas wake me up at night... though it could just be blackened salmon and other dietary oddities.

Blogging seems natural in the mini-wee hours when sleep evades me like the pretty girl at the dance. I hope you have found my sage sleepless advice, err ramblings laugh out loud funny. You will of course share and follow and re-share until my words go viral.

'Viral' is such a funny internutty word that if used in any other context wouldn't sound cool at all, but rather frightening. "yeah, I had Mexican for lunch and was all viral this afternoon." Yeah, creepy not cool.

Like attending to business email while on Percocet following surgery (been there, done that) writing in the middle of the night is a chance and a danger of parts of my inner monologue escaping. Thems the parts that walk around with a shiv and will cut you if you dis their ride, yahmean?

I've even followed my own blog, you know in case my alter ego writes something while I am asleep...more so I can have that odd moment like when the dog farts and wakes himself up with that "who did that?" look. Yeah, someone just went all 'viral.'

I debate following other blogs publicly. I debate privately... well not anymore apparently, whether to publicly announce the 'following.' Again, internuttyness that we've taken another creepy word and made it cool somehow. "I really like that new author, so I chose to stalk him and his writing"...c-reepy!

Do I really want people knowing what other sickos I follow? Do I mind that there may be profanity on my page as an offshoot of this decision? Oh, wait, there could be churchy stuff too which could offend the profane! What's a blogger to do? Blame the iPhone autocorrect of course! Anything that may offend you is merely a result of poor proofreading from changes made by iPhone.

As you've noticed, my inner monologue isn't always linear (technical speak for 'unable to stay on the path') and I will write paragraphs that get unceremoniously cut out or possibly pasted into a new blog draft. This post makes number 4 published works, while I have titles and beginnings for like, 25 more in my drafts. I'm random like a computer (to all my non-technical friends, that simply means that all my randomness has to be pre-programmed to appear random) and my maker intended me that way. Oh snap! There I went and got churchy on you and half of my followers just dropped the connection like a prank caller following the punch line "well you better catch it."

I'm a big fan of The Joy of Painting and some of the tenets of that show will undoubtedly make their way here. One of my favorites is "we don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents." Now my juvenile-minded audience has already been to the Depends place and back by now, but I believe that my white afro-ed Bob Ross was trying to say 'just go with it.' Once the words are out of my mouth, I don't like to edit them too much. They're part of history at that point and the words I choose will often lead me to different places (see non-linear above).

So get out there and be viral people, except in church.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone



Location:Home,Odenton,United States

Friday, September 9, 2011

Colors, or You only think you see Red!

Salesman: and that comes in a wide variety of colors in addition to Autumn Mist here.
Me: what the heck is Autumn Mist?!
Salesman: well that would be the color of this floor model.
Me: yeah, that's helpful.

Can I get that in Bratwurst Belch or Biscuits & Gravy or Whale Bladder? Sure, Sea Sky (say that three times fast) is comforting to say, but as a visual descriptor it leaves a bit more to the imagination.

Have you ever wondered why everyone has a favorite color and not everyone likes the same color? I could argue that we all like the same color. No really!

What color is a typical fire engine? Red, of course! How do you know? I'll wait while you in your normal and somewhat limited imagination try to determine where I'm going with this.

Didn't all of our mom's teach us our colors at a very young age? So how did they know what color it was? Their mom taught them! (lather, rinse, repeat back to pre-fire engine days)

I would postulate that our eyes are all different and those little electric symbols that traverse the optic nerve to the brain and get translated may not all be the same.

You: Scott, why do you do this to yourself?

So... What if the color I see when I look at a fire engine is what your eye translates as "blue" but since we have to have a common language we call it, red? I'd love to talk to someone who could see and then had an eyeball replacement. So we look at a fire engine and see a 'different' color much like if we put sunglasses on and the shade varies our common understanding is that the engine is red. Try to describe a color to someone, without using a reference object or color. You might as well say Bratwurst Belch!

Man in Black: you're intellect is truly dizzying.
Vezzini: I'm just getting started!

