Unless I can get the home computer back online shortly, the GGB will be on hiatus until Monday the 6th.
Please send only worshipful and fawning comments while I'm offline.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Yeeeeoooowwwwww!!!!
I can hear the squeals from the arse-smacking that Victor Davis Hanson just delivered to the more-enlightened-than-thou.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
'The business end of a dream deferred'
What a great phrase from Darryl James. Read his experience about being single and over 30.
I hear ya, bro.
(Hat tip: La Shawn Barber)
I hear ya, bro.
(Hat tip: La Shawn Barber)
That effin' documentary
*** READER ADVISORY -- EXPLICIT LANGUAGE ***
In response to my post about a proposed documentary on the f-word, blogger Carol had this pithy comment:
I'm surprised that someone who is so interested in language, writing and behavior would be so skeptical about a documentary like this. While I agree the letter is a bit overblown, it actually sounds like an interesting idea. It's been awfully perplexing to me that at a time when the country is at war, there's still plenty of time for our leaders to help us get our national panties in a twitch over boobs and bad words. Given that, I think a documentary exploring rhetorical hysteria is a great idea.
Touché, Carol. Why not give it documentary treatment? Are bad words just that ... bad words?
Granted, the movie isn't finished, but I'd be willing to bet that when it is, the f-word will be infused with some sort of gravitas. It'll be a mantra of liberation and enlightenment. What was profane will be sacred.
Don't laugh. Stay with me a minute.
Do you remember what the f-word means? Sexual intercourse. At its best, something special. Something sacred as in shared between two and no one else.
But fucking? That's different. Anyone can fuck. Now we fuck around, we fuck off, we tell people to fuck themselves. "Fuck" represents the lowest common denominator of the human sexual act, which is why it is/was considered an obscenity.
Now, I am not necessarily opposed to the word when used as intended. I am opposed, however, to elevating it to sacred mantra.
Same thing has happened to other vulgarities. Do a Google on the word "cunt" and see what I mean. Thanks to Eve Ensler and the Vagina Brigade, I'm being told to embrace the word "cunt." No longer a derogatory term for a woman's sexual organs, it's supposed to represent the power of my feminine sexuality and liberate me from the rigid sexual morés of the past.
In other words, I am my cunt and my cunt is me. Mmmmm, yeeeaaahhhh. Right.
That's what I find boring -- the preoccupation with the crude and the attempt to elevate the common to the divine.
In response to my post about a proposed documentary on the f-word, blogger Carol had this pithy comment:
I'm surprised that someone who is so interested in language, writing and behavior would be so skeptical about a documentary like this. While I agree the letter is a bit overblown, it actually sounds like an interesting idea. It's been awfully perplexing to me that at a time when the country is at war, there's still plenty of time for our leaders to help us get our national panties in a twitch over boobs and bad words. Given that, I think a documentary exploring rhetorical hysteria is a great idea.
Touché, Carol. Why not give it documentary treatment? Are bad words just that ... bad words?
Granted, the movie isn't finished, but I'd be willing to bet that when it is, the f-word will be infused with some sort of gravitas. It'll be a mantra of liberation and enlightenment. What was profane will be sacred.
Don't laugh. Stay with me a minute.
Do you remember what the f-word means? Sexual intercourse. At its best, something special. Something sacred as in shared between two and no one else.
But fucking? That's different. Anyone can fuck. Now we fuck around, we fuck off, we tell people to fuck themselves. "Fuck" represents the lowest common denominator of the human sexual act, which is why it is/was considered an obscenity.
Now, I am not necessarily opposed to the word when used as intended. I am opposed, however, to elevating it to sacred mantra.
Same thing has happened to other vulgarities. Do a Google on the word "cunt" and see what I mean. Thanks to Eve Ensler and the Vagina Brigade, I'm being told to embrace the word "cunt." No longer a derogatory term for a woman's sexual organs, it's supposed to represent the power of my feminine sexuality and liberate me from the rigid sexual morés of the past.
In other words, I am my cunt and my cunt is me. Mmmmm, yeeeaaahhhh. Right.
That's what I find boring -- the preoccupation with the crude and the attempt to elevate the common to the divine.
