Internet English

I've noticed a growing trend among internet users, especially in IM exchanges and in chat rooms. I see a lot of people purposely misspelling words for who knows what reasons. To be cute? I just can‘t see the point of it. It’s one thing for a momentary gag, but it’s quite another as continual, regular usage. I fail to find the idea of adults using what amounts to baby talk in public on an ongoing basis to be amusing

I'm not including typos and honest misspellings in this rant, which I don't have as big of a problem with, because they're just unintentional mistakes, not done deliberately.

Let me give some examples. I regularly see people writing "wiff" for with, "nuffin" for nothing, “enuff“ for enough, “sawee” for sorry, and the like. And this type of silliness isn’t coming from just fourteen year old girls, either. Most of the examples I’ve seen have come from otherwise literate adults in their 40s and 50s!

And then there’s the cryptic “CU L8TR, RU OK?” type of pseudo-writing, which is now still pretty much confined to teenage usage. .

The one that gets my teeth to grinding the most, is "prolly" for probably. I am very sorry, but "prolly" is NOT a word! Hell, we don’t even pronounce it that way! I'll bet there are some preteens online right now who think this and other bastardizations are real words in the dictionary.

Not only that, adults using this bastard language online consistently will get so used to it that it will one day carry over into their real life communications. Imagine....trying to get a job when you've written "wiff", "nuffin", "enuff", “sawee” and "prolly" on your application or resume!

Thanks for listening. Stepping off the soapbox now.

Jack of All Trades?

When I was on the police force, it always amazed me how many people thought that the police could and should do anything as part of their job to serve the public.

I remember one time being sent on a call to see a woman about an “unknown problem”. This essentially meant that the dispatcher couldn’t understand what the hell she was talking about on the phone. When I got there, a middle-aged woman was on her porch waiting as I drove up. After I asked what the problem was, she proceeded to tell me all her medical symptoms in great detail. She then asked what she should do about it. I told her I was sorry she didn’t feel well, but that she should have called the doctor, instead of the police, as we weren’t qualified to assist in such matters. What I wanted to say was, “Sure, lady, police officers make fine doctors. Why waste eight years in medical school when you can learn all you need to practice medicine in eight weeks at the police academy!”

Another time, a dispatcher told me about a woman who’d called 911 wanting her to send an officer out to her house to fix her brakes. Did I forget to mention that they think we get a course in auto mechanics at the academy, too?

One day while working the desk, I got a call from a woman who asked whether she should let her 14 year old daughter go to the prom with a 18 year old boy. Later that afternoon, someone else called to ask me to tell his kid the capitals of all fifty states, as the kid needed to know for a test the next day. Ditto on the courses in child psychology and teaching.

And one night when I was getting ready to go home after a busy, stressful shift, a woman with a suitcase met me going out the door to my car. She demanded that I give her a ride to the state capital, two hours away. This time, I said exactly what popped into my mind. “Look, lady, our uniforms may look like Greyhound bus driver uniforms, but when you leave the driving to us, there’s only one destination, and that’s the city jail!” With that, I continued on my way to the car, not giving a shit what she thought.

It’s too bad we didn’t get paid for all those other jobs we were expected to perform.

Heroes and Role Models

Sports figures are many times referred to in the media as “heroes”. But more often than not these days, we hear about professional athletes taking drugs, beating their wives, getting into fistfights, and so on. Many people condemn their boorish public behavior and say they are failing as role models for our children.

Excuse me? We are the ones failing our kids if we call sports figures “heroes” and expect them to be children's role models. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing particularly heroic about having superior athletic abilities. We need to remember that professional athletes are nothing more than adults being paid astronomical amounts of money to play kids’ games.

The real heroes for children to look up to are police officers, fire fighters, teachers, nurses, doctors, and many others, including their own parents and grandparents.

People should just enjoy watching sports figures as we do other types of entertainers -- for that is exactly what they are -- but they don’t need to look any further than their own communities for worthy role models for their kids.

