Euphemisms

I recently borrowed comedian George Carlin’s newest book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, from the library. I’ve never found Carlin terribly funny, but he does have some interesting and irreverent takes on language, society, and political correctness that more than make up for the fact that he is becoming the dirty version of cranky Andy Rooney in his old age. I do disagree with just about everything Carlin has to say about religion, yet one can see the grip that Catholicism holds, even on its apostates. Carlin cannot stop mentioning the Church, and the religious imagery spreads to his choice of book title and cover, with himself imposed onto DaVinci’s Last Supper, impatiently waiting for Jesus to pass the pork chops.

Carlin’s best social commentary comes in his remarks on the increasing proliferation of euphemisms in today’s society. He calls euphemistic language a type that “obscure[s] meaning rather than enhance[ing] it; [it] shade[s] the truth.” Euphemisms are words that replace other words that make people feel uncomfortable. Like when people say “beauty mark” instead of “mole,” when pimples become skin blemishes, free doughnuts become complimentary breakfasts, fat women become full figured, secretaries become human resource assistants, etc, etc.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be nice and not hurt others’s feelings. But, the problem with this type of language is that it shades the truth. Giving “nicer” names does not change the fact that a person is fat or the importance of person’s position in a company. Calling a secretary a human resources assistant sounds better, but is she really going to be getting a pay raise or added responsibilities? Do pimples look less ugly (excuse me, I meant to say “minimally beautiful”) when called skin blemishes?

We obscure language not just by substituting "nicer" words, but with our phrases and interactions, as well. Some can be justified, such as when your girlfriend asks if these pants make her butt look big. However, most of the time, I think, it is best to be honest. It may hurt more in the beginning, but in the end, it will be better. Like, when we reject another’s romantic advances, we try to be nice about it and say that we aren’t looking for a relationship right now, or that we do not want to hurt the friendship. In truth, what we mean is that we do not want a relationship with this particular person. You don’t need to be blunt and say that the idea of dating the person repulses you, but you can be direct and say you just aren’t interested. This extends beyond relationships too. Like, when you are a coach and you cut a player, don’t say you wish there was a spot on the team for the kid. Just tell him the truth, you did not think he was one of the 12 (or whatever number) best.

Video Games

On Tuesday morning, on my way to my last day of work before Thanksgiving Break, I got into my first car accident as a driver. I had just merged onto I-90 from the exit ramp, and I needed to merge to the middle lane or be stuck going on to I-787. Problem is, this time of morning, everybody is going to 787, so the lane I’m in is going about 20 mph. The middle lane cars are going 50-60, normal traffic speed, its really rainy and icy out, I can’t see a thing. I begin to merge over, and am sideswiped by an 18-wheeler. I almost shit myself, but I was lucky. All that I had was a dis-attached mirror, hanging by the cord, and it wasn’t even broken. I took it into the car dealership after work.

My Playstation 2 had been broken since about September. I hadn’t bought a new one yet. I kept telling myself it’s because I don’t have the time to play. But, there is always time. You make time for the things that are important. I just didn't want to spend the money. Yet, after spending $214 to reattach a mirror, I decided to spend the $149 and get myself a new Playstation 2.

Yes, I am 24 and still play videogames. People my age have grown up with them. The popular games for me now are Madden Football, the last three Grand Theft Auto’s, and Metal Gear. The new graphics still amaze me. I thought about waiting until the PS3 comes out, but I decided against it. There is a certain point where a person has enough technology to satisfy. My grandfather is happy with cable tv and fm radio. My father has stopped at the computer and internet. He is befuddled by video games. I used to not understand how he could not want to learn how to play video games, but I thing I understand. I have no intention of getting an IPod, or a satellite radio, or Xbox 360. I have enough technology to keep myself confused. Even a simple cellphone without a camera is fine. Some of the things on it, like text message, I still haven’t quite figured out.

The greatest video games, anyway, include more of the classics from Original “Old School” Nintendo than from the more advanced systems. Here is THE list of the greatest video games ever, in no particular order.

Pong—simple, yet enjoyable. Like bouncing a ball against the wall and waiting for it to come back to you, it never gets old.

