Cussing

I don't cuss. Yes, I am better than all the people who do cuss, but not because I don't, that's just coincidental. I just never got into it. I suppose it's the non-conformist in me. Growing up, kids would start cussing and drinking and smoking, kind of just to show that "hey, I'm all grown up now" and I never was into that. Indeed, I had, and still have, a great aversion to acting all grown up. It bothered me as a kid that somehow I was less a person because I wasn't an adult, so I just internalized that I was all right the way I was and I didn't need to take on any of the accouterments of modern American adulthood. I suppose that is why I am stuck in eternal childishness to this day.
But back to cussing. Even the word just seems embarrassing. It's a version of the word "cursing", as in "I curse you to forever wander the earth with gnats biting you and boils over your whole body" which today has been twiddled down to the simple "Fuck you!"
The whole thing just never made sense to me.
The word "shit" meaning feces, or in verb form, to defecate, makes sense. For example, "you look like shit" although not literal everyone can understand the metaphor. You look like excrement, unappealing to the touch and smell, and to be avoided.
I had a roommate in college who would come home and notice me cooking some delicious goulash and he would peer in the pot and exclaim "what is that shit?" to which I would retort, "it is not shit, it is delicious goulash" and he would respond, nonplussed, "looks good, when do we eat?" So he would be using the word to mean "stuff". A like example would be "we need to move all your shit over here" to which the response would likely be "yeah, I got a lot of shit to move" and no one would be making any value judgment on the particular shit that needed to be moved. Ironically, I use the word "crap" in the same way and somehow manage to offend. "You have a lot of crap in here" is likely to evoke a defensive "It's not crap, these books represent the pinnacle of man's knowledge." Ironic in that if I had called it "shit" no offense would be taken.
"Fuck" is the most nonsensical cuss word ever. We all know what it literally means, but it kind of just means "double-plus" know like in the book "1984".
"1984" is a cautionary tale about totalitarianism. An interesting development in the book is the concept of "newspeak" where the government has decided that having too many words is confusing and starts to pare down the vocabulary, ostensibly to simplify communication, but actually to stifle thought. Removing words with subtle meanings removes the ability to communicate those subtle ideas, eventually removing the ability to even think those ideas.
So, instead of words like good, better, best, bad, worse, worst, the ministry of culture takes the one word "good" and adds "plus" to mean "better", i.e. "plus-good." And so "double-plus-good" replaces "excellent", "fantastic", "radical", "totally groovy, man" etc. "Double-plus-ungood" is used to replace "that stinks to high heaven." See how this restriction of vocabulary limits our freedom of expression? I think of "fuck" in the same way. It means everything, so it means nothing. "That's fucked up" is the same as "that is double-plus-ungood" in that it really conveys no meaning besides "I heartily disapprove." What is that you disapprove of? What aspect can I change to gain your approval? How does it displease in comparison to other non-pleasing things? All that is lost, the critic says "that's fucked up" and everyone laughs and we move on. No thinking, no critical analysis, nothing. It's all evisceral.
At best most profanity is a lie. Using and outrageous, shocking word should be reserved for truly shocking, outrageous things.
For example, the firemen entering the World Trade Centers on 9/11, upon noticing flaming bodies landing around outside, they can honestly exclaim "holy shit!" because it means "there is something so disturbing, so panicking, so beyond the pale of normal observance that I must use the most shocking phrase in my vocabulary: HOLY SHIT!" Seeing a high school kid make a difficult shot in a basketball game does not come close. Seeing a cat chase a much bigger dog around the yard does not come close. Getting a B+ on my sociology final does not come close. Those are all lies, just like the people who are always saying something is the biggest, or best, or longest, or whatever, and you get sick of them always having witnessed the most of whatever the topic is about, I get sick of people using profanity and outrageous, shocking expressions to describe the slightly non-mundane. Pull out your dictionary and get some new words, words that actually mean something.

Up late last night at a little dinner party. It's hard to get up on the day after New Years anyway, but remember I'm laid off? So I have some contract work I'm doing and I need some money so I'll go in.
How many people get their income in this way? I mean, how many people are not on a salary but get paid commission, or only when the job is finished? Which way is "harder"? Getting paid by the job makes sense to me emotionally and psychologically, it seems that follows the core principles of "capitalism", I'm incentivized to do a good job quickly. Big corporations are run like mini-communist states, I suppose some not so mini. So many people are paid not for actually doing anything, but because their boss likes them, and they put up an air of importance, and they can tune into whatever values their boss wants to project to his boss, and so it goes.
But doing contract work for a small business, the owner just wants something produced and he doesn't know how to do it himself, but he has a notion of what a good job is, so he pays me for my skill in getting the job done, not because of how I dress or I can schmooze or I stay late pretending to be "on top off" various "issues." Maybe the real solution to the economy and to force us to be productive is to just put a cap on business size?

Happy New Year

The new year came in watching Kathy Griffin embarrass Anderson Cooper on CNN. Is that what I've come to, watching CNN for the New Year's countdown?
Let's see, this year my Dad died, I was laid up in the hospital for five days with a severe tooth infection, I got laid off, my credit card bills are way too high, I lost a ton of money in my 401K due to stocks going down, might seem like a crappy year, but I know there are people worse off so I guess I can't complain(?)
On the plus side I've lost five pounds, I just got a new job offer, and I love the swirling snow outside the family room window, and Target Optical put a new screw in my glasses for free!