Rainy Day Ramblings

It’s raining like hell as I sit here writing and has been for the last three days. To add insult to injury, it’s also humid and clammy.

As I sat down this morning at the computer and gazed out at yet another dismal, dreary day, I thought of places I’d rather be.

I used to do this as a kid, too. When we’d had one too many days in the single digits, I’d get in bed and get warm, then start imagining myself at the beach during the coming summer.

Normally, I don’t care much for the hot weather of summer, but the beach is different. I’ve always loved the ocean, and swimming at a lake or a pool just doesn't quite get it.

For the first ten years of my life, I lived a half hour from Newport, Rhode Island. Every summer, my mother took us there three or four times a week. When I close my eyes and imagine, I can almost hear the roar of the surf and the sea gulls overhead, see the waves rolling in, smell the salt water and suntan lotion, taste the tuna and egg salad sandwiches my mother would always bring, and feel the gritty sand between my toes. The sensory experience of those summer days at the beach forty years ago has been indelibly imprinted on my memory.

Food always tasted better at the beach for some reason. Maybe it was the sand that got in the sandwiches that made them taste better, who knows? She’d also bring soda in cans and I remember back then that the cans didn’t have pop tabs, so you had to have a “church key” to open them with.

Years later, after my mother had died and I was in college, I continued to go to the beach. By this time, I was living in New Jersey, and the beach of choice was Wildwood, NJ, about an hour from my apartment.

I remember one summer, my friends and I rented a stuffy attic apartment for a week. The main advantage of these less than luxurious digs was that the apartment house was only two blocks from the ocean. The week passed in a happy blur of drinking, swimming, sleeping, and screwing. One night, I had sex on the beach at night under the moonlight, which is an experience everyone should try at least once.

Now, I’m a five hour drive from the ocean, so I haven’t been to the beach in years. Maybe one of these days…

In Memory

Forty-one years ago today, John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Though I was only five years old at the time, I remember.

I was of kindergarten age, but not in school, as kindergarten wasn’t compulsory in those days and our town’s public schools didn‘t include it. I was out front playing in the mud, when my mother, who’d been doing housework, came to the door and called me into the house.

I knew she was upset when I saw the expression on her face as I walked into the house. She had me to sit down on the couch and then she told me that President Kennedy had been shot. Even at that young age, I knew who the president was, as we lived in Massachusetts, his home state, and my mother had always talked about how handsome he was.

I sat there with her and watched the television coverage of the unfolding tragedy, and to this day, I can remember the moment when Walter Cronkite removed his glasses and informed the nation that our president had died. Not long after this, my sister arrived home, as the town’s schools had dismissed schools for the day after getting word of the assassination. My father and brother got home shortly after that, as their employers had likewise shut down operations for the day. For the next couple of days, we watched the continuing TV coverage, as did most of the rest of the people in this country.

Nearly forty years later, as the events of September 11, 2001 unfolded, and it became clear that it had been an act of terrorism, I recalled Kennedy’s assassination and thought that my employer would surely send us home for the day. Not only did that not happen, but there was never any official announcement whatsoever from management to the employees about what had happened. If someone back in the warehouse hadn’t had a radio, none of us would have known what happened until we turned on our car radios on the drive home from work that evening.

Later that evening, I thought of Kennedy again, about his aggressive response to the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis, and how he took steps to prevent a disaster from happening.

Too bad George Bush didn’t respond to the growing terrorism threat during his first months in office, as Kennedy did to other threats in 1962.

A Few Thoughts on Deceptive Advertising

Ever notice that gas prices end in nine-tenths of a cent? What’s up with that? There’s never been a nine-tenths cent coin in the USA during the entire history of the automobile, so why this wacky pricing system? One time, I’d like to go to the gas station and buy precisely one gallon of gas, then ask for my tenth of a cent back in change!

