Sometimes, when I remember, and when I am trying to be polite (despite being mightily peeved at something or other), I will exclaim "Bolshoi!" instead of shouting the name of the food that comes out of bulls, after the bulls are all done with it.
It's a few semi-tasteful steps removed from the more obvious "Oh, bullcrap!" Plus, I'd like to think that this small effort on my part helps the people around me keep some calming distance between that particular nitrogen-fixer and their own finer sensibilities.
Which is to say, my silly, sly substitution hopes to introduce some room to maneuver and to squeeze in an ability to have sidesteps kept handy for the squeamish. For some people, keeping bull manure far apart from sensitive olfactory equipment, is a must. It's an aural-oral sort of thing.
No matter how organic people say they are, for example, I've discovered very few of them really want to contemplate bull manure while they are just starting to tuck into their beefsteak entrees.
Go figure.
For me, there's also running around in this thought the the loose notion of trying to leave the world a better place than you found it -- a concept alien to Republicans, unless you substitute other words for better, such as poorer, more depleted, fully drained, mostly rusted, kinda polluted, partially crippled, half-collapsed, thoroughly charred and cindered, and so on.
Besides, such an upbeat outburst of Bolshoi! adds in an unexpected, creative, and more than just art-for-art's sake, flair to the usual mind-numbing mix of Life in These Here Severely Taxing, Toxic, and Decidedly Republican Yoo-Nited States.
After all, absolutely anyone can be a highly-talented, seven-digit, modern movie star and parrot ^%$* and #&@! easily enough, but it takes some real, bench-pressing creativity, self-control, and wily, conscious effort to say Frazza Kruz Whoppa Jutt Murster-Rajja Grakk! and so on.
I mean, it's simply more spiritually rewarding and freeing exercise. It can even help offset the trying events and general peevishness of the moment. Creative Cursing, as I call it -- watch for the book and movie and mug and tee shirt and... -- can help scatter the dark clouds of situational bleakness, helping turn the corner into absurdity, beneath the thunderclouds of black humor, which are laughter's outskirts.
Silliness slays stress -- fast. It's one of my survival mechanisms.
- (I give you this discovery for free, unless you are Republican, and you feel burdened by the amount of your billion-dollar inheritance which survived the ominous Death Tax 100% intact, and you feel compelled to provide me an art grant -- in which case, I'll change my name to Art Grant, as the password, and you can leave a few shoe-boxes of hundreds in the following couple-dozen locations...)
Really, though -- try Creative Cursing yourself. There's untold bonuses. For example: You make your nonstandard exclamation and the humor radiates outward like tickling ripples in a funnybone pond. After an unexpected outburst of Gazz Frikka Hoo-Aaaah Fricasse Sassafras Sasquatch!, or whatever, you'll trigger some dazed and intrigued head-turning in any crowd.
Many people will suddenly sport questioning smiles and demonstrate you've lightened the loads of their day. However, it is also true that you are in America, so you might also trigger a number of people yanking out their .357 Magnums, RPGS, and light anti-tank weapons, aiming them right straight at you, in a bellowed-hail chorus of Freeze!, but that's the price you pay to live in a society with a declining sense of humor and a rising Dolt Rate.
- (Thankfully, I suppose the word is, most of these paranoid, demented, fear-struck people are employed in right-wing media -- which is most of media, anymore, despite bumper stickers with the very telling proclamation, I dont bleeve NO dam librull meddya! Many of these same fabulously challenged beings are at least kept off the streets for a portion of each day, kept busy in society, fabricating, and then directly and very sweatily bringing you a number of wildly foaming and frothing, mild-melting messages and assorted twists and tumors right into your very own radios and newspapers and teevee networks and interwebz sites, where EVERYthing you SEE is TRUE, doncha know....)
Yes, well...
Anyway: Consider your alternatives. A bit of creative cursing beats the living, peanut-buttered hell out of being in a crowd and having someone's day-ruining, hot laser beams of a Case of the Boiling-Hot Royal-Red-Ass radiating all over you, like an order of lava and hot-ash to go, Pompeii style, extra grande.
- Cases of The Ass are contagious. Luckily, so are Cases of The Giggles.
Don't believe me? Check out the blooper reels on your movie discs, where one actor gets The Giggles, and passes them around to everyone else. Better yet, perform your own experiments. Word of warning, though: It's likely better to experiment with The Giggle end of the spectrum, rather than wigging out big-time in a large and jumpy crowd, accidentally triggering nervous 911 phones calls which result in an over-the-top over-reaction, like a SWAT deployment of a herd of fierce, chest-sitting psychoanalysts, sicced on your poor old self, and onto that very convincingly portrayed, boiling-mad, and possibly terrorist-inspired, red ass.
Remember the climbing Dolt Rate in the country, and the TSA-ification of common sense, and you should be fine.
OK -- on second thought, mostly fine.
* * * * *
On a side note, I live for the day when a Doctor-Strangelovian film contains a character named General Peevishness. Or someone named Major Mayhem. Or Private Koncerns. As I have already said, I am easi;y Amused by the world around me.
I also think an indie humor-rock band, formed around a loose updating of The Mothers of Invention, named The Giggles, would be a pretty great thing, too.
* * * * *
Anyway, it is with a queasy, seasick, rubber-legged pleasure I denounce, I mean, announce, the upchucking -- I mean, upcoming -- and soon-to-be-televised Republican Presidential Candidate Duh-bates.
- Yes, dear friends, the Bully-Boys' Bolshoi Babble-Fest is heading to Babylon once again. Get your hanging gardens spruced up. Roll out your scrolls of Hammurabic law, and get ready to follow along. Warm up the gaggle of talking-head translators and rented, has-been, spin-doctors in the fabled Towers of our Babylonian teevee landscape and mind set...
