In Box Turtle Bulletin, a website I visit daily, appears this quote (attributed to a particularly virulent homophobe): “Because, God makes the rules and Jesus didn’t abolish the Old Testament.” (Actually, the Bulletin doesn’t use the quotes, I’m doing a little creative editing, but the sense is not violated.)
The question, in the Easter season of 2010, then, is, “If Jesus didn’t abolish the Old Testament, what was the point of his life and death?”
Just askin’.
Sphere: Related Content…about the current brouhaha about abuse of children by religious persons.
Centuries ago religions, rather than deal with evil, got ensnared in the concept of "sin," which encompasses the concept of redemption.
The problem today is that criminal activity has been hiding under "sin," and the church has been responding the only way it can respond as an institution dedicated to the eradication of sin.
If we insert evil whenever we discuss sin, we’d have a better moral compass for daily life.
Sphere: Related ContentAs you might recall, Dear Gentle Reader(s), two years ago there was a little tussle with “the old man’s” disease, during which I learned of the suffix brachy. (It means, more or less, short.)
The GP who got the show on the road once blithely informed that the digital prostate exam was not on his plate because his “finger is too short” to reach the affected organ.
Many a dinner party has been enlivened by the sharing of that bit of information, as you can well imagine!
Upon hearing of a cramping in the general prostate (or what’s left of it) area, said doctor recently sent this as part of an email exchange: “If you are continuing to have pain than I would suggest
Antibiotics x 10 days and if not better a urology finger thingy.”
“finger thingy.”
Ya have ta love it!
More dinner party fodder.
Thanks, Doc.
:-)
Sphere: Related Content[Tebow ad,Focus on the Family,CBS]
I saw only one ad by the Tebows. It was tame; it didn't really raise the issues which have been discussed for the past week or so.
Who punted?
Who had the most to lose?
Or was that the intent all along? (To get people upset?)
Strange.
[Superbowl ads]
The ads during the first half were better than the game; the 2nd half starts with a great two minutes.
Kia ad strange.
So far the Snickers, Monster.com, and Doritos non-bark collar are winners. Ms Tebow looks a little brittle.
Vizio ad very interesting, if a bit scary.
Emerald snacks a bit cheesy.
Dante's Inferno game...why al the scifi?
Bud calf and colt ad cute; animals are always cute in the ads.
Denny's screaming chickens another strange one. Funny...but...
3:24 to go and the Saints are leading. Who woulda thunk?
Audi green police ad very good message.
Sir Charles, selling Taco Bell...um...well, it pays.
Three things can happen with a pass, and two of them are bad. the Colts just learned that lesson in spades.
Tim's Doritos ad very funny. Looks like Doritos wins the Ad Super Bowl 44!
Bud's Book Club ad is funny...a bit demeaning, but funny.
(LXIV)
Wow!
Congrats, Saints.
General McChrystal, Dear Gentle Reader(s), has come out with a different statement about the situation in Afghanistan than the one he issued last spring.
You’ll find the complete article at Centcom’s web site. Here is the beginning:
Although he stopped short of saying the worst is over for troops as they prepare to surge into some of the toughest Taliban-held areas, the top NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan said here today that conditions no longer are deteriorating.
“I am not prepared to say that we have turned the corner. I am saying that the situation is serious. But I think we have made significant progress in setting conditions in 2009, and … we’ll make real progress in 2010…”
One hopes that his words are prescient.
Trust, but verify.
Sphere: Related Content…has fallen to the enemies of good diction.
Ann Telnaes, Political Animation cartoonist for The Washington Post, has a very astute eye, and I recommend her insight even when I (rarely) disagree with her point.
That willingness to embrace her philosophy does not, however, extend to her occasional gaffe, in my opinion, regarding diction and the representation on the page thereof.
In today’s animation, Telnaes depicts President Obama’s signature slogan, “Yes We Can” re-written as “Yes You Should Of.”
Once again, Correct-Man points out that the vocalization of the abbreviation of the verb have is something like “uhv.” In other words “’ve” has the same vocal attributes as “of.” So it is more correct to write “should’ve” from a phonetic point than “should of.”
Telnaes, you wonderful person, ya shoulda known better.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Supreme Court has become a forum for vocabulary lessons. Try this bit of amusement over at BLT (it isn’t a sandwich) which discusses romanette and orthogonal.
(Well, I found it amusing.)
Sphere: Related Content…for speakin’ een your face, Senorita.”*
Using quotes from a soon-to-be-released political book, the e-zine Salon quotes Nevada Senator Harry Reid saying, in 2008, that candidate Obama as a black man "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one” could be elected to the White House.
Such a brouhaha has arisen.
My Deep South, East Texas, Southwestern Louisiana childhood informs my response to this kerfuffle: it’s a tempest in a truthful teapot. *The quote is from very popular radio program in the 1940s. It’s a worker on one of the Judy Canova radio shows; it was his signature entry speech. It got laughs every time he delivered it. It was a popular radio show using dialects as a comic tool.
Does anyone think for a second that if Mr. Obama’s voice was similar to that of Jessie Jackson’s or Stepin Fetchit’s that he would be the President of the United States today? Surely he would have been dismissed out of hand.
We have built-in vocal biases that we work to overcome. We deal, although not always honorably, with Southern accents, Appalachian accents, Boston accents, Brooklyn accents, and “Ebonics” (remember that?), just to name a few. Each one of those accents give background to how we respond to what is said. Some responses are positive, others not so much.
