Month: October 2005

I have this credit card that I never use, but I must have authorized an automatic expenditure for a magazine once upon a time and it hits again for $24. I don’t notice the bill so I don’t pay the bill, get a $39 late fee, which is usury. Make a payment for what I THINK will cover the next payment, but find that was $8 short. So, on October 13, they’re going to charge ne $39 AGAIN for a bill that is $8 short of the minimum payment. So at 10 pm on October 12, I ask to pay from my checking account (it’s a $15 charge, but it’s not $39), and they tell me it won’t be credited until October 13, thus incurring the $39 charge I’m trying to avoid. She says, “There’s nothing I can do.” So, I said, “Never mind. I want to cancel my card.” She says, “You’ll have to call back.” I said, “I don’t WANT to call back, I want to cancel my card!” She talked with her supervisor and discovered, “Why, yes, we CAN post that payment on today’s date.”

I may have mentioned this before, but when you do one of those check transfers that offer you a great rate, credit card companies have been known to change (i.e., hike) the rate on your credit card because of late payments on your mortgage, loans or other credit cards.
Did I mention that credit card companies are evil?

One of the blogger who I’ve linked to, but I’m not remembering who (I’ve narrowed it to four) indicated once that he was afraid that his use of “foul language” might offend my sensibilities. The answer is: context is everything.

When I stepped on a nail 5 years ago, boy did I curse! When I play racquetball and I’m bettered on a shot, I might occasionally say, “You SOB,” but use the actual words those letters represent. (One of my regular opponents is VERY hard on himself, calling himself “You M*****F***ing C***S***ing A******!”) But when he knew kids were around, it was HE who suggested toning down the language.

As a matter of course, I don’t use actual curse words on this blog because I just don’t feel the need. I’m not in the heat of the moment when I type, generally speaking. (And I have a strong edit mode.)

I think my REAL problem with cursing is that it’s done so often that it fails to MEAN anything. I read a few years ago that there was some sociologist who suggested that the culture NEEDS those verbal outlets. But if cursing becomes common everyday language, what the heck do you use when you’re REALLY TICKED OFF?

Many years ago, I was at my house with my then-girlfriend and a number of people from my church choir after rehearsal. I wasn’t feeling all that well, so I was hanging back. One of the choir members told this joke that I found extremely offensive (it made reference to the size of a black man’s penis), but I said nothing, at first. But about an hour later, it was still bugging me, so I told the joke-teller that I was offended by the “humor.” She, to her credit, apologized. But another woman in the group said, “Oh, you just don’t have a sense of humor.” I yelled, “F*** YOU!” And I meant it. I meant the full fury of the curse, however one interprets it. How DARE she demean my feelings like that! So, casual cursing just minimizes the effect of a real good, emotionally-generated invective.
(I’m not suggesting that this was the appropriate response to the situation, or that I would respond similarly now.)

Now, I avoid swearing in front of my daughter, and our next door neighbors, who would embarrass sailors with their verbiage, attempt to tone it down when Lydia is around.

An incident in the bus just this past week: A guy was in the first row on the bus, on a cellphone. I was halfway back. I hear:
“For one thing, there ain’t no ‘us’.
“You have to work that s*** out with your husband.”
I now knew more about this man in two sentences than I really wanted to absorb.
But he kept saying the S word, in every sentence. Yes, it bothered me, because it showed a lack of intelligence, integrity, whatever. However, if my daughter had been on the bus, I’d have asked him to ratchet it down.

The premise is that some young girl, about to turn a significant age, is throwing a party that just everybody will want to attend. The important thing in most of the episodes I saw, was that air of ex-clu-SIV-ity, where some people don’t get in because they’re not popular or they’re not cool or or because they’re UG-ly, emphasis on the “ugh.”

And these parties aren’t cake and ice cream affairs. The budget for one of these events was $125,000, many times the cost of our wedding. And that was the one teenager who didn’t say, “The sky’s the limit.” Just the dresses of the young women made all but the most lavish wedding gowns look cheap. The term affluenza was made for these people. The point, if there is one, is that this is the ONE DAY in these girls’ lives that it’s all about THEM. Ha! EVERY DAY, it seems like it’s all about them; their fancy blouses literally state this in a couple examples.

So, why was I even watching not one, but multiple episodes? I blame my wife. Or actually my wife’s students. She teaches English as a Second Language, and some of her students were talking about seeing a quinceanera, on the show. In cultures such as Cuba and Mexico (both represented on the shows), the big coming-of-age party takes place at the age of 15. Carol was hoping to work one of these episodes into a lesson plan for school; if she ends up doing so, it will be for limited moments, for she doesn’t want to encourage such bad behavior.

The first episode involved triplets who wanted to outdo each other; they consult with the party planner (each episode has one, of course) who is charged with keeping the “surprise” a secret from the other two sisters. The second show was the Staten Island girl with the “limited” budget of $125,000. The third was a quinceanera for a Cuban-American girl who was ordering around her mother as though she were a serf. I am a firm believer in non-violent resolution to issues. But when I saw how this girl treated her mother, I wanted to do her serious harm. In the quinceanera, there are 15 couples who are part of her court (think “wedding party”) who she screams at like the worst Bridezilla you could imagine. (Whatever religious significance of the event, if it took place at all, was lost on the editing room floor.)

The fourth story had an interesting angle. Young girl grows up poor in Erie, PA, gets adopted as a young teen, now lives the good life. But she wasn’t humbled by her background; rather, it semed to fuel her avarice. My wife, who doesn’t swear, said during this particular broadcast, “That girl’s a B!” And the topper is that, at the party, the girl, who fails getting her driver’s permit, because she studied “like for a minute”, nevertheless gets a new BMW from Mommy and Daddy. Even though the parents are lavishing material things on her, both Carol & I thought that they seemed curiously detatched.