xelent’s Neighborhood

Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of "banished words"; words they consider trite, overused, annoying, or a combination of all three.  Following below is the list, with my comments in italics:

SHOVEL-READY

"Apparently, the generally accepted definition of this phrase is to imply that a project has been completely designed and all that is left to do is to implement it...however, when something dies, it, too, is shovel-ready for burial and so I get confused about the meaning. I would suggest that we just say the project is ready to implement.” – Jerry Redington, Keosauqua, Iowa.

"Stick a shovel in it. It's done." – Joe Grimm, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

I'd like to take a shovel upside the head of the person who coined this obnoxious phrase.

TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY

"In the lexicon of the political arena, this word is supposed to mean obvious or easily understood. In reality, political transparency is more invisible than obvious!" -- Deb Larson, Bellaire, Mich.

Someone throw a blanket over "transparent".

CZAR

Long used by the media as a metaphor for positions of high authority, including “baseball czar” Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, appointed by team owners as commissioner-for-life in 1919. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson had an “industry czar” during World War I. Lesser-known “czar” roles in government during the last 100 years include: censorship, housing and oil czars in 1941; rubber czar in 1942; patronage czar (1945); clean-up (1952); missile (1954); inflation (1971); e-commerce (1998); bioethics, faith-based and reading czars (2001); bird flu (2004); democracy (2005); abstinence and birth control czars (2006); and weatherization czar (2008).

I thought the Russians took care of "czars" in 1917.

TWEET

And all of its variations…tweetaholic, retweet, twitterhea, twitterature, twittersphere….

Jay Brazier of Williamston, Mich. says she supposes that tweeters might be "twits."

Personally, I'd go for "twats", myself.

APP

"Must we b sbjct to yt another abrv? Why does the English language have to fit on a two-inch screen? I hate the sound of it. I think I'll listen to a symph on the rad." -- Edward R. Bolt, Grand Rapids, Mich.

Put "cr" in front of "app" and you get crapp!

SEXTING

Sending sexually explicit pictures and text messages through the cell phone.

"Any dangerous new trend that also happens to have a clever mash-up of words, involves teens, and gets television talk show hosts interested must be banished." – Ishmael Daro, Saskatoon, Sask., Canada.

A "word" spoken by those who aren't getting the real thing.

FRIEND AS A VERB

Came into popularity through social networking websites. You add someone to your network by "friending" them, or remove them by "unfriending" them.

"'Befriend' is much more pleasant to the human ear and a perfectly useful word in the dictionary." – Kevin K., Morris, Okla.

I pretty much hate any noun that is made into a verb and vice versa. 

TEACHABLE MOMENT

What might otherwise be known as 'a lesson.'

"It's a condescending substitute for 'opportunity to make a point,'" says Eric Rosenquist of College Station, Tex.

So, portions of time are now capable of being taught, hmm?

IN THESE ECONOMIC TIMES….

"Overused and redundant. Aren't ALL times 'these economic times'?" -- Barb Stutesman, Three Rivers, Mich.

I think this stuffy phrase has outlived its fifteen minutes of overuse.

STIMULUS

"Everything in the news is about the stimulus packages...it is no longer a grant, it's stimulus money, stimulus checks, etc. I think it is just being over-used." Teri Heikkila, Rudyard, Mich.

I've got your "stimulus package" right here! 

TOXIC ASSETS

"Whatever happened to simply 'bad stocks,' 'debts,' or 'loans'?" -- Monty Heidenreich, Homewood, Ill.

This list wouldn't be complete without an oxymoron.

TOO BIG TO FAIL

"Just for the record, nothing's too big to fail unless the government lets it." Claire Shefchik, Brooklyn, NY.

Tell this to the owners of the Titanic!.

BROMANCE

"I am sick of combined words the media creates to make them sound catchier. Frenemies? Bromances? Blogorrhea? I'm going to scream!" – Kaylynn, Alberta, Canada.

I've been lucky to have never heard this one before.

CHILLAXIN'

"Heard everywhere from MTV to ESPN to CNN. A bothersome term that seeks to combine chillin' with relaxin' makes me want to be 'axin' this word." – Tammy, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

What?  Does this mean to put an axe into the refrigerator?

OBAMA-prefix or roots?