What Senator Reid said, and remember, it was a private conversation, makes perfect sense to me. The President’s rhetorical skills and cultured voice and diction went a long way to assuaging the American public that he was not a figure to be feared. That allowed many to overlook racial and class barriers and to cast their votes as they did. (Just how many did not are legion and have kept up the yammering are there for the world to see on a daily basis.)
Political correctness was better for the nation when it was conscientious awareness. Those were the days when you tried not to be offensive out of respect for fellow human beings. Nowadays we’re pilloried for forthrightness which is not soaked in pablum.
Let’s get real. Let the good Senator work on real problems without distraction.
Sphere: Related ContentHere’s a mildly interesting line from an obituary which appears in a local paper:
“He was preceded in death by many who knew and loved him.”
Sphere: Related ContentYa gotta love ‘em, our idioms. You can’t really turn off a light; you can move a switch to the off position.
“Pre-sale” by now is ubiquitous, although it’s nonsense. There’s another one which is not quite so widespread, but only because, one supposes, there’s not that frequent an opportunity to use it. Henry Chu of the Los Angeles Times delves into his easy phrases in “Epilogue to tale of novelist’s success” and trots out this curiosity: “untimely death.”
“Untimely death,” eh?
One wonders exactly what a timely death would be, and who would decide upon the timeliness of it.
At least it isn’t used quite as often as pre-sale. It’s almost as much fun, though.
Just wonderin’.
Sphere: Related ContentThere’s an ad running on LOGO which touts the benefits of the “Shake Weight.” One shakes the weighted object much like one would shake a martini, but with both hands. It’s supposed to assist in firming up the upper under arm muscles.
Fine.
What’s fun is the use of a new “technique” called dynamic inertia.
Dynamic inertia.
A wonderful oxymoron for a mere $19.99.
Sphere: Related Content
Fleeting: the scene in one of the Jurassic Park movies where the camera captured the passenger mirror reflecting a dinosaur’s eye with the warning: Objects are closer…
Sphere: Related ContentApropos of absolutely very little, The Muckroom over at Townhalldotcom features an anti-choice article which uses a Benedictine order as a platform.
The article references an ad by the monastery which queries “Got Monks?”
My parents, Dear Gentle Reader(s), for reasons which I never questioned, when discussing…um…privates with my brothers and myself, referred to the penis as a monk.
How many times I heard some variation of “Wash your monk,” “Did you wash your monk?” “Be sure to…” is lost to the ages; but it was at least once a day until I was old enough, and trained well enough, not to have to be asked or reminded.
I’d never seen the Benedictine ad (which was designed as a recruiting tool—no pun intended—for the Order), but the answer to the question is “No.”
Plural penises? Ridiculous.
Reasoning out parental euphemisms? Impossible.
Writing about Monks/monks? Quite fun, actually.
Sphere: Related Content
…the Orbitz commercial with the hovercraft (is that what they call those things which fly over land?) guy greeting “The Hernandez..es..es..”
Perfectly captures the American problem with plurals of names ending in the “s” or “z” sounds.
On the other hand, American Express and BBCAmerica show and have their names associated with an ad for Jamaica—possibly the most homophobic country in the Western Hemisphere.
Ah, well.
With joy comes sorrow.
Sphere: Related ContentSphere: Related ContentWell, Dear Gentle Reader(s), it didn’t take the nay-sayers much time to toss their little water balloons at President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.
One of the many amusements attendant on their usual divertissements, is the way they use the language.
Take this example, from the on-line presentation of TNR: from whence it comes.
Even though cited as used by Graham Greene, from whence is redundant. It’s more “green” to say “whence it comes” since the definition of whence includes from.
Save ink, bytes, paper, and energy. Learn the nuances of the language. It’s patriotic.
Oh, and congrats to President Obama for the Prize and for the very nice speech at the White House Rose Garden this morning.
Sphere: Related ContentIt seems, Dear Gentle Reader(s), that there is some faith in the eventual success of NATO (read: U.S.) bringing some sort of democratized stability to Afghanistan.
The New York Times reports that British authorities have returned some 2,000 artifacts of Afghanistan’s history to Afghanistan’s National Museum.
Now, if Britain will step up and help NATO (see supra) secure the political situation in Afghanistan so those treasures will be safeguarded against a Taliban return to power, all will be truly well.
Yeah. Well…
How much pleasure there is in eking out the last little bit of use of a bar of soap!
At least 5 or 6 more hand washings, don’t you think?
Ahhhhh.
Sphere: Related ContentAh, Dear Gentle Reader(s), who will ever forget the immortal words of the President when he said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is…”
Now we have a new phrase to contemplate. Because of what a judge felt was some prosecutorial misconduct, she ordered a new trial for a defendant. The prosecution is arguing that the judge should not grant a new trial because the testimony of the witness whose testimony was involved in the brouhaha was “truthful, but inaccurate.”
It’s a federal case. The title of the article cited reads “Prosecutors defend false testimony as 'truthful, but inaccurate'.” It’s fun to read.
Truthful but inaccurate.
Well, that lets the Bush administration off the hook for a great many supposed ills. “What I said in court was truthful, your Honor, but a tad inaccurate.” “When I spoke of weapons of mass destruction, I was being truthful, but inaccurate.”
Sphere: Related ContentSphere: Related ContentOf all the inanities of the right wing blather, nothing makes less sense than the “czar”-ing of the Obama administration.
Google search indicates that possibly Nixon was the first person to use the word—unofficially.
It’s just a shortcut way of talking about a person’s responsibilities. Yet the right wing blathosphere would have us believe that there’s a Russian cabal running the country out of the West Wing.
Nutty people.
