I don’t usually use George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” in public and rarely write them.
Mr. Carlin’s original words are what we now call “vulgar slang,” seven nouns, two of which often stand as verbs. Two excretory functions, four that denigrate, two action terms, and one that is every boy’s favorite body part. I’ve never been fond of bleep-censoring but it is still used by American network broadcasters to titillate us.
Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
–Mark Twain
Although Twain pretended he did not have a typewriter, he was a pretty smart feller. The modifiers we use in writing can take away from the message. That doesn’t stop us from specially crafting flowery, robust, descriptive text.
Some simply avoid the “dirty words” by substituting clean ones.
Liza Arden has said she “couldn’t be arsed” at work more than a few times this week. Ms. Arden is an engineer and no relation to the cosmetics conglomerate. Her cow orkers were unmoved by her phrasing which surprised her and sent me on this flight of fancy. Thanks to PBS and the Internet, there are probably few British substitutes for bothered that we haven’t heard before.
Substitutes? Google offers about 210,000 results for alternate swear words.
Bleep and fweep and meep and yeep are popular.
RedDwarf adopted smeg as an all purpose curse.
The movie peeps use airhead for rectally enhanced individuals. Freak (and the ever popular freak off) explain themselves.
As Andy Rooney might say, “Gosh is for people who don’t believe in heck. Who the frell do they think they are?”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports on “Y U Luv Texts, H8 Calls.” Teens send 3,339 texts a month. Adults, just 323 per month. Me? I get two or three incoming texts in a busy month and those are usually mistakes.
Although Ms. Arden calls me a Luddite, that’s not because I cannot text.
“Yeah, right,” she said. “You’re too cheap to buy a data plan.”
Texters started abbreviating to save space and stay under SMS limits or to encode the looming presence of authority (LTTIC). Unlimited text plans have largely eliminated the need for brevity but typing on a micro keyboard is still typing on a micro keyboard.
I don’t text because I see brevity, misspelling, malaprops, and corruption replacing the richness of language. And I hate the tiny keyboard, not to mention picking out letters on a phone keypad.
“I sooo no ur thinking about me. So I thot I wud say hi! LH6”
“My luser cat did the CRZest thing. Off to vet.”
“Orf to home garden sho. I luv U. TBL”
DQMOT: I think the Brits do this better than we do but sooner or later it’s so satisfying just to have a good fuck.
“Apple announced this morning that Verzion Wireless will start carrying the iPad at its stores later this month.”
“The Verizon iPhone 4s early 2011 arrival, which many had interpreted to mean January 2011, is now being pegged as March 2011 by at least one analyst.”
Sayanara AT&T. Although it’s too little, too late, that’s annoying. When people have polyamorous relationships, society waggles a finger at them. A bad finger. When companies begin polyamorous relationships, society bumps up their stock prices.
We’re back! There is no inflation. The Cost of Living has not risen yet again and seniors get stiffed for the second year in a row. I wrote this column in April but there have been developments:
The Associated Press reports that “the government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through another year without an increase in monthly benefits.
“It would mark only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. The first year was this year.
“Based on inflation so far this year, the trustees who oversee Social Security project there will be no cost of living adjustment for 2011.”
Cost of living is by definition the cost of maintaining a certain living standard.
Employment contracts, pension benefits, and government payments such as your Social Security check can be tied to a cost-of-living index, typically to the CPI or “Consumer Price Index.” Federal law requires the Social Security Administration to base its Cost of Living Adjustment on the consumer price index changes in the third quarter of each year (July, August and September) with the same quarter in the previous year. Remember that.
The CPI reports the average price of a lot of stuff — what is called a constant “market basket of goods and services” — purchased by average households. According to Bloomberg Business News, the CPI wonks add up and average the prices of 95,000 items from 22,000 stores and 35,000 rental units. Those prices are weighted by assuming that you distribute your spending along strict percentages. Housing: 41.4%, Food and Beverage: 17.4%, Transport: 17.0%, Medical Care: 6.9%, Other: 6.9%, Apparel: 6.0%, and Entertainment: 4.4%. Taxes are exempt from the CPI totals so when your property tax or sales tax or income tax or ObamaCare health tax or gasoline tax or telecommunications tax or blue cheese tax rises, it doesn’t actually cost you any extra.
In calculating the CPI, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a formula that reflects the fact that consumers shift their purchases toward products that have fallen in relative price. Although this substitution game means the BLS reduces what we pay by “living with” store brands instead of name brands, BLS says my analysis is incorrect. Their objective “is to calculate the change in the amount consumers need to spend to maintain a constant level of satisfaction.” As long as the BLS gets to define “satisfaction.”
Where, oh where is Mick when we need him?
The Social Security Administration writes, “Since 1975, Social Security’s general benefit increases have been based on increases in the cost of living, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. We call such increases Cost-Of-Living Adjustments, or COLAs. Because there has been a decline in the Consumer Price Index, there will be no COLA payable in 2010.” Or 2011.
Did your cost of living go down?
Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup costs between 80 cents and $1.29 per can in most markets today. Do you remember when it was 40 cents? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
A five-pound bag of flour costs about $2.49 in most markets today. Do you remember when it was a buck? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
Gasoline prices dropped in the third quarter but its cost is flying upwards again; it will be over $3 before I get back to Florida this year. Do you remember when it was $0.999? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
According to USAToday, health insurance premiums cost about $13,375 per annum in 2009. (And despite the new law, insurers say they do not have to cover kids with pre-existing conditions.) Do you remember when a family policy cost $2,500? I do. But your premiums will still go up. And, of course, the Cost of Living has declined.
