MAKE YOUR PROFANITY COUNT

Say these words out loud to yourself: duck, buck, luck, fuck, muck. Did you hesitate on number four? Why? They all have the same structure: a consonant plus "uck". So why does number four make you hesitate to say it out loud? Because we've agreed, as a people, to deem it obscene.
Granted, it refers to a sex act, but should that make it unspeakable? We can say "screw", can't we? And that is another word for the same sex act, right? But "screw" has other meanings, whereas "fuck" doesn't. That's not true, though, as "fuck" has come to mean all sorts of things other than the sex act it was meant to name. In fact, it's been so widely used that it's lost its power. It should have real impact, when properly used. It can even shock people. But not when mis-used. If you say, for instance, "That fucking guy fucked me over, and I'm going to fucking kick his fucking ass," you've diluted the power of the word. It's become just a meaningless adjective, substituting for what you really wanted to say. If, on the other hand, you say, "I fucked your wife," that has real power, because you're using the word to mean what it was supposed to mean. You might also say, "You, my friend, are fucked," and we all know what it means: you, my friend, messed up so badly that there is no saving you. Americans -- and maybe others, too -- give too little weight to the words we, as a society, have decided are profanity. We should use them sparingly, if at all.
I once heard a woman friend of mine, a wonderful mother, grow so exasperated with her kids that she said, "Stop that, goddamn it!" The kids froze. They had never heard an expression like that leave their mother's lips. She was embarrassed, but it had the desired effect: they stopped doing whatever and retreated to their rooms. Profanity is what we decide it is, but the words we decide are unacceptable in polite company become, automatically, powerful. But only if we use them with discretion. If we spout out too often "damn" and "goddamn" and "fuck" and all the others when we're only a little bit frustrated, those words mean nothing when we really need them. Here's a suggestion: limit yourself to one damn a month, three goddamns a year, and only one fuck. In fact, maybe no fucks. You won't need it if you use the damns and goddamns properly.

If it were left to men, there would be no holidays.

Men don't like holidays. Oh, they like to take part in them, but they don't like to organize them. If it were left to men, Christmas would be a wreath on the door -- maybe -- and a tree which they wouldn't think to decorate. It's women who supervise, and make possible, holidays. It's women who think ahead, plan ahead, buy all the decorations, arrange the parties, etc. How many men do you know who have ever planned a birthday party for one of his kids? Unless he's a single dad -- and, thus, had to -- I'm betting the answer is "none". Men don't think in terms of holidays, except maybe July 4, when they get to barbecue and drink beer in the process. Men do like cooking meat on an outdoor grill, that's true. But when it comes to the big holidays, men defer to their women to make all the preparations, issue all the invitations, conduct the actual parties, etc. Men tend to stand by and smile and, yes, drink beer. It's not that men aren't social.
Many are. It's just that men don't think in terms of specific days of the year when a celebration is mandatory and deserves special consideration. If men think of having a party, it's just a party.
No special day, no special decorations. Decorations? What are those? My own wife is so good about putting out appropriate items for each holiday: pumpkins at Halloween and Thanksgiving,
along with spooky stuff and Pilgrim stuff; tons of winter and Santa stuff at Christmas; colored eggs at Easter; etc. Left to me, kids would come to my door to trick-or-treat and find a bowl labelled "Help Yourself" and all the lights off. At Christmas, I might put up a tree, but would I spend much time hanging ornaments or lights? Oh please. And Thanksgiving? Give me a beer and an order of KFC and a football game, and I'm good to go. So why aren't men more attuned
to holidays? (And maybe some are -- but not most.) I think it's because men just aren't into the whole idea of special days and dressing up and entertaining, etc. We're simple creatures who look at one day much the same as the next, or the one before. If a holiday requires something extra -- presents, a costume, a string quartet, whatever --we'll make allowances and do what's required, but we aren't all that interested in making a big deal of it. If it were left to men, holidays would pretty much disappear. So let's hear it for the women: thank you for keeping holidays alive! Your children and ours appreciate it and you! And, as long as you're up, would you get me a beer?

Men don't care what women think of them.

I know this sounds insulting -- to men and women alike -- and it is admittedly a blanket kind of assertion. There are certainly exceptions; we all know good men who are very attentive to the needs and desires and moods of their mates.

On the whole, though, it's been my experience that most men are not particularly concerned with how they are perceived by women, including women they are married to, dating, or just trying to get into bed. And, in fact, men's concerns about women's perceptions of them -- and judgments of them -- probably decrease in order of the categories I just listed.

When a man is trying to get a woman to have sex with him, he is at his most conscious about his looks, his behavior, his bearing -- and his treatment of her. When he's dating a woman, he's still alert to all this, but as the dating becomes regular, he often tends to take her for granted: if she disapproves of his choice of clothes, or his personal habits, or his friends, or his pasttimes -- ah, she'll come around. And once he's married, his regard for his wife's opinion of him falls to an all-time low. I'm me, she's her, we're different people, but she knew that when she married me. Get used to it.