It’s no doubt merely an advertising ploy, to make people think they’re getting it cheaper, because when people see $1.74.9, they think, $1.74, not $1.75.

This is a common gimmick. We see things priced at $3.99, $19.95, and the like, so that people will think they’re getting something for less. But it’s because of this odd numbered pricing that we continue to need pennies, because when the taxes are added in, we usually end up with a final price that doesn’t end in five or zero.

There’s nothing that costs between one and four cents anymore, so the continued coining of new pennies at taxpayer expense is the fault of gimmicky pricing, combined with our sales tax system.

In regards to sales taxes, the practice is to list an item’s price without the tax figured in, which is again another marketing tactic designed to make consumers think they’re getting it cheaper.

If it were up to me, prices would be listed with tax included and the prices themselves would end in a five or a zero. It’s not as if many people are fooled by this hokey pricing system any longer. Once this was done, then pennies could be eliminated.

I’m not going to say much about sales ads, as that would be an entry all of its own. But before ending this rant, I’ll mention one thing I’ve noticed over the years. When I was growing up, stores would sometimes hold a “half price sale”. Now they call such sales, “Buy one, get one free”, which is the same thing. I’m guessing that advertisers thought that people would think they’re getting more if they heard the word “free” and thus, buy more.

I lied. I have one more advertising peeve to mention before ending this entry. I grind my teeth every time I hear an ad that says, “Get a free gift when you sign up with our _____ plan”. “Free gift” is redundant. If it’s a gift, then of course, it’s free. Who ever heard of a gift you had to pay for? That’s why it’s called a gift, because it’s given to you, not sold. If it wasn’t free, then it wouldn’t be a gift!

Stepping off the soapbox now…

Odds And Ends

The other day I was reading the comment section on another blog. One commenter said that spelling was irrelevant as it didn’t matter how one spelled a word, as long as others understood what you were talking about.

This may be true in casual communications, but I got a job one time simply because I was the only person who had spelled everything correctly on the application form.

___________________

There are many reasons why I am a liberal, but I’ll give you an abbreviated version here. In a liberal society, people are always free to be more conservative in their private lives, but in a conservative society, people are not always free to be more liberal.

___________________

I've always thought that instead of demanding sameness, that we should be able to come together in our differences.

Humanity is a big jigsaw puzzle that doesn't need all the pieces to be the same size and shape in order to fit together.

___________________

Actors shouldn’t become politicians, and politicians shouldn’t become actors.

___________________

Stupid people are always ignorant, but ignorant people are not always stupid.

Blue Laws

While reading my local newspaper the other day, I read that my town had voted to suspend the Sunday blue laws for the duration of the Christmas season. A poll, asking residents of their opinion of this measure, was included with the article.

When I was growing up in New Jersey in the late 60s and early 70s, I can’t remember there being blue laws there, as the malls kept the same hours, seven days a week. When I moved here in 1985, it was quite a culture shock to learn that many stores would not be open at all on Sunday, and the ones that were, wouldn’t open until 1:30 and would close again promptly at six. And even in the stores that were open, such as grocery stores, I could not buy alcohol on Sunday.

With the passage of this recent temporary measure, stores will be able to open and close at their usual times all week long, but you still can’t get any booze ‘til Monday.

I looked at the newspaper poll results and, predictably, two-thirds were against the measure, wanting the blue laws to remain as they were. Several made comments to the effect that blue laws, “encourage people to go to church”.

First of all, it’s not the government’s place to encourage people to attend church. I’ve always believed blue laws to be a violation of the separation of church and state, as blue laws are always on Sunday, thus favoring a particular religion. If we have blue laws on Sunday, that Jews, Muslims, and all others, must abide by, then why not blue laws on Saturdays for Jews and on other days for other religions?

Secondly, those who wish to go to church need no laws to reinforce that desire, nor will being unable to shop or buy beer on Sundays inspire those to go who do not wish to attend. Most churches have both morning and evening services, which would cover churchgoers who work on Sundays. It’s not as if going in the morning is somehow more devout than going in the evening.