Milk costs between $3.50 and $4 per gallon in most markets. Do you remember when it was $1.75? Or $1? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
Property taxes on the Vermont house are $3,869.96 and $3,892.26 on the Florida house this year. Do you remember when they were each $900? I do. But the Cost of Living has declined.
The AP report continued, The stagnant Cost of Living Adjustment is “not seen as good news for Democrats as they defend their congressional majorities in next month’s elections.
“Last fall a dozen Democrats joined Senate Republicans to block an effort to provide a bonus payment to Social Security recipients to make up for the lack of a COLA this year.”
I wish stuff didn’t cost so much but even more I wish our “leaders” didn’t lie to us about stuff costing so much. Oddly, I still cannot vote myself a raise.
Bob reminded us last time this appeared that “taxes dont go into the CPI” so I updated the list to include property taxes. I didn’t include the little increases in government programs “recovery” on the phone bill or the increasing number of cities and towns implementing local sales tax “options.”
44 million Americans subsist below the poverty line because the cost of things we buy has skyrocketed past our incomes. Guess how many of those Americans depend on Social Security?
It is likely that Medicare Part B premiums will remain frozen at last year’s levels but premiums for Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program, will rise.
Federal law requires that the Cost of Living Adjustment be based on the CPI changes in the third quarter of last year to the third quarter of this year. Well, Ollie, some of the items in the CPI haven’t changed much, so seniors are now behind the same eight ball as they were last year.
Except their taxes, insurance premiums, drugs, heating oil, and cable TV subscriptions are all going to cost more.
Good thing there is a sale on cat food down to Price Chopper, isn’t it? Mmmm. Cat food.
I have an idea with a couple of data points to support it. Here’s the data:
Desdemona has a dear, close friend named Maggie; Like Anne and “Sally” and so many other close friends, they spend hours and hours together. Before hooking up with Maggie, though, Desdemona spent most of her free time with Susan. Their interests were poles apart so they spent their time differently.
We have previously suggested that one can have sex without love and, more important, one can have love without sex.
Desdemona and Maggie might fit our definition of lovers. Likewise Desdemona and Susan, except the latter pair seems to have become passe.
Fred and Gwen and Bonnie and Carol are our polyamorous friends from Part 2 and Part 3. Fred passed along something interesting. When he spends time in the library with Bonnie neither Gwen nor Carol cross his mind at all. Fred has tremendous concentration and he focuses entirely on Bonnie when she is with him. At the motel with Carol, Fred is absolutely unlikely to ponder a logical plan for resolving the nation’s economic problems.
But wait! There’s more!
I’ve watched Fred move his focus from one lover to the next. He pulls away slightly from Gwen even before leaving their house so he can better concentrate on his coming partner.
I often describe multitasking as that familiar circus act of keeping plates spinning in the air. I’ll bet you expected me to say “juggling,” didn’t you?
Wikipedia tells us that plate spinning is a “manipulation art where a person spins plates, bowls and other flat objects on poles, without them falling off. [It] relies on the gyroscopic effect, in the same way a top stays upright while spinning. Spinning plates are sometimes gimmicked, to help keep the plates on the poles.” David Spathaky holds the world record for spinning 108 plates simultaneously in 1996.
Like the juggler, the plate spinner plies his art by touching just one plate. (See, that way I didn’t have to say he holds just one of his balls in his hand at a time.)
We also know that “multitasking” is actually serial (mono)tasking with fast enough switching that Task #1 keeps on rotating on its own while one spins up Task #2 … and so on.
Desdemona serially switched from Suze to Magster. She keeps her BFFs in series. Fred task switches between Gwenny and Bonnie and Caroleena. He (almost) keeps his BFFs in parallel.
One way or another, people switch focus.
“When I’m home, I’m home,” Jon Stewart told NPR’s Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air, about how he separates the parts of his life. “I can’t not be at work but the real challenge is when I’m at work, I’m at work. I’m locked in, I’m ready to go, and I’m focused. When I’m home, I’m locked in, I’m ready to go, and I’m focused on home.”
One way or another, people switch focus but some people maintain a mental map of their frame of reference for each ongoing task.
“I serially task switch when it comes to Things That Must Get Done,” Nancy said, “but Dick has had a taste of me doing the micro-switching I am capable of when I texted my daughter, played Solitaire and carried on a reasonably in depth conversation with him.”
I’m not very good at true multi-tasking. I can carry on a conversation while I carry a load of lumber to the barn. I can listen to a polyamory podcast while driving across a bridge. But I cannot use the same brain center — communications in this case — to manage conversations with two or three people at once. I can, however, switch from one conversation about boat design to another about network integration almost seamlessly because I remember the context from one to the next.
Here’s the big idea: Since our monogamouses serially monogatask but the polyamouses appear to multitask, perhaps having poly tendencies has more to do with the way we manage time (and hold on to our memories) than the way we reach for love.
For those who absolutely need to know, Dez and Maggs go to a movie every Tuesday, play poker on Saturdays, and take a long weekend or whole week road trip about once each month. On the other hand, Susan swims twice a week at the Y so Dezzy swam twice a week. They played bridge with a couple of different bridge clubs, sometimes on Tuesdays or Saturdays. And, since Suze doesn’t like sleeping in an empty house, the girls had “sleepovers” once or twice a week when her husband traveled on business.
[Editors Note: gekko and I shared the four-part polylocution that lead up to these afterposts. Please visit The Poly Posts for the entire series and for other resources.]
