A Small Rant

Yeah, yeah, I know I should be getting to the Cult of the Month, but I feel like being a dirty little procrastinator at the mo'. So here I sit, having just finished the 4th Harry Potter book and a few chapters into the 5th (why yes, I AM attempting to re-read them all before the next school year starts!). The coffee cup is empty, which means that I will probably be forced out of the Dungeon of My Black Despair, Down We Plunge to the Prison of My Mind. (Er, yeah, random "Phantom" lyrics. Yes, I know. I'm a freak.)

There's one thing that I've been thinking a little bit about lately, and that is swearing. You know what I'm talking about- the 'f' word and such. I know that some might look at me funny and yell "HYPOCRITE!!!" at the moment, but rest assured I'm working on my own problems with certain words in the English language and have thus far made a tiny bit of progress. (There are a few issues that I won't go into that it's stemming from, and so I'm trying to treat the disease and not merely put a band-aid on the symptoms.)

But this isn't about me. Not this time. This time it's been directed at my friends, and it's meant to wound and hurt and downright offend. It's disrespectful, and it's wrong. And you know what? This might sound really really weird to some, but guess what? IT DOESN'T MAKE YOU LOOK MORE MATURE. Quite the contrary, really. It just makes you look like some... I don't know... like some illiterate nutjob that just has to "emphasize" their situation instead of actually taking care of it. (Lauren and Linsdey's mother/supposed!friend, I'm looking at you. That's not a good thing when I've got coffee and a rising Pavlovian urge to kill.)

And it doesn't convey any sort of idea, either. When you think about it, you simply have to wonder where these words came from and what they were originally meant to mean. Take the 'f' word, for instance. You hear that one all the time (unfortunately) and it seems to have lost any sort of shock factor that it might have, since it's so overused in pretty much every aspect of society. It's a noun, verb, adjective, and any other part of speech you can think of. The only thing people don't know about it is where in the world such a word actually came from. I sure don't know, and I'm not really in the mood to type such a profanity into my search engine and find out. All that anyone really knows is that it's there, it's mean, it's disgusting, and it's probably here to stay, at least until someone thinks of something nastier.

*sighs* I kinda wish I knew why people choose to use things like that, especially when they have essentially no meaning. Sure, you can use them in the place of proper words, but why? There are a bunch of other words that sound a lot funnier than, say, the 's' word when you mean a pile of defecation. Come, now, you can't say that you've tried the word "defecation" and didn't smile a little bit. (Or maybe that's just me again.) It's a mind-boggler, to be sure, but it's one I'm interested in, both for myself and for others.

And just to let those strangers who tell me to show them a Bible verse that denounces cussing, I've got one: James 5:12- "Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned."

Or perhaps this one, Matthew 5:37- "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one."

I do believe that last one was straight out of Jesus' mouth. It's right up there with the Beatitudes and the whole "Salt of the Earth" thing. Sermon on the Mount, you know what I mean?

Perhaps I should add the last verse of that chapter, verse 48: "Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect."

I can't think of anything quite as simple as that, can you?

Current Mood: Curious

Random Useless Fact of the Day: Radioactivity doesn't make stuff glow. You need phosphor (the stuff you find covering the TV screen) for that. Besides, you're lucky if you can make all the little particles stick, so it's not contagious either.