BUT . . . there is one major area in which men continually pay attention to how the women in their lives look at them. Any ideas? Here's a hint: it's not a very admirable area. It's guilt. Getting in trouble. When a man senses that his woman knows that he's done wrong -- fooling around, drinking too much, gambling, etc. -- he goes out and buys flowers and brings them home and, maybe tearfully, begs forgiveness. Unfortunately, it's usually not to make her think better of him: it's to get back into her good graces and make the bad moment go away. When married men behave extraordinarily well, it's too often the case that they just want to re-establish the status quo.

Why is this? I think men -- being one myself -- are, on the level of emotion and truth and relationships, simple creatures. Like dogs who sense they've done wrong, they cower and whimper and seek to just get things back to the way they were -- even if they don't quite grasp why what they've done is "all that bad". Is this a cynical, and too simplistic, view of the male species? Probably. But it's got some truth in it, too. Just ask any woman you know. And if you're a woman and you're not nodding in agreement, you're a lucky gal!

With Every Advance in Technology, We Lose a Functionality

When we went from LPs to tapes, we lost the ability to drop the needle just where we wanted, in the middle of a song. When we went from tapes to CDs, we lost the ability to stop the tape just where we wanted. Same thing. But we lost something else: the LP jacket as art. The LP album cover was the kind of art we could hang on a wall; CDs reduced that art to something you might carry in your wallet or purse. And downloading songs does away with the jacket art altogether. Going back further, I remember driving one of my first cars, a '62 Buick, that had power windows. One hot summer, in Texas, the windows locked up at the same time that the air-conditioning quit. I couldn't roll the windows down because there wasn't a handle. I drove around all summer with the windows up; I was too poor to get the windows fixed. We need to welcome new innovations but, at the same time, realize that we lose something whenever we embrace a new technology. I used to be able to program my VCR by punching buttons on the unit, even when it wasn't on. Now I have to turn the TV on and do any programming on the screen, using my remote. I still love -- and use -- the old technology of getting messages on my answering machine; I don't want to have to dial a number to see if I have messages. The cell phone is a wonderful invention, but now I have no place to hide! Even if I don't leave it on all the time -- and I don't -- anyone can call and leave me a message and then fuss at me later for not responding. What ever happened to privacy? On the other hand, I know people, as you do, who can't go an hour without checking to see if they have phone messages. What did those people do before voicemail? Were they lost, out of contact, drifting, anxious? No, of course they weren't. They went on about their lives, interacting with other people, doing all the things we did before we were in constant contact with each other. It seems to me that we should all use technology on a needs basis: if you need it, use it; if you don't, well, don't. Something gained, something lost; if what is gained doesn't make up for what is lost, reject that technology. If you can afford to. Increases in fuel efficiency have resulted in smaller cars, which are, obviously, less roomy and also potentially more dangerous in a crash. So you can keep driving that big SUV or Hummer, but you may need to cut out other luxuries, or even other necessities, to keep the monster in gas. One of the most useful recent advances in technology is, without a doubt, email. Instant communications without having to wait for the post office to deliver our thoughts/emotions/demands/etc. to someone else. So what is lost? When was the last time you got a handwritten letter from anyone? If you're young enough, chances are that you have NEVER gotten a handwritten letter -- and you likely never will. Type is impersonal; handwriting is about as personal as a human can get. I still receive a letter every few weeks from my 97-year-old mother, but once she's gone, the letters will be gone, too. Nothing from then on but bills and junk mail and countless emails with little smiley face icons. A big loss.
In the meantime, if you need to call me, just leave a voice message -- your own personal voice -- on my answering machine, and I'll get back to you.

Women have the last say on abortion.

Let's say you're the man. You're having intercourse with a woman. You get all excited and ejaculate and experience an intense, though fleeting, erotic feeling in your nervous system. If you've been a good lover, your partner experiences the same. But a few months later, she finds that your sperm has impregnated her egg, and she's pregnant. Unless she's in a real relationship with you, she is probably depressed to hear this news. She knows that she is going to go through profound changes in her whole system: her belly -- for lack of a better word -- is going to be distorted beyond her imaginings; her moods are going to swing back and forth; her digestive system is going to be thrown way out of kilter (e.g., she's going to be vomiting in odd places, often without warning). And what are you, the male, the guy, the father, going to undergo? Nothing but the anxiety of thinking that you might be bringing a new person into the world and that you might be held accountable for it. Who do you think should have the veto right on this embryo?
I vote for the woman. She is going to be saddled with this baby, while you can skate out of town, denying everything. Yes, there are DNA tests that might name you as the likely father, but you can challenge those. Yes, you may actually acknowledge that you're the father, but you can still disappear and make the authorities track you down. (And you know they're not going to spend much time or effort to do so.) In the meantime, the woman has to go through the trauma of giving birth, which can be prolonged and painful. (If men had to give birth, the whole human race would have ground to a halt long before now.) Then there is a baby to be fed and cared for, or given up for adoption, or neglected and flushed down a public toilet. Excuse me, but the case seems pretty clearcut to me: the woman who is pregnant has the right to decide whether she wants to see that pregnancy through to completion (i.e., birth). Until the laws change -- until there is more responsibility demanded of fathers -- the woman, of whatever age, gets to decide.