Plus, as if that's not enough -- in a Republican dream come true, we are going to be made witnesses to... a mass of televised executions!
The victims? Well, let's see, according to the advance copy of the program I received from GOP Global Dingbat Kontrol -- gee, they really like spelling things over there with good, bold, Germanic Ks, for that hard, sharp, Saxon sound favored by mallet-wielders, axe-grinders, and bone-pickers everywhere...
... lessee -- yeah, here it is: We'll see the English language executed on live TeeVee... along with the art of dialogue, idea exchange, diplomatic compromise, intelligent conversation, logical thought construction, empathetic demonstrations, harmonious awareness of our samenesses.... and we'll also see any, like the brochure says right here.... any verbal structures even remotely resembling actual debates will be put to death before our very eyes!
The press kit doesn't mention what very eyes are, so I guess it's a BYOVE sorta deal.
However, they do include this definition, so to help klue us in, as they say, as far as what will absolutely NOT be happening, not under any circumstances:
- A contest of scholarly skill and critical thinking using thoughtful discourse and argument, with each side presenting a series of factual statements to bolster the truth of statements made, thereby reinforcing step-by-step rationales of beliefs arrived at through calm, sensible, and insightful exchanges of cogent, coherent ideas.
No, there will be no fact-based, rational ideas from these ideologues. Not allowed. Facts keep out Go away. Quarantined! Shoo!
As always, chest-beating will be allowed. Language will be used, but only of the pre-approved sort which is one notch up from grunting, and used only to convey displeasure, extreme displeasure, or a maximum of extreme displeasure.
The brochure says FEAR AND EMOTION will be tapped, SOUND-BITES and TALKING POINTS employed, and FAMOUS POSES will be used. There is nothing about the use of thought, or employing an earnest exchange of ideas based on facts. There is nothing about the use of discussion or dialogue until a win-win solution is found, nor about discussions employing science or actual evidence versus faith and belief, nor is there any warning about how best to avoid pandering to the baser instincts of the crowd and candidates by the candidates themselves. Or the crowd.
There is nothing which prevents the use of fabrication or prevarication, and nothing which points out that the use of static truths is preferred. Here is a highlight, so to speak, from the Republican Candidate's Guide to Making Points: Be ye literal in all things, except that which you know to be true or shows ye in poor light.
(If you can't find this standard GOP "go for it" disclaimer in your press kit, as it has been called by some, it's in the small, thin pamphlet titled, So You Want to Be a Republican!)
Ask me, there'll be PLENTY of opportunity to practice your Creative Cursing. Always is, I have found, to my sad dismay. However, the upside is I am a cheap date these days, and, by the end of the first beer, the couch is a pretty great place, all things considered, I mean really, when you come right down to it....
* * * * *
Well, if the announcement itself hasn't exactly made me thrilled to be alive and American in this fabulous era of dumbed-down, fired-up bombast and snake-bit sound bites, I have the warmth of irony, and timing, at least, to help keep out the subzero, frostbitten, glacially-slow, Arctic chilblains of what passes for Republican thought in America.
See: Scientists have just announced the discovery of a Sixth Taste.
- (No, not a Sixth Sense -- hey, wasn't that the movie, where someone kept seeing dead Republicans, that flick which started the whole zombie movie craze?)
Anyway, the newly identified taste bud is called "oleogustus." Frankly, this sounds like a perfectly good name for a toga'd Roman senator, holding forth on day three of a filibuster to ensure tax-free status for all margarine profits produced by plants moved off-shore and run by slaves and wage slaves...
The phrase, turns out, is Latin, for "a taste of fat." Latin is big in law. Fat is big in lawmakers.
Turns out this is not very pleasant, though. The fatty-acids these taste buds hone in on are not associated with the nicer side of fats. The taste bids we're talking about may have been a sideways gift from Nature, one chipped in for our protection, so we could detect bitter or rancid fats.
They are still checking it all out, but researchers say the unpleasantness-detector taste buds may function in other ways, too. In the right low concentrations, for example, they may help contribute to the overall appeal of foods we enjoy, such as chocolate, coffee, wine, and so on.
This would make some sense, one supposes. After all, light requires darkness for contrast and meaning, each defining the role and limits of the other. Imagine, for example, the burnt notes in Hershey's chocolate, say -- although it's a very low percentage of the candy, that burnt note defines the flavor of the item.
The takeaways here seem abundant, even if some remain obscured by the obvious, and even if all the discoveries and bouts of thinking are not yet completed in this matter.
On the one hand, in low concentrations and with a very large number of others to offset them, Republicans may not be as vile or repugnant as first thought -- like mushrooms, truffles, and other fungi, they may help flavor the American stew. However, they make for a bitter and rancid stew, all by themselves.
On the other hand, the discovery of oleogustus may help explain Republicans' lusty desire for pork and fat-headedness.
However, this does not help explain the American craving and thirst for the taste of blood, such as the yearning for the Republican Presidential Candidate Duh-bates.
Draculagustus may yet to be discovered as a separate taste bud, or it might be a still-undiscovered, but allied, part of oleogustus -- who knows?
But stay tuned, by all means, for the opening intellectual pie fight, this Thursday, in the sandbox -- and catbox -- of the Republican Cheerleading Channel.
You know the one.
Please don't make me say it, as it will create a reflex action for me to curse uncreatively, and in a rancidly-fat, mile-wide, bright-blue streak.
Hey, it just wouldn't do, for the press to catch wind of me -- the inventor of Creative Cursing -- to be hollering $%^#@ and &*%$#. After all, I have a whole line of water bottles and stadium cushions coming out.
Extended Metaphor Land: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/02/428643391/oleogustus-is-the-newly-discovered-taste-and-boy-is-it-bad
