Bus Ads and Stereotypes

As the self anointed destroyer of malignant myths and untoward untruths, yours truly is no stranger to stereotypes and both their necessity and risk. Most humans are built in such a way that they need to generalize in order to communicate with one another. The rest are engineers. By finding common themes, we create roadways for mass communication. The danger is that these wide paths tend to get overcrowded with sheep who walk readily over the cliff at the end of a discontinued road. So use stereotypes we must, but need to keep our heads up and your wits about us lest we take a dangerous fork in the road and tumble over the cliff of bigotry and hatred. Don’t do that. Yes my brothers, sisters, and brother/sisters, a sermon from The Captain’s pulpit, a dead giveaway that I’m completely sober as I write this on the commuter bus. But as I perused the ads on the bus, I noticed all the faces were some shade of brown save one and that they seemed to perpetuate certain racial stereotypes. You be the judge.

• Ad for baby making instructions with a little mocha colored baby in diapers looking both worried yet hopeful…or maybe he’s just about to make a poop, I can’t really tell. Bus riders learn that if you want to make a baby someday then both parents need to eat healthy, exercise, avoid drugs, cigarettes and alcohol, see your doctor and dentist regularly, take vitamins and folic acid (because battery acid just doesn’t cut it?), get tested for STDs and HIV, control blood pressure, diabetes, asthma and weight. That assumes A LOT. Damn, I didn’t know it was so difficult to conceive these days; back in my day, we just had sex with a fertile partner of the opposite sex. In truth, it asks the ridiculously unhealthy riders to live in such a way that the only fun activity left is sex, so it inadvertently encourages the behavior it seeks to discourage. Fail.

• Whteva ur style you don’t wnt to wear G. to find out if you wearin it (gonorrhea) get tested. Perhaps this language is designed to appeal to the young minority audience who ride the city bus because Dad is MIA and single parent Mom can’t afford to but them a car? Just askin’. One thing is for sure: I not eva callin myself G agin

• Another ad picturing a milk chocolate colored adolescent with a fro asks: Do you know a teen with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder? Answer. F*&k yeah. Every teenager who ever walked the face of this earth. The remedy for this is obvious if not pleasant: patience. They will turn 18 some day if they live that long and then you can legally evict them. Waste of ad space.

• Get Carter and get peace of mind. Carter being an Aryan looking blonde male ambulance chasing personal injury lawyer messiah who has appeared among the poor to save them from their oppressors, the insurance companies. What Carter fails to tell you is that insurance companies have entire herds of blonde beasts (while male lawyers) at their disposal who are not paid by the hour, so they can afford to wait until injured plaintiffs are strapped for cash and settle for pennies on the dollar. Now that’s irony. The ad should really say “Get Screwed.” Come to think of it, so should the ad about making babies.

Believe The Captain when he says: I am really just a somewhat odd literary persona who pokes fun at the foibles and weaknesses of both myself and other flawed human beings using humor, irony, and occasionally provocative statements :)

Yours totally screwed,

The Captain

The Logophile

I am a logophile. And though I admit to being offensive, you will not find The Captain’s name on any registry for illegal offenders. Of course, The Captain is a pen name and would not be found on any legal documents anyway. But more importantly, it is imperative for you all to know up front that a logophile is a person who loves words. This does not make me a criminal or a deviant, just a bit odd. Some people love animals, so much so they volunteer their time rescuing animals at risk., which is a perfect segway to the topic of this blog: word rescue. There is a marvelous website called Save the Words (http://www.savethewords.org/) which is dedicated to saving words teetering on the precipice of verbal extinction (something many have wished for my words, I might add).

Thankfully, unlike animal rescue, which can be smelly and messy and expensive, word rescue is cheap, easy and clean, like my wayward cousin (OK maybe not “clean”). One needs only to use a word in a sentence to keep it alive. And given my obsessive compulsive tendency for lengthy parentheticals, The Captain is a word savior if ever there was one! So time for The Captain to save some word souls.

Word Disciples of The Captain

Panchymagogue: medicine purging body fluids from the body.

Saving sentence – When using beer as a panchymagogue, PBR works best.

Lubency: willingness; pleasure.

Lambition: Act of licking or lapping

Saving sentence – The Captain’s lubency for lambition leads to a need for a panchymagogue.

Obacerate: to stop one’s mouth.

Saving sentence: On average, The Captain receives a dozen daily requests to obacerate.

Pregnatress: female power that generates or gives birth to something.

Gumfiate: to cause to swell.

Saving sentence: Her pregnatress made me gumfiate down below.

Hirquitalliency: strength of voice.

Saving sentence: Mom always said my f*&king hirquitalliency gave her a headache.

Recineration: second time a thing or place is burned down.

Saving sentence: My probation officer said that incineration was bad, but recineration would get me a date with the judge.

Adimpleate: to fill up.

Saving sentence: Barkeep, adimpleate my mug!

Foppotee: a simple minded person.

Tudiculate: To bruise or pound.

Saving sentence: The bullies would tudiculate me whenever I called them Foppotees.

Diffibulate: to unbutton; to unbuckle.

Saving sentence: My amorous adventures would always begin with diffibulation and invariably end in tudiculation.

Doomed Words

Ovablastic: making eggs burst open in the womb.

Death Knell: Using this word in a sentence would only get me in big trouble.

Urette: dried animal urine absorbed into chalky soil.

Death Knell: So esoteric, even The Captain wouldn’t use this word in a sentence. Perhaps if it referred to the ribald messages we peed on the dirt infield of the Little League field…

Woundikins: mild profanity.

Death Knell: There really is no purpose for mild profanity.

Believe The Captain when he says: I do not suffer boreism (behavior of a boring person!

Yours cloakatively (superficially),

The Captain (time for me to obacerate)