In any case, blue laws have no place in a multicultural society containing people of all religions and of no religion.

Thoughts?

Employer Intrusions Into Employees' Private Lives

Nowadays, pre-employment drug testing and random tests thereafter are an everyday fact of life in many American workplaces. I believe that an employer has every right to insist that employees be sober while on the job, for reasons of safety and for the mere fact that the employer is paying you for those hours.

However, what employees do on their own time, away from the workplace, is their own concern, and as long as such employees do not show up to work drunk or high, their off hours activities are none of an employer’s business.

On my last job, there was one supervisor who had gained the respect of all those under his supervision and even those in other departments. This was because he, unlike the other supervisors, treated the employees with respect and consideration. Naturally, this did not sit well with upper management, as he did not merely spout the company line, as he was expected to do. Because they couldn’t openly fire him for this reason, they had to find another way to get rid of him. They could find no fault with his work, so they had him to take a random drug test. When the urine test came back clean, he was required to take another, more precise test, which nailed him for marijuana. So, despite the fact he’d never shown up impaired on the job, nor had he missed work or been late, he was terminated.

I was disturbed by this invasion of privacy, as were most of the other employees.

And though workplace drug testing is something that would never affect me adversely, as I’ve never done drugs and haven’t drank in years, employer intrusion into employee privacy is not limited to drug testing. Employers have also been known to intrude into employees’ personal relationships, even if such relationships do not affect their jobs, an issue which has great relevance to me as a libertine.

When I was on the police force, one of the married officers on my shift was having an affair with a divorced dispatcher. However, they were quite discreet and limited their relationship to off hours, with it never affecting their jobs. Nevertheless, once the chief, who was a fundamentalist, got wind of it, they were both fired. Another dispatcher was called into his office and given an official reprimand for having a baby out of wedlock. To be honest, I don’t know how I managed to escape his radar myself, but I guess I was just lucky.

Fortunately, he retired fairly early on in my tenure there, and was replaced by a younger man who stayed out of the private lives of his employees. But remembering this, combined with the rise of the religious right and of conservative government, I see this type of intrusion increasing in workplaces in the years to come, which disturbs the hell out of me.

As far as I see it, an employer can tell me what to do while I’m at work, but they don’t own me 24/7 and should stay the hell out of my private life.

Thoughts?

Garbled Transmissions

Ever play the game “Whisper Down the Line” when you were a kid? That’s when one person whispers something to another, who in turn whispers it to the next person, continuing down the line until everyone has heard it. The purpose of this game is to see if the message survived intact, word for word, after having been repeated several times. Usually, it doesn’t.

Sometimes it doesn’t take this much for what someone has said or sung to be misunderstood by a listener.

Children, especially, tend to have “creative ears”, many times with amusing results. I can remember hearing reports on the news about euthanasia. Considering that I was a little kid during the sixties, what my ears heard was “Youth in Asia”, and I thought they were talking about kids in Vietnam. You have to admit that it made sense. I also heard electoral vote as “electrical vote”, which I thought meant voting by machine. Again, perfectly logical.

My creative hearing extended to music as well. All during school, we frequently sang “God Bless America” in music class. For the longest time, I thought the actual lyrics were, “And guide her, through the night, with a light from a BULB”. It made perfect sense to me.

Of course, adults mishear things as well, for a variety of reasons. Some of the most common reasons are being hard of hearing, but fairly often it’s because of regional dialects. Back in the sixties, VW put out a car called “Karmann Ghia”. Growing up with an r-dropping New England accent, my mind pictured this as “Common Gear”. Years later, when I first moved to my current home, I’d hear these radio commercials promoting “Mills on Wills”. It took me a moment to realize that they meant “Meals on Wheels”.