Ms. Pac-Man—“She's fun. She's cute. She swallows.”-Van Wilder

Super Mario Bros. 1—The Original. It defined the mythical adventure genre. Unlike complex games like Zelda where you have to find stuff and think, in Mario you just go from one side of the screen to the other. I can beat the game using warps in less than 9 minutes and, going through every board, in about half an hour.

Super Mario Bros. 3—The Greatest Video Game of All Time. Hands down. No Questions asked. Just amazing.

Contra—Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A B A Select Start.

RBI Baseball—The first game to use real players. And by real players I mean bubble shaped cartoons that had the real players's names. It has teams from 1986, so we get the Red Sox with Roger Clemens, Dave Henderson, Wade Boggs, et al, the Mets with coked up Darryl and Doc, the Angels with a ready to retire yet amazing video game star Reggie Jackson.

NHL 94 (or was it 95?)—This is the game Vince Vaughn and co. played on Swingers, so it has to make the list.

Tecmo Bowl and Super Tecmo Bowl—The greatest football video games of all time. People still bow down in reverence when they hear Video Bo Jackson mentioned. There were real players, for Super, real season stats and rankings, and best of all, the game play was simple. Instead of the complex offense and defense schemes you see in Madden, you had 4 offensive plays in Tecmo, 8 in Super, and defense was just guessing what offensive play the other person or computer picked.

Crash Bandicoot Warped—The Mario of Playstation. It brought the Mario 3 genre into 3-D. At least for me.

Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andrea—So wrong, yet so fun.

Madden Football—The Madden games are great. I still get nostalgic for Tecmo, but there really is nothing like Madden.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

The holiday season is upon us, and life can seem quite hectic. It is a time to look back on the year that has passed and on what is to come. In our Church calendar, we are closing out one liturgical year, reflecting on God’s presence in our lives thus far, and looking anew, in Advent, to the coming of Our Lord in the feast of the Incarnation. Looking back on the outside world, it has been a tumultuous year for many, opening with the Tsunami, then moving on to other disasters, both natural, like Katrina, and man made, like Iraq. I know for many, 2005 has been a struggle. I think we mark the turning of years both to show the cyclical nature of life as well as the ever-renewed hope of new beginnings. Each year is similar; we have happiness and sadness, companionship and loneliness. Yet, each year is different, because each New Year brings with it hope for new beginnings.

A good way to start off a new year is by looking back more on our blessings than our sufferings. I am pessimistic at times, but I also realize that I have much to be thankful for. I have my health, I have a job that I enjoy, a college education, hopefully a Masters degree soon, and most importantly, I have an amazing family and incredible friends. I have everything a person could reasonably ask for. I suggest that when you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with your family, you count your blessings. We all have plenty to be thankful for.

Dating Essay Contest

I am sponsoring an essay contest. In order to be eligible, you must be a female between 21 and 27 years old, at the very least in your third year of college, and not be related to me. You must submit an essay of no more than 500 words explaining why I should consider dating you. Essay is to be submitted into the area marked "comments" at the bottom of this blog entry. You must also submit contact information, and a link to a recent picture (or pictures) of yourself (nothing naughty, keep it rated PG or PG 13 at the most). Essays will judged on spelling, grammar, cohesion of thought, laughter value (I like humor), and...um...measurements.

This may or may not be a joke depending on the quality (or lack thereof) and/or quantity (or lack thereof) of responses. I suggest that the 2 0r 3 of you who actually read my blog regularly pass this information on to potential essay contestants :-)

Wal-Mart and the Annoying Annual "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" Debate

It is less than two weeks from Thanksgiving, retailers are licking their chops at the month ahead that will bring their yearly and quarterly earnings into the black, and, once again, we have to hear from that ever annoying annual debate: Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas. The irony is that this time the rile up was begun by Wal-Mart. The corporation that liberals love to bash has this time annoyed the conservatives. I guess, if this Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas debate has to happen every year anyways, it's better off getting it out of the way before Thanksgiving, so we can forget about it when we are drunk on our rum and eggnogs later.

The “crisis” began soon after Halloween (which is, of course, the official start of the commercial Christmas season—Charlie Brown is rolling over in his comic strip grave) when Wal-Mart decided to replace “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays.” A customer complained, and Wal-Mart responded to her complaint with this:

“Walmart is a world wide organization and must remain conscious of this. The majority of the world still has different practices other than ‘christmas’ which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with ‘christmas’ red and white are actually a representation of of the aminita mascera mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses, mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world.”

