Monthly Archives: April 2011

Word of the Day: obscene, profane, and vulgar

Today’s words are all adjectives and they all have similar meanings, but each word has a different quality.

The word obscene suggests something that is offensive to decency or morality and which is abominable, disgusting, or repulsive. For me the Jerry Springer Show comes to mind as the perfect example of something that is obscene par excellence.  However, the word can also be used to describe something that is in greater excess than it ought to be. For example: obscene wealth. A great example of an obscene word is cocksucker, one of the late George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. It’s nicely offensive isn’t it? And it’s certainly indecent and possibly immoral.

Moving on to profane, then. This word in its noun form: profanity, is often used to encapsulate all “bad” and “dirty” words, but the word profane itself has religious connotations. It’s the antonym of the word sacred. Something that is profane is characterized by an irreverence or contempt for God or sacred principles or things. I’ve never been particularly religious, but to me, the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church – pretty much everything they do – but particularly their picketing the funerals of soldiers and marines killed in action. Well, to me that’s just profane. They are the antithesis of everything decent and honest and good in this world.

Finally, the word vulgar pretty much describes much of the content of MTV these days. Vulgarity is characterized by a complete ignorance of or a total lack of good breeding and taste. (See: Jersey Shore) It’s inelegant, unrefined, ribald, low. In Shakespeare’s time, the word vulgar meant “common,” in a Kate Middleton-ish kind of way. Basically not royalty. Even farther back the word vulgar meant “vernacular.”  At one time there was huge controversy over the first bible written in a vernacular (non-Latin) language. It was called the “Vulgate” bible.  Interesting, huh?

Until next time…

…oh just

shut the fuck up, already!

Honestly.  I know some rambling motherfuckers and it’s all I can do to grit my teeth, smile and sit on my hands so I don’t reach for their necks and strangle the last breath of life out of them.  These people come in all shapes and sizes, all walks of life and there is absolutely no escaping them.  No matter what you do.

Not one to sugar coat things, I have tried all sorts of different tactics to silence the verbose.  I have left the room in mid-sentence.  I have pretended to be unwell.  I have played up being partially deaf.  I have (absolutely true) looked someone in the eye and excused myself by telling the gasbag that I had to go stick my head in the nearest oven.  Granted, I’m not always Miss Sweetness and Light but even I, for all of my evil, understand when it’s time for silence.

After two meetings today with someone who loves to her herself jabber away, I’m left with little patience and an enormous amount of frustration.  If only I could get away with deploying my absolute, most-favoritest STFU meme.  Life would be so much easier.

And before you even ask – NO.  I am not always a people person.

AmericaFTW!: Baconnaise

At first I didn’t think this was even real, but it turns out that it is.  If there is one thing Americans are good at, it’s combining things, like hunting and drinking beer, peanut butter and jelly, or bacon and mayonnaise!  Om nom, nom!  And it’s Kosher too for our Jewish friends and family.  So, my fellow Americans, go out and buy yourself a jar of Baconnaise, your mouth will thank you!

Going to the doctor in Sweden…

There are different ways of getting medical treatment in Sweden. First of all you can call and make appointment with a certain doctor or nurse practitioner, which usually works out just fine for non-emergency stuff. Most of the time there are appointments available the same day or the next day to see a normal GP or NP. Getting an appointment with a specialist takes longer of course (and you have to be referred) but Sweden is certainly not unique in that regard.

However, if you need to see a doctor the same day, and there aren’t any appointments available, you have two options. Option number one is to do what I did this morning and have your name added to the drop-in list. This is like having an appointment without having an appointment. I called my local vårdcentral (medical clinic) this morning and asked if there we’re any appointments after lunch because I needed to see a doctor as soon as possible about these pollen allergies. The person on the phone said there weren’t any appointments, but that they had drop-in hours until noon. Otherwise I’d have to wait until tomorrow. I’d said I’d rather not so she added my name to the list. This meant that they could expect to see me sometime between the time I hung up the phone (around 9:30) and 12. I left work at ten and got the the doctor’s office around 10:30.

After checking in and paying for the appointment, I sat down and waited. And waited. Aaaand waited. There was a full waiting room today so I knew it would be a while. I was wishing I had my Kindle with me, but rather than amuse myself with the small selection of out-of-date magazines, I sat quietly and casually listened to the coughs and moans and complaints of other patients waiting for same-day but not necessarily emergency treatment.