Sometimes the confusion comes with not the words themselves, but the emphasis. Take the song “Home on the Range”. The line, “Seldom is heard a discouraging words”, can be taken two ways. It could either mean that “seldom” is a discouraging word heard often, or it could mean seldom does one hear discouraging words.

And this brings me to one of the biggest sources of garbed transmissions -- music. All sorts of music is heard in ways that the singers never intended, usually with hilarious results. Here are a few of my favorites:

Louis Armstrong -- What a Wonderful World

The actual words: “The bright blessed days, the dark sacred nights”
What I heard: “The bright blessed days, the dogs say goodnight”

CCR -- Bad Moon on the Rise

The actual words: “There’s a bad moon on the rise”
What I heard: “There’s a bathroom on the right”

Elton John -- Island Girl

The actual words: “Island Girl, what you wanted with the white man’s world”
What I heard: “Island girl, what you wanted with your wife’s Aunt Pearl”

Manfred Mann -- Blinded By the Light”

The actual words: Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night”
What I heard: Blinded by the light, wrapped up like a douche, had a boner in the night”.

Well, at least for that last one, I think my words made about as much sense as the original ones.

Here’s a funny collection of misheard lyrics I found that you might enjoy:

http://www.kissthisguy.com/

Garbled Transmissions

Ever play the game “Whisper Down the Line” when you were a kid? That’s when one person whispers something to another, who in turn whispers it to the next person, continuing down the line until everyone has heard it. The purpose of this game is to see if the message survived intact, word for word, after having been repeated several times. Usually, it doesn’t.

Sometimes it doesn’t take this much for what someone has said or sung to be misunderstood by a listener.

Children, especially, tend to have “creative ears”, many times with amusing results. I can remember hearing reports on the news about euthanasia. Considering that I was a little kid during the sixties, what my ears heard was “Youth in Asia”, and I thought they were talking about kids in Vietnam. You have to admit that it made sense. I also heard electoral vote as “electrical vote”, which I thought meant voting by machine. Again, perfectly logical.

My creative hearing extended to music as well. All during school, we frequently sang “God Bless America” in music class. For the longest time, I thought the actual lyrics were, “And guide her, through the night, with a light from a BULB”. It made perfect sense to me.

Of course, adults mishear things as well, for a variety of reasons. Some of the most common reasons are being hard of hearing, but fairly often it’s because of regional dialects. Back in the sixties, VW put out a car called “Karmann Ghia”. Growing up with an r-dropping New England accent, my mind pictured this as “Common Gear”. Years later, when I first moved to my current home, I’d hear these radio commercials promoting “Mills on Wills”. It took me a moment to realize that they meant “Meals on Wheels”.

Sometimes the confusion comes with not the words themselves, but the emphasis. Take the song “Home on the Range”. The line, “Seldom is heard a discouraging words”, can be taken two ways. It could either mean that “seldom” is a discouraging word heard often, or it could mean seldom does one hear discouraging words.

And this brings me to one of the biggest sources of garbed transmissions -- music. All sorts of music is heard in ways that the singers never intended, usually with hilarious results. Here are a few of my favorites:

Louis Armstrong -- What a Wonderful World

The actual words: “The bright blessed days, the dark sacred nights”
What I heard: “The bright blessed days, the dogs say goodnight”

CCR -- Bad Moon on the Rise

The actual words: “There’s a bad moon on the rise”
What I heard: “There’s a bathroom on the right”

Elton John -- Island Girl

The actual words: “Island Girl, what you wanted with the white man’s world”
What I heard: “Island girl, what you wanted with your wife’s Aunt Pearl”

Manfred Mann -- Blinded By the Light”

The actual words: Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night”
What I heard: Blinded by the light, wrapped up like a douche, had a boner in the night”.

Well, at least for that last one, I think my words made about as much sense as the original ones.