The LSSU Word Banishment Committee held out hope that folks would want to Obama-ban Obama-structions, but were surprised that no one Obama-nominated any, such as these compiled by the Oxford Dictionary in 2009: Obamanomics, Obamanation, Obamafication, Obamacare, Obamalicious, Obamaland….We say Obamanough already.

Let's bomb all the Obama coinages.

My personal contribution to this year's list would be:

FAIL used as a noun.

For example, a football team loses big in a game and it's dubbed "an epic fail".  This one made me grind my teeth the first time I heard it.  It may be an "epic failure", but it's NOT an "epic fail".

What's your New Year's resolution for 2010?

I don't make resolutions other than the one I make every year and have no trouble in fulfilling: to get laid as often as possible!

2009 hasn't been one of my better years.  My finances have become increasingly tighter this year -- I'm nearly as broke now as I was in college -- and I remain underemployed in a state with a high unemployment rate.  I've spent much of the year robbing Peter to pay Paul just to barely make minimum payments on my bills.  My son also lost a good job this year, and he has yet to find permanent employment.

I ended an important relationship this year out of necessity, yet I still miss her to this day.  Intellectually, I know it was for the best, but my body tells me differently.

I also lost one of my cats this year and I likewise mourn his loss.

On the plus side, I remain healthy, and no one has died in my family or among my friends this year.  That's always something to celebrate.

I finally paid off my car loan, so that should help to ease my finances a bit in the new year.

Plus, my "social life" is still as active as ever which is, again, always a reason to celebrate.

But I can safely say I'll be glad to bid 2009 good riddance and I look forward to see what 2010 will have to offer.  I offer no resolutions, as it's not in my nature to do so, except to say that I will be alert to whatever opportunities present themselves  in the new year.

While reading a message board the other day, I saw a thread about New Year's resolutions and rolled my eyes.  My first thought was that nearly everyone would resolve to "lose weight" in 2010, as that particular resolution is typical and ubiquitous.  There's absolutely no originality about it at all.

Sure enough, I was right.  Every person who had posted on the thread put weight loss on their list.  I seriously doubt that every person who posts on that large message board is in need of weight loss, hence my rolling of eyes.  But no one ever wants to gain weight or just doesn't care one way (weigh?) or the other how much they weigh.  No,everyone resolved to lose weight, even if they were underweight.

And what annoyed me most about this is not so much the desire to lose weight, but rather the ubiquity of this resolution and the total lack of originality in coming up with a list of resolutions, not to mention the ubiquity of New Years' resolutions themselves.

I got to thinking and I realized that it was ubiquity in general -- the ever-present, the predictable, and the typical -- that is at the heart of my annoyance.   It connotes a lack of original or creative thinking and reeks of a lemming-like ordinariness.  Thinking further, I thought of other examples of ubiquity that irritate me.

One example is the fact that nearly every rock band, without question, contains only two types of instruments: guitars and drums.  Why do we not see wind instruments on a more regular basis?  Why not pianos? There's nothing wrong with guitars and drums, per se, but the ubiquity of the guitar-and-drums-only bands annoys the crap out of me.  I can't help but think of how much more opportunity for creative music is lost because most rock musicians just stick to the same ol' thing, instrument wise.

One petty example of ubiquity is that whenever you see a couple sharing a motorcycle, the woman is always the one on the back.  What?  Is this a freaking law or something?  You think they'd want to switch up now and then for a little variety.  A funny example of ubiquity is that whenever you are driving behind construction workers in a pickup, they always have a yellow plastic water dispenser with a red lid on top.  Never any other colors.

Feel free to list other example of ubiquity in the comment box, particularly the kinds that irritate you..

White lights or colored lights? Blinking or non-blinking? Bonus points if you show us a photo of the lights you used to decorate for the holidays.

I prefer colored Christmas lights, as I think white lights are boring and kind of pretentious.  After all, we see white lamps in different forms of lighting 365 days a year; there's nothing special about them.  On the other hand, we only see the strings of colored lights at Christmas time and color is inherently more interesting than the lack of color.

But I prefer non-blinking lights, as the blinky kind are kind of distracting and annoying.

I can't show you a picture, because I don't decorate for Christmas.

