No Brainer?

Suppose the worst happened to you and you had to be hospitalized.  

Perhaps you have a terrible illness that requires an extended stay or even worse. 

Now feel your anxiety at the prospect of never again seeing your friends or family.  Feel the fear and isolation; the absolute despair at ending your life on Earth alone. 

That is what may face our Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters in America in this, the 21st century. 

Naturally your parents or children could visit you but in many cases Gay men and women found themselves estranged from their families as a result of arcane societal taboos. 

Unless you happened to be married and your spouse was of the opposite sex you could not count on having your life partner visit. 

This is changing as President Obama has mandated hospital visitation rights to same sex partners. 

The implementation of this compassionate 'no-brainer' will naturally face tremendous opposition from unfeeling radical groups who do not like anyone other than themselves to be treated as human beings.  The sad part is that many in the opposition's camp are probably gay themselves as has been shown time and again by the so-called religious right and a few homophobic Congressmen. 

In a nation born on the notion 'live and let live' too many feel it's 'let me live and you die' and if gay, die alone.  (WWJD?)

Another Word Bites the Dust

Society needs words to convey many things such as objects and feelings.  Words are the building blocks of language and without language we are nothing.

Many of the words we use today evolved from ancient Latin and sometimes contain obvious links to their origin.

Some words are simple such as ‘pinpoint’ which is merely the combination of two words signifying quite literally an exact location.

Others words are a bit more obscure such as ‘posthumous.’  This word comes from the two Latin words ‘post,’ a prefix meaning ‘after’ and the verb ‘humare,’ ‘to bury.’  Together they form the idea of ‘after death.’

Occasionally we even use the word and it’s meaning together in an otherwise seemingly redundant sentence such as, “We pinpointed the exact location of the grave in which Mr. Smith was buried in order to award him his medal posthumously.”

Luckily we can use our words without having to hearken back to their origins every time we open our mouths.  Words give us comfort and in some ways are our friends.

Unfortunately every once in a while someone will hijack a friend of ours.   They take our words away from us and return them with different meanings.  They cause us to change the way we think and express ourselves.

A perfect example is the old word ‘Gay’ which was used for so many years to express a feeling of joy.  It now has a completely different meaning which still gives joy but to a far smaller group of users.  The rest of us are forced to change our language slightly so as not to offend, well, just plain happy people.

Like human beings words also evolve. (Creationists may stop reading at this point.)

Even the word evolve comes from another Latin word which itself evolved from ‘volva’ to ‘vulva’ meaning to expand or twist.

Evolve has nothing to do with all the other new “E” words that have cropped up recently.  This includes the computer world which itself has evolved from the Univac days although you may wish to e-mail this post to others.

Evolve simply signifies the twisting of what was into what is.  It is an ever changing expansion and twisting of our lives which may cause distress not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Recently I enjoyed a nice vacation in the Cayman Islands.  I enjoyed the warmer weather the change of scenery and the different culture.

I also enjoyed swimming, ‘with my head just below the surface of the water with a tube in my mouth that reached the air above allowing me to breath while being submerged for a long period of time sporting a clear plastic-faced mask that covered my nose and eyes allowing me to watch fish swim by.’

There used to be a word for that but I can no longer tell people what I did without having them looking at me oddly.

I guess I just long for the days when I could have said, “I had a gay time snorkeling!”

Words – Part One

Ever notice how words have changed with time? Well the words are the same but their meanings have changed and not necessarily for the better.
Just before the turn of the century, from the 19th to the 20th that is, this country was celebrating a time to be known for many, many years as the Gay Nineties. One hundred years later we were still celebrating, sort of, the Gay Nineties but with one incredibly different meaning.
In the bible, and recreated on the silver screen in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” Charlton, I mean Moses is so pleased with the land he finds after being expelled from Egypt that he decides to stay put and marry Tzipporah. He proclaims his love of the location by saying, “I shall dwell here.”
Dwell?
Doth anyone sayeth dwell anymore?
Imagine telling a real estate agent after a long day of showing off her available properties that in the last place you saw you will dwell. “Oookay, we’ll talk later.”
And how about some words we see every day that are extremely absurd and yet so common we don’t even seem to notice? A sign on a front lawn proclaims proudly, ‘House for sale – By Owner.’ WELL WHO THE HELL ELSE IS GOING TO SELL THE DAMN THING BUT THE OWNER? What do you expect, ‘House for sale by the neighbor two doors down on the left – I hate the guy?’
And when someone asks if they can ask you a question haven’t they already done so?
Or better yet they “axe you something.”
Please don’t axe me!
And while we’re on the subject how many mothers does it take to give birth to a child? If you think this is a dumb question let me axe you how many times have you heard someone say, “My moms told me…?”
In our current world the intensity of words has also changed. When a doctor tells you, “You may feel a little pressure” be prepared to die.
And in business, especially retail, words are used to trick you. Everyone flocks to a sale to pick up items they had no intention of buying in the first place just because they are 40% off.
Yeah well 40% off is still 60% on!
We live in a world of sound bites. Attention spans are so short that most of you stopped reading this diatribe a few paragraphs back. Naturally this upsets me but reality is reality.
And speaking of reality, how can you call a group of people placed in a remote area of the world forced to compete with strangers for the rights to come back to civilization with a million dollar prize merely because they were able to trick the others into voting against everyone else reality TV?
That is not reality. Everyone knows it’s really Politics!
Uh oh, I seem to have come back to politics so I better stop for now. I wouldn’t want to dwell on that subject too long.