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a watch group that looks for anti-Catholic and anti-religious bigotry, pounced on this. Their major complaint was that when you typed in Hanukkah or Kwanzaa into the Wal-Mart search engine, it took you to a special Hanukkah or Kwanzaa shopping site. But, if you typed in Christmas, it took you to a generic holiday site. The Catholic League called for a boycott of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, ever bottom line con$ciou$, changed their website so that there would a special Christmas shopping section as well, and also took down their explanation of the meaning of Christmas. However, they still encourage their employees, though do not require them, to greet shoppers with “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” The Catholic League grudgingly accepted.

I have a few comments. The Wal-Mart explanation of Christmas is not exactly fiction, but not fact either. While Christians have adopted and co-opted some pagan and other traditions, the Incarnation has always been at the heart of the meaning of Christmas. Christmas has always been, and always will be, mainly about Christ. All the side stuff that is adopted is meant to accentuate that fact, not to reinterpret Christmas as a multicultural hodgepodge. Those who are offended either by “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” are being extreme. If you are a Christian, your faith should be strong enough that you will not lose it simply by hearing Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. And, for those who only think Happy Holidays is appropriate in our “increasingly multicultural” world, get a grip. Nobody is trying to offend you by saying Merry Christmas. I honestly don’t think that religious Jews or Muslims are offended, anyways. They recognize that someone is just being kind and friendly. It is only hard core secularists who are offended. What happened to the days when we just used Merry Christmas and Happy holidays interchangeably, and we didn’t have to think too deeply about the implicit meaning in whether a person said one or the other?

Stores should allow their employees to greet customers with either Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas. After all, let’s be real. Chances are, a customer is Christmas shopping this time of year. And, extreme secularists and extreme fundamentalists should not worry over whether they hear “Merry Christmas” or Happy Holidays.” My message to everyone else is back off of Christmas and the “Holidays” for awhile. It’s not even Advent yet. The message of the season is “wait, Jesus is not here yet. He is coming. Don’t be in such a rush. Appreciate each part of the season for what it’s worth.”

Faith and Miracles

Miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that prompt realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle, but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see said: “My Lord and my God!” Was it the miracle that forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said: “I do not believe until I see.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "The Brothers Karamozov"

We’ve all done it. We’ve all wondered why we never get to see miracles take place, why God won’t let us hit the homerun when we ask Him, or why God won’t put all the knowledge in our head right before the start of the test that we should have studied for. All those Bible characters got to see miracles, and even some of them got to benefit from miracles, with cool stuff like the parting of the Red Sea and the turning of a handful of loaves and fishes into a meal for thousands. Why can’t we get miracles? Why are the only miracles we ever hear about just stories in the Weekly World News right next to an article on the most recent alien abductions?

Some would say that it is because miracles are not possible and that they are just made up stories in the Bible. That is as much of a religious or faith based claim as the positive belief in miracles. How would one know that miracles couldn’t happen? You can’t prove it either way. Besides, there is evidence for miracles and signs (the Greek word for “miracle” literally means “sign”) of miracles all the time. Such as the documented appearances of the Virgin Mary, and other events. The reason why miracles are infrequent and that God doesn’t show up and begin doing wondrous deeds every time someone tempts Him for “proof” of His existence is because, like Dostoyevsky says, miracles do not bring about faith; faith allows us to see miracles.

Jesus performed miracles, healings, and wondrous deeds throughout his earthly ministry. Yet, there were still many people who did not believe in him, and thought he was a charlatan. Even his own disciples were constantly misunderstanding him and what he had to say. When Jesus healed the blind man, his accusers would not allow themselves to “see” the miracle, because it was performed on the Sabbath, and they could not “see” beyond the narrowness of their interpretation of the Law to recognize that resting on the Sabbath does not preclude helping others. They could not see that, though Jesus performed a miracle and cured one man’s physical blindness, his real mission was to cure spiritual blindness and hardness of hearts.

When two men look at a beautiful sunset, one may see evidence of God’s creating work and love for us. The other may just see evidence of blind chance and a world without need for God. The sunset is a sign, and like any sign, depending on one’s viewpoint, it could be pointing in different directions. When a 7th grade boy pulls out a girl’s ponytail, it could mean that he has a crush on her. It could also just signify that he is being mean.