Finally, after waiting for about an hour and a half my name was called, and I was taken to an examination room where I was left for another ten minutes: “The doctor will be with you shortly.” Why do that always do that?

The doctor came in and I told her about how I’d been up all last night and unable to breathe while lying down, and that my eyes and throat were so itchy it was driving me crazy. The two different allergy tablets I had bought last week weren’t helping at all.  No, she said, it doesn’t matter how many of those you take, taking more won’t increase their efficacy. She prescribed me some stronger tablets and some eye drops for pollen allergy suffers. I asked about cortisone injections, since that was recommended to me earlier today, but she informed me that they no longer give those injections. (I wonder why not…) They do give cortisone tablets, though, to people who have it really bad. She said to try the tablets and eye drops for a week and then if I was still suffering, she’d prescribe the cortisone. The conversation I had with her lasted no longer than 5 minutes. I then spent another 15 minutes in the pharmacy waiting to pick up my prescriptions.

All in all, the whole process, from the time I checked in to the time I paid for the medicine, took about two hours. This is not bad at all, especially when one considers the second must-see-a-doctor-today option. Of course I mean the so-called emergency room. If you have to go to the ER, then don’t make any plans for the rest of the day. Or night. And you might want to clear tomorrow as well.

And it will cost you three times as much and you’ll end up waiting three times as long as going to the vårdcentral. Thankfully, I’ve had to visit the ER only once since I’ve been living in Sweden, but it was a genuine medical emergency. I was having an allergic reaction to a medication I’d been prescribed, and the person on the ask-a-nurse hotline told me to go to the emergency room immediately. She asked if I needed an ambulance as well, but the hospital was only a short bus ride away so I said I could make it on my own. When I got there I talked to the intake staff who took down my information and gave me some medicines to stabilize me. Then they sent me to the waiting room, where I believe I waited for at least four hours. By the time I got to see a doctor I was feeling pretty much fine, but they wanted to keep me overnight for observation anyway. This was because stopping my medication suddenly (the one I was allergic to) could bring on a seizure.

Everything worked out just fine, by the way. No seizures. Even the nurses knew there was nothing wrong with me. They delivered my medicine in the morning but said I could get up and get my own breakfast off the cart. No problem, I thought. Let them take care of the people who really are ill.

AmericaFTW!: Texas Tater Twisters

My friends, as a newly-minted Americano, I bring to you yet another exciting series: AmericaFTW! AmericaFTW! will feature people, things, food, and stories that are uniquely American. People Europeans Russians Asians Asshats love to make fun of Americans and our culture, but little do they know that we have one of the longest running democracies, and we also rock!
Anyhow, today’s entry is a culinary delight from my YouTube friend Hilah Cooking!

…faked ziti

From the “what the fuck should I cook for fucking dinner” files…

There were green peppers on the verge of spoiling in the fridge.  We also had a mountain of meat, enough boxes of pasta to build a fortress to keep the birthers away, some yellow onions and mozzarella cheese.  I started thinking of what to make for dinner and decided – fuck it.  What if I put it all in a casserole and call it something?  How bad can it be?

With that, I present Kang’s Faked Ziti

  • 1 pound pasta (I’m partial to Rotini because it reminds me of my beautifully, springy curly hair)
  • 2 jars Marinara sauce
  • 1 pound ground meat or Italian sausage
  • 2 green bell peppers, sliced and chunked
  • 1 yellow onion, sliced
  • Fresh garlic
  • Mozzarella cheese
  • Brown meat, drain, set aside.
  • Cook pasta – remove from heat one or two minutes prior to instructed cooking time, reserve approximately 1 cup of pasta water, strain.
  • Sautee peppers, onions and garlic on low-ish heat in olive oil until onions are translucent.
  • Grab pasta pot and dump meat, veg and 1 jar of sauce.  Blend with spoon of choice.
  • Add noodles and some of the reserved water, stir again.
  • Eyeball and sample.  If necessary, add more sauce.
  • Open bag o’ shredded mozzarella, dump in pot, stir.
  • Dump in baking dish.
  • Dump more cheese on top.
  • Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees until gooey and bubbly (25 – 30 minutes-ish)

It’s not a science.  It’s not even proper baked ziti.  It is, however, a great way to use up items that are nearing an expiration date, it’s damn easy to make and everyone loves stuff covered in a good marinara and cheese.

