The power of words

Let me begin by saying that the intent of this post is not to offend anyone. If you know anything about me, you know that being offensive merely for the sake of being offensive is completely against my nature. I merely wish to present some ideas and hopefully spark some discussion.

I've been thinking about the power of words lately, especially given the scandals surrounding Michael Richards, Don Imus, and Dog the Bounty Hunter. Let me point out that I do believe that words have power, however, words have only as much power as we choose to give them. What if, instead of focusing on the fact that these individuals used words like "nigger" or "ho," and then bringing down the full might of our free press upon them, we were to completely ignore their actions, thus taking away the very power of the words they're speaking?

Let me give a couple of more positive examples to illustrate my point. The Constitution of the United States is, in its most basic form, a set of words written down on parchment. But the American people have chosen to give those words an enormous amount of power and influence because we feel that those words represent an important set of ideals. As a result, people have died to defend those words, and arguably the most powerful man in the world is tasked with defending and upholding those words.

Another example: the Bible. Again, in its most basic form, it is words written on paper. But we choose to recognize those particular words as spoken by God Himself, thus infusing them with the power of deity.

So when yet another celebrity uses a racial slur, and organizations across the United States condemn that personality and hold rallies calling for their resignation or firing, we are giving that word power. And when news organizations refuse to actually print the word, replacing "nigger" with "the n-word," we elevate it to the mystical. The word becomes, not only bad, but SO bad that our lips must not utter it for any reason at all!

Words are a gun, but we are giving those who would choose to use them the bullets. What if we chose to withhold those bullets, allowing racists and bigots to wave around scary but, ultimately, harmless weapons? If the media want to report on it, tell us what was really said; don't hide behind this thin veil of calling it "the n-word." We all know what word you mean. Calling it "the n-word" only gives it even more power.

Or even better, don't report it at all. Ignore it, and then ignore those who would choose to use these words. I know far more than I otherwise would have about Michael Richards and Don Imus because they chose to use racial slurs. If they'd simply been ignored and sidelined, their words would've ended up in the ether, unheard and useless. And isn't that the whole point?

Please, I'd love to hear thoughts or discussions on this one.

Some days it's not worth writing...

Some days you read something that makes you think you shouldn't even be writing yourself. Today is one of those days. Instead of writing anything myself, I'm just going to post a link to a friend's blog. Read it. No, seriously, read it... it's that good.

And leave a comment. She likes comments.

When does a hobby become an obsession?

I've been thinking recently about how obsessed people often become by their particular hobbies, and the amount of money they can sink into them. I've decided that no matter what you do for recreation, you can find someone else who is way better at it, who spends way more time at it, and who has put way more money into it.

Here are a few examples:

• Ann and I enjoy scuba-diving. With the presence of two kids it's not something we get to do much anymore, but we still enjoy talking about it and looking forward to getting back into it. But whenever we've been, we always run into "those" people, the ones with the multi-thousand dollar underwater cameras, wearing several thousand dollars worth of gear, and they're on their seventh scuba-diving trip. That year. And it's only April.
• One of my long-time hobbies is computer gaming. Keeping decent hardware takes a non-trivial amount of money, and games easily run between 40 and 60 dollars. A standard computer game can take up to 20 hours to complete (although I have one that I've spent, embarassingly, over 100 hours on (curse you, Oblivion!)). But I heard a podcast a while back about a guy who'd spent about 2,500 hours on an online game called Guild Wars. And the game had only been out for a year and a half or so. They figured out that this guy had to have spent around 5 hours every day for a year and a half to log that many hours.
• This afternoon the Monkey and I went to Fry's. In the parking lot, they had guys showing off their pimped out cars. You know the ones I'm talking about, with the custom rims and paint jobs and a sound system that sounds like he's performing nuclear warhead tests in the trunk (and the driver always has a Bluetooth headset). There was one guy who had an Excursion (base price, probably around $40,000) with a blue and orange paint job (I'm guessing several thousand dollars), an XBox mounted into the dashboard, a video screen in the dashboard, another small screen over the backseat, and then two ENORMOUS videos screens over the back seats (probably 15-inches each). So that's FOUR SCREENS in the car, twice as many as I have in my house. Then he had the sound system in the trunk, with a huge sub-woofer. I'm guessing the entertainment system alone was several tens of thousands of dollars. And of course the entire car was detailed and spotless. But it gets better: right next to the Excursion was his motorcycle with an identical paint job, and right next to that was the helmet for his motorcycle, with an identical paint job. So the whole setup had to have been well over 100 grand.

So how is it that somebody goes from saying, "I enjoy swimming underwater," to "I'll spend every spare dollar and hour I have to have the best gear, so that I can swim underwater"? How does someone go from, "I'll enjoy a couple hours of video-gaming every now and then," to "I will forget about having a life in the real world, so that I can have a life in this simulated world"? And how on EARTH does someone say, "You know, I don't think my kids really NEED to go to college; what they need is to be able to play their XBox on 15-inch screens in the back of the car, while I ride my matching motorcycle next to them!"?

Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety...

Give the people what they want

I've already had two requests for more details on my slapping-someone-upside-the-head story, so here it is.

We're travelling to Canada at the end of this month to visit Ann's family. Unfortunately, three days before our intended return, I have an extremely important meeting at work I need to attend. So I need to switch my tickets to allow me to return early, leaving Ann, the kids, and her parents in Canada for the rest of the week. There's a fee incurred with this switch, about $100, plus another sixty dollars or so for a shuttle to the airport, and since I'm having to cut short my own personal vacation for work reasons, I asked if the company could cover the cost of changing the ticket. No big deal, right?

My boss had no problem with this, and agreed that the request was justified. My secretary had no problem with it. But the travel coordinator didn't appear to understand the concept. Apparently, since this was outside the bounds of normal travel expenses, it was too hard for them to understand. They needed specific details on what day I was leaving, what day I was returning, and what flights I would be on. They asked whether my family could take me to the airport to avoid the cost of the shuttle. I responded with a very terse "No," and then waffled and sent another e-mail explaining that it would be about six hours out of the way for them, and that the mileage costs that the company would have to reimburse me for would be more than the actual cost of the shuttle ticket. They asked specifics on car rentals and how I would be getting around. Finally, after two days of this back and forth, they approved the cost. You'd think I'd asked them to solve world hunger or something.

Besides all this, we have a personal friend who is making some, if not poor, at least very immature choices about her lifestyle and the types of people she associates with, and the effects of those decisions tend to trickle into our lives a little. It makes me want to grab her by the shoulders and say, "What are you thinking? How in the world does that seem like a good decision to make?"

And now, I will step down from my soapbox. Wow, these Internet rants are kind of therapeutic. I feel better, even knowing that it's quite possible no one will read this! I'll have to do this more often.

You ever have one of those days when you want to slap someone upside the head for being stupid?

Vanilla Bean did well at her appointment. She still has to wear the brace, but surgery's looking unlikely. Thanks for the prayers!

Prayer request for Vanilla Bean

Vanilla Bean goes in on Monday for another checkup on her hips. We're praying that the right hip socket will be well-seated. The best news of all would be that she can stop wearing the brace entirely, in which case she can start doing things like sitting up, rolling around, and so on. It's possible that the doctor will just tell her to keep wearing the brace, or she might even need surgery. But we should know more in a few days!