Yes, I am calling you a retard. Live with it.

Before I get to the meat of the matter, I want to tell you about one of my favourite authors, George Orwell. Or Eric Arthur Blair as he was known to people around his home. Eric‘s biggest talent other than creating stories that were equally frustrating and compelling to read was writing about the cause-effect between how people behave and what they are taught to believe about themselves. His masterful way of writing is reflected in the fact that this relationship I have spoken of is indeed equally demonstrable no matter what order you write it in.

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Orwell would be proud. A bit about language and choice of words.

Of all the things ailing our present oh-so-wonderful mass-communication society, none anger me quite like political correctness. In fact, if you were to ask me on a particularly bad day, I would tell you that I believe conservatives invented political correctness as something to tar and feather liberals with. This essay by Steve Kangas tells a lot about why I find this a credible belief.

Just to reiterate: sterotyping hurts.

Whenever I start to really think about things like culture or how I look at others around me, I start to ask questions. Why do I see people in the manner that I do? How did we reach this point? Are the ways in which I see this person or this group of people fair? Questions like that can keep a philosophical person up at night, and I think it is only fair that these questions get proper exploration.

Why DO people expect lunch bought for them?

One of my favourite features of the WordPress system by some road is the ability to get a list of all of the search terms used that have led people to this journal. Some of the search times in the list raise an eyebrow, to say the least. One such search engine query in the list reads “images examine my pussy”. No, I am not making that up. But it seems that at least one individual has a poor enough understanding of the world we live in to do searches with the terms “why people expect lunch bought for them”.

“Boy, I fear you may be legally retarded…”

In recent years, and of late there seems to have been a slight resurgence, there have been campaigns to discourage people from using this or that word in a given situation. Sometimes, there is even an attempt to outlaw a conjunction of words by proxy. In all cases, such calls are based in such ignorance that it makes me wonder exactly what the people responsible think they are trying to achieve. In fact, it brings to mind a line by Darrell Hammond during one of his appearances impersonating Sean Connery during Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches on Saturday Night Live. As the man impersonating Robin Williams delivers another trademark Williams-esque stream of incoherent babbling, Hammond as Connery says to the Williams impersonator what I believe every Human being with an IQ above 120 (or the real Patch Adams, for that matter) would like to say to Robin Williams. “Boy,” he says, “I fear you may be legally retarded…”