God does not perform lots of miracles because He knows that it will not cause people to believe in him. He gives us free will and does not force us into faith. Take the story of The Grand Inquisitor, told by Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov.

Torquemada, a Cardinal in the Church, was busy burning heretics in the 15th Century. By burning heretics, he could scare and compel others into believing in the Church, or at least pretending to, thereby keeping order. Torquemada no longer believed in Christ, himself, however he, in his wisdom, "knew" that compelling belief in the people would make their lives ordered and easier. Freedom would just bring chaos and unhappiness to them. Suddenly, Jesus walks in and begins performing miracles, and healing people. Torquemada has him arrested, and condemned to death. We are given mention here of the temptations Jesus faced in the desert from Satan.

Satan tempted Jesus, saying to him, “if you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread” and end your hunger. Jesus quoted Scripture: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on the word of God.” Satan took Jesus to the highest point of the Temple in Jerusalem, and told him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down and the angels will catch you, since Scripture says God will order his angels to catch you.” Jesus replied, “Scripture also says, do not put the Lord to the test.” Satan’s final temptation was to offer Jesus dominion over all the people of the world, if he would only kneel down and worship him. Jesus would not do it, for the Scriptures say to worship God alone.

Torquemada demands to know of Jesus why he did not take up the devil’s final offer. After all, if Jesus had done this, Torquemada agonized, then everyone would have followed Jesus, and there would be no heretics to burn. If people didn’t have the burden of freedom, Torquemada would not have to burn so many heretics to keep them in line.

Jesus did not respond to Torquemada’s pleadings. Torquemada was ready to burn Jesus, but Jesus gave him a kiss. Torquemada shuddered, then opened the prison doors and told Jesus to go.

God chose to give us free will, rather than compel us to belief, because he wants something far greater than simple obedience…he wants our love. Miracles are scarce because God wants us to have faith even without seeing. Thomas needed to see the wounded hands and feet of the Resurrected Jesus before making his profession of faith. This is not how we are supposed to come to faith. Rather than asking God for signs before we give him our faith, hope and love, we should have faith as a sign of our love for God and hope for eternal life.

Happy Birthday Tara Reid!

Looking through the Life & Leisure section of the newspaper, I noticed that Tara Reid turned 30 today. A few things came to mind: (1) Is there any male left on this earth that she hasn't dated or hooked up with? (2) When one of the stars of the high school movie of my generation--American Pie--turns 30, I realize that I am getting old myself. (3) American Pie was about a group of high school seniors back when I was a high school senior, yet Tara Reid is 6 years older than me. Ever since time immemorial, and I don't know why, directors cast people much older than the characters they are playing. I think it began with the play Peter Pan, which always has a 40 year old woman playing that 12 year old boy. On Beverly Hills 90210, every actor was at least 10 years older than the high school character he or she was playing, including Luke Perry, who was like 35 then. But, on the bright side, I don't have to feel guilty about finding the high school chicks hot on movies and tv shows, because I know in real life that they are probably my age (24) or older.

Bring on the Holiday Season!

It's November, and the holiday season is fast approaching. To which I say, thank goodness! The World Series was last week, baseball is over, and now there really are no sports to watch. Yes, there is football. And my Giants are kicking ass. But, that is only once a week. I miss the daily excitement of baseball games everyday. Don't even get me started by telling me that the NBA and NHL have begun. Unless you use "eh" instead of "um" between words, hockey does not count as a sport. And, the NBA? Yeah, I like it. I'm one of the few to like it more than college hoops (other than March Madness--the first two days are the best days of watching sports; even better than the Super Bowl). But, the season is longer than most Hollywood marriages. And, like half the teams make the playoffs. It's not worth watching until April.

I think God, in His infinite wisdom, planned the holiday season this way. He sent the Pilgrims to have dinner with the Indians in late November, then get up early Black Friday morning to beat the welfare people to Wal-Mart to buy their guns and kill the Indians. He had Mary give birth to baby Jesus in December, knowing that the holiday shoppers would take up all the hotel rooms, causing Mary to have to stay in the manger, so that people would have to go shopping and buy creches, and get their minds off the lack of baseball on tv. God knew that men would go into relapse with a two month period between the end of baseball season and the start of the football playoffs, so that is why he put Thanksgiving in November and Christmas in December.