So is it possible that everyones' favorite color is what I call blue? The rest of you use the reference word 'blue' but actually see different colors?

Be green with envy, now! As opposed to the 'you look green' as when someone is sick. Maybe you're just blue over the thought?

In reality, you're Whale Bladder in my eyes.

Impossibly Half-Empty Glass

Friend: Scott, you seem to be a 'glass is half empty' kind of guy?
Me: impossible! I'm often a cynical pessimist with an Eeyore complex, but glass half empty I'm not.
Friend: do I want to know?

That seems like the question lately as more people seemingly ask me to throw open the doors of my brain and put out a welcome mat. Well I warned you that more than just icky spiders live there...

So imagine a full glass of milk (I reserve the right now to use all references to crying over any spillage, as well as any nose-milk examples)

I'm sorry I don't see you envisioning!

Let's say that it holds 12oz and no more and it has a full 12oz brimming to the very top such that any slight tremor will undoubtedly cause spillage and the aforementioned crying. So as everyone can deduce, half of that is going to be roughly 12 Oreos, I mean 6oz. To prove I can do math, we would multiply our 12 by .5 (or 1/2 for you fractioneers) which neatly gives us 6.

12 * .5 = 6

Go ahead use your calculator like the school said you could, I can wait.


They said you could use it.
Because they wanted to get to more
difficult stuff... Like playing the
Cool games!


Yes input that into your calculator as a function and it should give you 23.

Are you done checking math? Can we agree on 6?

Ok now similarly we take the same glass that can hold 12oz and we empty it. Those of you with issues can also wash and dry it. You want it Empty. Now using the same mathematical wizardry, we show that:

0 * .5 = 0

WHOA! so half of empty is empty? How depressing!

We cynical pessimists knew that all along.

So before you go crying over the spilled milk when someone tells you that irregardless of your opinion, there is a glass half empty, just say "riiiiight" and move on.

Use of poor English intended, some restrictions apply.

Happiness

Therapist: Are you happy, Scott?
Me: Define "happy."
Therapist: How do you come up with questions like that, Scott?
Me: That's just the way my mind works, there should be signs that say "do not walk on the grass, stay on the main path!"

It's possible that my mind just made up part or all of that conversation. Are you sure you want to be here? Pull the harness all the way over until it locks in position and fasten the seat belt.

So what is happiness? How do you know if you're happy? These are real questions that I threw up into my head to digest. Yes, I just said 'threw up' in order to digest... don't say I didn't warn you!

Analogy (I realized I was an 'example' learner, so I go to my analogy place for comfort): a man has reached into his pocket and finds $100 bill. That would make many people 'happy' (except for those of us who would have to angst over how it got there, but I digress). You're imagining what you could spend old Ben Franklin on right now...some new gadget maybe? possibly taking your sigo (significant other) on a date? Starbucks for a week?
Same man gets to his office in time to hear another man (or woman, for all of you "branders" out there) describe finding $1000 in his suit jacket the same morning. Is the first man AS happy as he was earlier or has his happiness been slimmed down a bit?

Sure, we can go all 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth' or 'glass is half full' but is happiness based on a "feeling" or on some relativity scale?

I 'feel' like I am happy, but is that because I've never truly been happy enough to have a good comparison? Didn't you think you were in love with someone before, only to find out it wasn't 'really' love?

Are tears of happiness an indicator? A swell of pride? A contented feeling? I need to know.

How about opposites? Sadness is generally considered by most grade schoolers to be the opposite of Happiness. So if I am not sad, does that mean I am happy? Is there a scale of -10 to 10? I suppose you could say that I only thought I was sad when my grandmother died, but like the guy who found out he ONLY found $100, I haven't experienced the death of my parents, spouse, or God forbid, my kids?

So blissfully ignorant of the discovery of $1000 in my suit jacket or the death of 1000 grandmothers, I will pronounce myself happy...and somehow that makes me happier.

Yes, you may begin to pity my beautiful wife.

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