Here’s a funny collection of misheard lyrics I found that you might enjoy:

http://www.kissthisguy.com/

Living in a Red State

I live in a Red State and I’ve been here for nearly twenty years. Sometimes, it’s almost like living on a different planet, as the majority of people here view the world quite a bit differently than I do. My libertinism is merely the tip of the iceberg in how different I am from the typical local mindset.

Many people here have been brought up as religious fundamentalists from their earliest years. Fundamentalism teaches people not to question and to be suspect of depending too heavily on reason, teaching that only faith is completely reliable. It presents spirituality in a rote, black and white fashion: yes/no, right/wrong, with no room for shades of gray, which is viewed as the slippery slope to evil. Fundamentalism is also big on authority and the “chain of command”.

Fundamentalists think in absolutes and believe that children should be taught what to think, rather than how to think. Unsurprisingly, such an upbringing produces adults who are firm “in the box” thinkers. Fundamentalism is a “Just Say No” form of faith, that emphasizes external things that people shouldn’t do, much more than inner spirituality. There is a common bumper sticker here that pretty well sums up the fundamentalist mindset: “God said it, I believe it, That settles it!”

Consequently, it’s not hard to see how many people here embrace right wing conservatism, despite the fact that voting for such candidates is against their best interests economically. Right wing Republicans have learned how to play their crowd, to play on the insecurities of the superstitious, and how to mouth all the buzz words and cliches that correspond to the fundamentalist mindset: “moral values”, “family values”, etc.

Never mind that there’s nothing moral about people who are unemployed or underemployed and can’t support their families. Never mind that the sons and daughters in these families who can’t get a job or afford to go to college turn to the military and then are sent on a fool’s errand as Bush orders them overseas to fight the wrong target as America gets mired into another Vietnam.

I mean, what’s having a job when they can elect a President who can keep two people of the same sex from getting married? They never stopped to think that their moral self righteousness won’t pay any bills or put food on the table. Instead of voting to help themselves and their families, they voted to meddle with the happiness of strangers who have no affect on their own lives.

_________________

My son is of an age where this could have been his second time voting in a Presidential election. But he’s always refused to register to vote, with this election being no different.

Is he indifferent to politics, you might ask? Hardly. This year, especially, he followed the election and fully agreed with me that Kerry was the better choice. Though he was born and raised in Red States, he was brought up by me and my father, so he is a critical thinker, able to look at the issues for himself.

He’d told me he’d been debating with his coworkers about why Bush was the wrong choice, but that it was hopeless; that everyone there, except for one other guy, was a die hard Republican. One of his coworkers even said he thought Bush was too liberal; that he wished Pat Robertson would run again!!

I understood how my son felt; I can remember that in the 1992 election that only four of my fellow officers in a one hundred officer department had voted for Clinton.

He refused to vote because we live in a Red State that would undoubtedly vote red again, so he felt as if his vote would be a waste of time, stating that he didn’t think the Electoral College was fair. I had to agree with him on that, though I couldn’t agree that it was wasting his time to vote.

I told him that if every person who felt that way had decided to vote anyway, it might have been enough to swing it the other way. And, if not, voting wouldn’t do any harm and one would have the satisfaction of at least having voiced their opinion. I even asked him to vote just to humor me. He wouldn’t do it and the results of this election, combined with the irregularities over absentee ballots and provisional ballots, isn’t likely to change his mind any time soon.

However, I have hope. In the twenty years I’ve lived here, the population has changed dramatically as people have moved here from all over the country, which may some day make this state blue if the trend continues. Right now, I’d be willing to settle for purple.

Petty Aggravations

When I was on the police force, many of the typical annoyances that came with dealing with people of varying attention spans and intelligence levels came when working the desk, particularly with phone calls.

A common occurrence would be for someone to call to inquire if a friend or relative was in jail:

Caller: Do you have Suchandso in jail?
Me: (Checks list) Yes, we do.
Caller: What’s he in for?
Me: (Reads charge(s) out loud)
Caller: How do I get him out?
Me: (Explains procedure)
Caller: Can I talk to someone else?
Me: Yes, you can, but one of two things will happen. They will either switch you right back to me or they will tell you what I just said!