Tray full of om nom nom and win prior to baking (and prior to additional cheese-ing for the cheese inclined)

America: The Greatest Show in the World

We Americans love a good show.  Little do we know that we are actually part of the show now.  Other people from around the world are watching our slow decline into a Third World nation.  While we are busy arguing about the “big issues” like abortion, gay marriage, and evolution; our roads are being unpaved, we are becoming poorer, and more stupid.  As the old Carl Sagan remarked in his book, Cosmos, we have more astrologists and psychics than astronomers.  And why wouldn’t we, after all, astronomy requires serious thinking?  Better to go with the gut feeling of an astrologist.

Just look at your newspaper, one-third of the newspaper is comprised of the sports pages these days!  In fact, there’s more sports coverage than foreign news coverage!  A whole page is devoted to a home run, while a suicide bomber in Afghanistan killing two Marines gets a paragraph.  Charlie Sheen’s Truth Tour gets more exposure than a top general in Iraq discussing rebuilding efforts.  The sad thing is we don’t realize that this is happening to us.  And if we do, we don’t seem to care as long as the circus continues and we are “pacified” with cheap trinkets from China or entertainment in the form of Snooki.  Never mind that Snooki got more money for giving a talk at Rutgers University than Nobel-Fucking-Prize-Winning-and-I-Got-A-Damned-Pulitzer-Too Toni Morrison!  How the hell did that happen?

Richard Hofstadter wrote a book entitled Anti-Intellectualism in American Life back in 1963.  If you haven’t read this book, I highly suggest you pick it up at your local public library.  That’s if you still have a public library!  In his book, Hofstadter laments the poor state of the American intellectual, and how he must contend with a rising tide of stupidity coming from his fellow countrymen.  That’s a paraphrase of course, and a pretty dumbed down version of things, but hopefully it’s easy enough for people to understand.

Anyhow, I’m off to plan my vacation trip to the Creation Museum, and maybe I’ll swing by Dollywood as well.

Candlelight Vigils

You know what I fucking hate?  Candlelight vigils.  Not only is a gathering of people with candles a fire hazard, but they just don’t work.  I am particularly perplexed by people holding candlelight vigils for missing people.  I just read today that another young, attractive white woman went missing, and people have already scheduled a candlelight vigil for her.   People, instead of holding a fucking vigil, how about you form a search party instead or drive around the fucking neighborhood looking for her, seriously?  For Pete’s sake even putting up missing person posters on a lamp post is doing something!  Standing around with a damned candle is pointless.

I will admit that I can sort of understand a candlelight vigil for memorial purposes.  Say Princess Diana died and some idiot wants to stand outside and get hypothermia, that’s okay.  Nothing says I remember you like almost dying yourself.  I’m not going to do it, but to each their own.

Now if I ever go missing, I want all of you to be out there looking for me, and for the love of God, don’t stand around with fucking candles, okay?

…get a job

Oh The Royal Wedding™.  I’m so happy that I don’t live in the UK.  The amount of attention given to this hullabaloo is mind-boggling enough for us Americans.  I cannot begin to fathom what it must be liked to be choked with the pomp and circumstance on my way to work, however.

The picture above is the headlining snap on MSNBC.  The Royal Wedding™ must be a big deal now that people are camping out to catch a glimpse of….what, exactly?  A feathery fascinator?  A coat with tails?  The backs of other gawkers’ heads?  If you’re into this thing, how much fun can you have standing in a sea of people with no food, drink or access to a toilet?  It’s like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Sure, you may be there for history but look at all the creature comforts you’re sacrificing for the cause.  There is no cause significant enough for me to give up the bare necessities in life.  NONE.  Not an endless supply of money, eternal salvation, a bottomless cup of coffee or cigarettes that magically do not cause cancer.

Then there is that whole question of what does one actually expect to witness that cannot be witnessed in the comfort of one’s home, on the sofa, in front of the teevee?  As with sporting events, if you don’t have a decent seat, maybe your ass should just stay at home and watch things you can actually see via the miracles of modern technology.

I dunno.  Maybe the freak of nature (above) has some logical excuse for parking his ass on concrete for a week?  I’m sure the people watching (of the crowd, not those invited) is worth the price of no admission.  Alas, it’s certainly not worth not being able to move from a spot, eat or tend to Mother Nature.