Monday, May 23, 2005
I wanna be an ad exec
Hey! I've got a great new concept for the next big pharmaceutical advertising campaign:
Have attractive, healthy-looking, upper-middle-class people talk about what a load of crap their lives were before taking ritavectinagra. Show shots of them limping on the playground with their grandkids, barfing into a toilet, having entire limbs fall off, stuff like that. Cut to cool graphics of ritavectinagra entering the bloodstream and making limbs grow back. Cut to peppy music and shots of people hauling surf boards into tsunamis and biking up the side of Mt. Everest. Be sure to include speedy rundown of side effects, which include nausea, hair loss, pimples, ingrown toenails, hives, impotence, major organ failure and coma.
Oh ... what? It's been done already? Shoot.
Have attractive, healthy-looking, upper-middle-class people talk about what a load of crap their lives were before taking ritavectinagra. Show shots of them limping on the playground with their grandkids, barfing into a toilet, having entire limbs fall off, stuff like that. Cut to cool graphics of ritavectinagra entering the bloodstream and making limbs grow back. Cut to peppy music and shots of people hauling surf boards into tsunamis and biking up the side of Mt. Everest. Be sure to include speedy rundown of side effects, which include nausea, hair loss, pimples, ingrown toenails, hives, impotence, major organ failure and coma.
Oh ... what? It's been done already? Shoot.
GGB summer reading list
I seem to be doing my best writing in e-mails to friends. Here's a recent excerpt:
"Loved Snow Crash. [A former boyfriend whose name shall be withheld] actually gave me Cryptonomicon as a gift Christmas before last. (I think it was a guilt offering.)
"Right now I'm trying (again!) to read Diamond Age. Neal Stephenson's prose is very dense, and I've discovered it doesn't make a really good poolside read, which is what I need now because my circuits are so fried, so this weekend I picked up a copy of Mary Higgins Clark's latest."
I think Neal Stephenson is sci fi's answer to Tom Clancy. At least I have a clue what he means when he writes about "buckminsterfullertubes." :D But sometimes all that detail clogs up the pipes of this ADD-addled brain.
"Loved Snow Crash. [A former boyfriend whose name shall be withheld] actually gave me Cryptonomicon as a gift Christmas before last. (I think it was a guilt offering.)
"Right now I'm trying (again!) to read Diamond Age. Neal Stephenson's prose is very dense, and I've discovered it doesn't make a really good poolside read, which is what I need now because my circuits are so fried, so this weekend I picked up a copy of Mary Higgins Clark's latest."
I think Neal Stephenson is sci fi's answer to Tom Clancy. At least I have a clue what he means when he writes about "buckminsterfullertubes." :D But sometimes all that detail clogs up the pipes of this ADD-addled brain.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a ...
Blogger Michelle Malkin recently received an invitation from Napoleon Dynamite casting director Jory Weitz to appear in a documentary about the f-word. (She declined.) Read all about it here.
Just how bored are we as a culture that we think an obscenity deserves documentary treatment? Good grief, you'd think Weitz was talking about global warming or beating baby seals the way he described the earth-shattering implications of the f-word in his letter to Malkin:
Boiler plate - this film will examine the long history of the word, trace its use through time and present all sides of the current and ongoing debate over its use.
OK, I know ... they'll delve into issues such as First Amendment rights, censorship, etc. Yeah, whatever. They also plan to bring in "important personalities" such as Sam Donaldson, Miss Manners and Alanis Morrisette, who I'm sure will be happy to tell us how she liberated female anger when she inserted the f-word in her hit song "You Oughtta Know." I wonder if they'll also interview Beavis and Butthead. ("Huh ... huhuhuhuh ... he said the f-word.")
Let's be honest. Hollywood of late has been delighting in the f-word like a potty-training two-year-old showing us his poo. Or, perhaps I should say like a 13-year-old boy who thinks he's the first one to discover profanity and is gleefully horrifying his parents.
I find it ridiculously boring. Chalk it up to well-fed Westerners to become enraptured with trivia.
Just how bored are we as a culture that we think an obscenity deserves documentary treatment? Good grief, you'd think Weitz was talking about global warming or beating baby seals the way he described the earth-shattering implications of the f-word in his letter to Malkin:
Boiler plate - this film will examine the long history of the word, trace its use through time and present all sides of the current and ongoing debate over its use.
