Trading Insults (and Other Curious Dialect Phenomenon)
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?"

who knew my little blog would stir up so much trouble?

this blog is a direct sequel to the one that has friends old and new up in arms (August 17th's "Exhaustion -vs- My Existence as a Reverse Oreo"). some have posted comments, others have e-mailed me, and one called me.

what follows is not to be confused with me trying to defend myself. it is me explaining myself and my blog further (something, i'm told, an artist is never supposed to do, but i'll make an exception this once).

i grew up believing there were good words and bad words. i didn't question it. i just didn't use them. but growing up on military bases has a way of exposing one to all sorts of words in various languages. i was amazed how many good people used bad words. when my family would sit down on Saturday night with a big bowl of popcorn and watch a movie, i knew any time someone uttered one of those four-letter words, if i looked over at my mom, she would shake her head disapprovingly. i thought it curious that some of my heroes, good people still, would use bad words.

as i grew up, my friends started using these words. the more i heard them, the less i thought they were bad. i realized my friends could call me a "dork," and it wouldn't effect me. but if one of my enemies called me a "dork," i was deeply offended and hurt.

that was the first time i was introduced to the duality of words. it wasn't the word that offended me. it was the intent behind it.

since then i have sat down through MULTIPLE Bible studies with people, as they try to explain their faith or as they tried to make sense of what they read in the Gospel the night before, would swear a blue streak (so far as for one man to call the Saviour "Jesus f*ckin' Christ"), but not once was it offensive (shocking, yes, offensive, no) because i knew this was just their dialect, their language and to them, it wasn't swearing. the words weren't bad.

i was in eighth grade when i adopted "these words" into my vocabulary. as i did, i quickly realized there are people you can say these words around and people you can't, very similar to the way one (living in the south) has to choose the words carefully they use when talking about the south losing the Civil War.

words. we're talking about words here. we're talking about the relevance people put on them, which i think is odd. i think "outlawing" these words is the easy (dare i say, "Republican") way out.

we need to challenge ourselves to ask ourselves why we use the words we do. what do we mean when we use them? that's what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5:22. it's not whether or not i use "the N word" or not, it's about why i use it. what do i hope to prove by using it? what place am i hoping to put someone in by using it? where is my heart? am i being malicious?

for the record, there are two words i use VERY sparingly as it's hard to be anything but malicious when using them: mediocre and ugly.

i'm not asking anyone to agree with me. this is my world view.