This would annoy the hell out of me -- just because I didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear didn’t mean I didn’t know what I was talking about!

Another common scenario would be for every shirttail relative and passing acquaintance that the inmate had to call the booking desk and ask the same questions over and over: Is he there, what’s he in for, how do I get him out, etc. The typical pattern would be to have these calls come in rapid succession over a very short period of time. I would hang up from one call and before I could even remove my hand from the phone, it would be ringing again.

It became obvious that the calls were all coming from the same place, as I would hear the same background noises: TV, radio, voices, etc each time they’d call. However, each new caller would not build on the information that I’d given the previous caller to ask more questions; they’d ask the same basic ones over and over, simply to tie up the lines and waste my time. One day, I’d been barraged by around 25 of these calls and I eventually lost my temper. Exasperated, I said to the latest caller, “Why don’t you just ask the guy sitting right next to you? I just told him the information less than a minute ago!

Not all aggravations came over the phone, of course. One time I was working the front desk on first shift. A UPS guy carrying a large package came over to me, letting the package fall to the desk with a big thump.

Looking at his clip board, he said, “I have a package here for Joe Blow”. I told him we didn’t have anyone by that name working here. He pointed to the address on the package and said that it matched our address.

I said it was the right address, but there wasn’t anyone here named Joe Blow. He pushed the package closer to me and said, “But it says……!”

And then, “Is there anyone here that would know?”

That did it. I hadn’t been angry up until this point, but that set me off.

“I didn’t say that I didn’t know," I said. “Joe Blow does not work here! What part of that didn't you understand? I’ve been working here for six years and if Joe Blow worked here, I think I would have caught on by now!” I then turned away from him and returned to my work, effectively dismissing him.

He stood there slack jawed for a few more moments, then finally got the idea, picked up the package, and left.

Nothing like cop shows on TV, eh?

"Words of Love"

While at the library yesterday, I was browsing the shelves and came upon a book, “Making Whoopee: Words of Love for Lovers of Words” by Evan Morris. Naturally intrigued, I pulled it off the shelf to find it was trivia book of sorts. It was a list of words, related to love and sex, complete with how they originated, and their meanings past and present.

I flipped through the pages to see if “libertine” was included. It was:

“Today we use libertine to mean ‘a person who blatantly flouts society’s generally accepted rules of moral conduct, especially regarding sexual behavior.’ Hugh Hefner, the publisher of Playboy, was for many decades regarded as America’s leading libertine, a title now made irrelevant by any weekday’s crop of guests on The Jerry Springer Show and its kind.

But while “libertine” might be out of a job at the moment, the history of the word is an interesting historical tour of what our society has regarded, at various times, as being ‘free’ (and sometimes, ‘too free’). When “libertine” first appeared in English, about 1382, derived from the Latin “libertus” (meaning ‘freed’), it was applied in historical accounts to Roman slaves who had been freed from bondage. By the sixteenth century, a “libertine” was a freethinker in matters of religion, and the term held much the same weight of condemnation as apostate or infidel. By the seventeenth century, “libertine” had been secularized and was used to describe anyone who disregarded the conventions of art, literature, or society in general. Then, as simple social nonconformity lost its shock value, “libertine” took on the more restricted sense of a ‘sexually promiscuous, dissolute person who is willing to break any social taboo in pursuit of his or her pleasure’.”

First of all, I had to laugh at the notion of Hugh Hefner being “America’s leading libertine”. I never thought of this country having its own “Libertine Laureate”, so to speak.

Secondly, I chose the word “libertine” to describe my lifestyle mainly because it’s an old word with a long history. “Libertine” has a lot more class and panache than its more current synonyms: horndog, stud, womanizer, ladies’ man, etc. And though I see the word only occasionally in print; I wouldn’t quite say that it’s totally “out of a job”. Indeed, I hope that I will have played some small part in helping the word regain some of its former popular usage.