OK, I know ... they'll delve into issues such as First Amendment rights, censorship, etc. Yeah, whatever. They also plan to bring in "important personalities" such as Sam Donaldson, Miss Manners and Alanis Morrisette, who I'm sure will be happy to tell us how she liberated female anger when she inserted the f-word in her hit song "You Oughtta Know." I wonder if they'll also interview Beavis and Butthead. ("Huh ... huhuhuhuh ... he said the f-word.")
Let's be honest. Hollywood of late has been delighting in the f-word like a potty-training two-year-old showing us his poo. Or, perhaps I should say like a 13-year-old boy who thinks he's the first one to discover profanity and is gleefully horrifying his parents.
I find it ridiculously boring. Chalk it up to well-fed Westerners to become enraptured with trivia.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Runaway bride story boon for sloganeers
The Jennifer Wilbanks fiasco has spawned its own cottage industry. Go to www.cafepress.com and do a search on "runaway bride." I though this messenger bag was particularly choice.
My prediction is that to "pull a Wilbanks" will ignobly enter the American lexicon just as "Lewinsky" has become a euphemism for, well, you know.
My prediction is that to "pull a Wilbanks" will ignobly enter the American lexicon just as "Lewinsky" has become a euphemism for, well, you know.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Dangit! Why didn't I think of that?
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/ts/042805missingbridega
Let's see if he actually gets payment. (I thought it was a pretty darn good likeness.)
UPDATE: Whoops. Time to get the butter.
Let's see if he actually gets payment. (I thought it was a pretty darn good likeness.)
UPDATE: Whoops. Time to get the butter.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Some reflections on the American Idol controversy
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz .......................
Monday, May 02, 2005
Please send Jennifer Wilbanks to her room
Note to the news media: Please do not grant Jennifer Wilbanks any more ink or air time. I’m already sick of seeing her face, and she doesn’t deserve it.
If the situation had been reversed, there would be no calls for "understanding" or "compassion" for the runaway groom. He’d be drawn and quartered by now.
Jennifer Wilbanks wimped out. Pure and simple. I’m glad she’s alive, and maybe she needs medication, but she also needs to grow up.
UPDATE:
Note to the WWJD crowd harping about "compassion": I am not condemning Jennifer Wilbanks to anything; I am not making pronouncements on the state of her eternal soul or whether Jesus forgives. (He does.)
I'm only saying that she is not a victim in the true sense of the word and it's ludicrous to characterize her as one. The press should focus its attention elswhere and not give her the satisfaction of notoriety, if that is indeed what she's looking for.
She obviously needs help but she also needs to be held accountable for putting her loved ones through untold anguish, deceiving the public and lying to law enforcement.
I'd be more likely to give her a pass if she were 14, but she's 32. Grownups do not fake their own abductions to get out of unpleasant and stressful situations. The cut hair they found indicates that she wanted people to think she was the victim of a crime, not that she merely skipped town and didn't tell anyone (which is not a crime).
Folks, with all the publicity surrounding the Laci Petersons and Chandra Levys of the world, I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner. We can't set a bad precedent and let her completely off the hook.
If the situation had been reversed, there would be no calls for "understanding" or "compassion" for the runaway groom. He’d be drawn and quartered by now.
Jennifer Wilbanks wimped out. Pure and simple. I’m glad she’s alive, and maybe she needs medication, but she also needs to grow up.
UPDATE:
Note to the WWJD crowd harping about "compassion": I am not condemning Jennifer Wilbanks to anything; I am not making pronouncements on the state of her eternal soul or whether Jesus forgives. (He does.)
I'm only saying that she is not a victim in the true sense of the word and it's ludicrous to characterize her as one. The press should focus its attention elswhere and not give her the satisfaction of notoriety, if that is indeed what she's looking for.
She obviously needs help but she also needs to be held accountable for putting her loved ones through untold anguish, deceiving the public and lying to law enforcement.
I'd be more likely to give her a pass if she were 14, but she's 32. Grownups do not fake their own abductions to get out of unpleasant and stressful situations. The cut hair they found indicates that she wanted people to think she was the victim of a crime, not that she merely skipped town and didn't tell anyone (which is not a crime).
Folks, with all the publicity surrounding the Laci Petersons and Chandra Levys of the world, I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner. We can't set a bad precedent and let her completely off the hook.
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