This morning, I read an interesting blog post by Paula Reed.  Her entry was based on a quote she'd received by email:

“The Left: People who demonize those with whom they disagree.”

My first thought was to think of how so many neocons today are masters at the art of projection: they take what is commonly done by neocons and turn it around saying it's really liberals doing it.

Personally attacking one's opponents, instead of coming up with reasoned rebuttals to their ideas is intellectually dishonest and is a symptom of the creeping anti-intellectualism in this country; an example of the dumbing-down of America.  It's much easier to blame liberals for everything that's wrong in our world today, than to come up with ideas on how to fix these problems together.

Gone are the days of erudite conservatives, such as William Buckley. Also largely gone are those conservatives, such as Barry Goldwater, who was able to often put ideological differences aside and work in a bi-partisan manner with his Democratic colleagues (now, I bet that is a word you don't hear too much in Washington nowadays) for the good of the country.

Now, it's neocon pundits, such as Limbaugh, Savage, and Coulter, among many others, who have brought the black and white, simplistic tactic of using ad hominems against their opponents in from the far right fringes of the tinfoil hat brigade into mainstream conservative thought.  Or what passes for thought.   This is not to say that the left is entirely free of such nonsense -- there are liberals, such as Rosie O'Donnell, who could hardly be called intellectual.  But those such as O'Donnell hardly have the reach or the influence tha those in the pantheon on the right wing do

I heard a prime example of this type of anti-intellectualism the other night while listening to the radio.  A man called the Dennis Miller show to express why he rejected intelligent design.  Miller didn't give him much of a chance to speak.  Instead he cut him off to say that he couldn't get on board with Darwinism because he just couldn't get into the idea of "worshipping a pile of amino acids" and that he liked the idea of an intelligent being creating life on Earth.

My jaw dropped when I heard this nonsense.  I could not believe that Miller, a former liberal and former cast member of Saturday Night Live -- in other words, someone who should know better -- was spouting off such simplistic ideas.   There was once a time when being a conservative did not mean one also had to accept intellectually bankrupt, fundamentalist Christian beliefs as well.

Instead of the Buckley types being the mainstream of conservatism, we now have the Archie Bunkers of the world running the Republican party, which is a sad thing for old-school Republicans and the party in general.

Thoughts?

Apparently, the Federal Government of the United States.

Recently, the Obama administration ordered the Supreme Court to NOT hear a case. By doing so, they let stand a DC district court case that concluded that detainees (arbitrarily fingered as enemy combatants) are not persons and thus have no constitutional protections from torture or abuse in US prisons abroad.

William Fischer recently wrote an article on this topic on AntiWar.com titled US: Guantanamo Prisoners Not 'Persons'.

The implications of this are horrendous. The government is essentially saying that they can arbitrarily decide who is and is not a person. They can name anyone an "enemy combatant", drag them off to some foreign prison, and torture them to their hearts content. The non-person has no legal recourse, even if the government never presses any charges and releases them. Think about this.

Most people will think, "sucks to be them, but the odds of that happening to me or someone I know are slim to none." This is true, but it is the principle rather than the practicalities that matter here. If any random person can have their personhood stripped at the whim of the state, then we are nothing more than free range slaves.

In recent news reports I read about a four year old pre-kindergarten Texas boy who has been suspended from school for having long hair.  Say what?  Is this 1959 or 2009?  I thought that the right of male students to wear long hair had been settled years ago.  Indeed, when I was in high school in the 70s, I wore long hair with nary a comment from the school, as did my son when he was in school in the late 80s into the 90s.

Taylor Pugh, who attends school in Mesquite, Texas, was given in-school suspension because school officials say that his hair, which  long on the front and sides, covering his earlobes and shirt collar, violates the school district’s dress code policies.   According to the district dress code, boys’ hair must be kept out of the eyes and cannot extend below the bottom of earlobes or over the collar of a dress shirt.

On the website of the Mesquite Independent School District, it makes reference to its dress code by saying:

“students who dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of the society in which we live.”

Oh, really?  The Mesquite school district apparently has no problem with female students who wear long hair and do not believe that long hair on girls is inherently messy or ungroomed, nor does it doom them to being future societal losers.  But it would seem as if they believe that the same hair length on a male student automatically turn the same hair into a dirty mess, not to mention marking such boys as future bums or even criminals.