I certainly associate being a libertine with being free; free of the bondage of monogamy! Also, I think I can safely say that many would consider me an “infidel” when it comes to religion, so some of the previous meanings of the word still hold true in a sense in my case. And while the current meaning is accurate for me, I can’t quite say that I’m willing to break any social taboo in pursuit of pleasure. Though I break most of them quite cheerfully, even a libertine has some limits.

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Check out “Making Whoopee” at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565123506/qid=1100218454/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-3474027-7228864

Sexual Pet Peeves

Here's a short list of sex-related pet peeves. I'm sure I could think of more if I sat down and thought about it, but these are the ones that popped into my mind first. Enjoy!

Dead Fish; that is, women who do imitations of them in bed.

Sleeping in the wet spot

Women who say yes when they mean no

Women who say no when they mean yes

Women who say no and mean it

Women who get mad at you and cut you off to prove a point

Almost getting caught and having to jump out the window or hide in the closet

Getting caught

The phone ringing just at the point before orgasm

The doorbell ringing at the same interval

Synchrony in “that time of the month”

Premature ejaculation

“Shrinkage”

Jealousy

Involuntary celibacy

Soft core porn

Being too tired for a “command performance”

Rug burn

A woman who leaves hickeys in places you can’t cover up. I’m too old for that shit

Defective condoms

Getting an erection in public when you can’t do anything about it and/or at an embarrassing moment

Doing My Part

It’s been said that George Bush won re-election based largely on voters in the South and Midwest voting according to “moral values”, despite the fact that anyone can freely adhere to or disregard whichever moral ideals they wish, regardless of who the President is.

As for myself, I voted for Kerry, based on economic issues, more specifically in response to declining job opportunities and the staggering deficit Bush has managed to run up. So far as “moral values” go, those who don’t believe in abortion don’t have to have one and those who don’t believe in gay marriage don’t have to marry someone of the same sex! And I don't see anything "moral" about more and more people unemployed and underemployed, not being able to sufficiently support their families.

With this reason for Bush's re-election in mind, I intend to carry on, as usual, in my happy, amoral, libertine oasis, doing my part to piss off the right wing.

Don't Get Screwed!

Please observe National Celibacy Day on November 2, 2004.

No Bush!

No Dick!

National Celibacy Day ends promptly as the polls close. (Whew!)
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I remember that the 1972 Presidential campaign also had a slogan that was a double entendre:

"Vote for Dick; He's Up and Coming"

Hmm, Republicans again. Not surprising, considering they've been screwing the country for years.


Remember: If you don't vote, don't complain!

Childhood Memory

The other day, I was having a conversation with J, who made the comment about how it was cute when a little boy got past the “girls are yucky” stage and started looking at them in a new light, as sexual and romantic partners.

I thought about it for a moment, then told her that I’d never gone through that “girls are yucky” phase; that I’d always been interested in them, even before I knew just what sex was.

As we talked, I remembered an incident that happened when I was about six years old. At that age, I was good friends with a girl who lived down the street, who was a year younger than me. There weren’t a lot of houses on my street at that time, so you just played with whomever was available who was roughly your own age, regardless of gender.

Our neighborhood was in a wooded area, so we played out in the woods a lot, away from the eyes of adults. One day when we were out in the woods, I told her to pull her pants down and bend over; that I wanted to see how girls were different from boys. She didn’t bat an eye, but simply did as I requested. I looked at her very carefully from all angles for a few moments, but did not touch. My curiosity satisfied for the moment, I told her that was enough, and we moved on to something else, once she’d pulled her pants back up. Oddly enough, she did not make the same request of me, nor did I volunteer to satisfy her curiosity.

I’d not thought about this for a long time, but I found it rather interesting to remember, considering how I’ve turned out.