The school district’s rule about male hair length has nothing to do with hygiene or safety issues, as if it did, the same rules would apply to both boys and girls.  Requiring neat and clean hair for all students  is a reasonable rule — requiring short hair for one sex only is blatant sexism.

So far as hair length determining character and being a “constructive member of society” goes:

You’ll note the ribbon behind his head for his ponytail!

Though a bit thin on top, it’s long in the back!

I don’t think anyone would deny that George Washington or Ben Franklin were contributing members of society, long hair and all.

Likewise, short hair is not an inherent indicator of good character or potential to contribute positively to society:

I’m sure this style would be acceptable to Mesquite schools!

The point is, that male hair length is no reliable indicator of character or potential to contribute to society in a positive manner.   Hair length is simply a matter of personal preference, thus is an invalid thing to regulate when forming dress codes.

I’m not saying that dress codes in and of themselves are invalid, but they must be based on common-sense criteria that is applied equally to everyone and ideally be based on matters of safety and actual hygiene, rather than on matters of fashion.

In 1996, Bill Clinton made the following comment about school uniforms:

“I challenge all our schools to teach character education, to teach good values and good citizenship. And if it means that teenagers will stop killing each other over designer jackets, then our public schools should be able to require their students to wear school uniforms.”

While I don’t necessarily agree that clothing styles are necessarily linked to character, I do agree that rules pertaining to clothing are valid for employers especially and also for schools to a lesser degree. The reason I make the distinction between required/banned clothing and that of hair styles is that clothing is something that can be changed at the end of the day when the person is no longer at school/work. It’s not a permanent change, as people can wear what they prefer on their own time. And nowadays, rules about clothing are generally applied equally to both men and women, considering that women are now able to wear pants.

But hair length is a different matter. It’s a 24 hour a day thing. A male who prefers long hair can’t grow it back at the end of the day after school or work.

In conclusion, schools should have a single standard about students’ hair that applies to both boys and girls: that is be clean and neat, with no reference to length.

Thoughts?

I've not so far written about the Tiger Woods story because I viewed it as yet another story about a straying celebrity and that it would quickly become yesterday's news.  Reports such as these are now rather commonplace and are hardly worth reporting on, let alone commenting on.

But this story outlived its fifteen minutes a long time ago and, personally, I'm getting tired of hearing about it.  I don't see what all the shock and fascination is with this story.  It's not as if he's the first, nor will he be the last celebrity (or non-celebrity, for that matter) to fall off the monogamy wagon.

I also don't see why Woods is off the golf tour.  I don't see what one thing has to do with the other.  The state of his marriage should be a private matter between him and his wife and it in no way impedes his ability to play golf.  It's not as if being monogamous would make him a better golf  player. 

And it's not as if he beat his wife and had done something criminal.  Indeed, if anything, the shoe is on the other foot in this instance.  It seems the only reason he had an accident was because his wife bashed in the back window of his SUV, thus distracting him, as he tried to drive away.

I've read comments from people cheering her on for this; taking the opinion that he got what he deserved for his infidelity. The sexism of such statements boggles my mind, as I'm quite certain there would be no cheering if their roles were reversed in this drama.  People would be calling to have him locked up and the key thrown away if it had been him bashing a window in with a golf club while she drove away.  It seems when it comes to domestic violence and infidelity, the double standard is alive and well.

Other people are shocked, asking how could he do such a thing.  Again, with the ubiquity of stories about celebrity infidelity and its corresponding prevalence in the lives of ordinary people as well, I think that people are asking the wrong questions.  They take the view that people are failing marriage, but in reality, it would seem that our idea of what marriage should be is failing people.

Instead of asking why so many people are unfaithful, we need to be asking such questions as, why are all marriages expected to be monogamous, why was monogamy originally instituted in the first place, are the original reasons for monogamy still relevant in our society today, what is the exact nature of "fidelity" -- is it summed up by sexual exclusivity or can it refer to other aspects of a marriage and, if so, must sexual exclusivity always be a part of it. and so on.

Perhaps we need to be re-examining and re-evaluating the structure of marriage and the purpose it serves in our society and be willing to make some changes, instead of trying harder to cram people down into the same old, ill-fitting boxes.

Thoughts?