When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (5 page)

Number fourteen: Some of the things you need to know are things that are unknowable.

Number fifteen: Some of the things you need to know are things that can only be imagined.

Number sixteen: At any time the list of things you need to know can be abruptly suspended.

Now you know.

EUPHEMISMS: Shell Shock to PTSD

Earlier in the book, in the first section on this subject of euphemistic language, I mentioned several reasons we seem to employ so much of it: the need to avoid unpleasant realities; the need to make things sound more important than they really are; marketing demands; pretentiousness; boosting employee self-esteem; and, in some cases, just plain, old political correctness.

But no matter their purpose, the one thing euphemisms all have in common is that they soften the language. They portray reality as less vivid. And I’ve noticed Americans have a problem with reality; they prefer to avoid the truth and not look it in the eye. I think it’s one of the consequences of being fat and prosperous and too comfortable. So, naturally, as time has passed, and we’ve grown fatter and more prosperous, the problem has gotten worse. Here’s a good example:

There’s a condition in combatmost people know it by now. It occurs when a soldier’s nervous system has reached the breaking point. In World

War I, it was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables. Shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. Shell shock!!

That was 1917. A generation passed. Then, during the Second World War, the very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. It takes a little longer to say, stretches it out. The words don’t seem to hurt as much. And fatigue is a softer word than shock. Shell shock. Battle fatigue. The condition was being euphemized.

More time passed and we got to Korea, 1950. By that time, Madison Avenue had learned well how to manipulate the language, and the same condition became operational exhaustion. It had been stretched out to eight syllables. It took longer to say, so the impact was reduced, and the humanity was completely squeezed out of the term. It was now absolutely sterile: operational exhaustion. It sounded like something that might happen to your car.

And then, finally, we got to Vietnam. Given the dishonesty surrounding that war, I guess it’s not surprising that, at the time, the very same condition was renamed post-traumatic stress disorder. It was still eight syllables, but a hyphen had been added, and, at last, the pain had been completely buried under psycho-jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder.

I’d be willing to bet anything that if we’d still been calling it shell shock, some of those Vietnam veterans might have received the attention they needed, at the time they needed it. But it didn’t happen, and I’m convinced one of the reasons was that softer language we now prefer: The New Language. The language that takes the life out of life. More to come.

ELEGY FOR “MILLENNIUM”

You don’t hear the word millennium much anymore, do you? It’s kind of sad. Here’s a word that lies around for long periods of time looking for work, but never really doing very much. Then, every thousand years, things suddenly pick up and there’s a flurry of activity. The word is on everyone’s lips, and is heard in almost every conversation. It stays red-hot for several years, enjoying its popularityseeing its name in newspapers and magazines, making appearances on radio and TV. But then a peak is reached, and, after a while, things begin to slow down. The activity tapers off, and before long, it’s once again relegated to history books, academic journals and reference works. Goodbye, poor millennium. I’m going to miss you. When you return, I may not be here to welcome you back.

WHO, ME? HATE?

I saw two bumper stickers on a car: HATE IS NOT A FAMILY VALUE and VALUE ALL FAMILIES. What is the purpose of having things like this on your car? Certainly it’s not to change someone else’s opinion of family life at a red light. More likely, the purpose is to inform us that the driver doesn’t hate anyone, and that he considers himself pure and virtuous and better than the rest of us. So it’s actually self-righteousness. The driver apparently forgot that the seven deadly sins include both anger and pride.

JACKO BEATS THEM ALL

I don’t care if Michael Jackson freaked off with little boys or not. It doesn’t bother me. Fuck those kids. And fuck their greedy parents too. What’s important to me is that Michael is the greatest entertainer who ever lived. Bar none. Watch him dance; pay attention to the showmanship. No one ever came close.

Elvis was a bogus white guy with sex appeal and good looks who ripped off a lot of great black music, watered it down, and made it safe for lame whites who couldn’t handle the experience of raw, emotional black music. Never grew as an artist; remained an entertainer. Fuck Elvis.

Sammy Davis Jr.? Nice try. Ordinary dancer, ordinary singer, second-rate impressionist. I also didn’t like the insincere sincerity. But he was a nice man, personally; I give him credit for that.

Frank Sinatra? Great singer of songs, among the best. Superb musician. Grew as an artist. No showmanship, though. Arrogant, too. And mean to ordinary people. Fuck him.

Michael Jackson buries them all. I say give him a bunch of kids and let him dance.

LET’S GET REAL, HERE

I’ve decided to cash in on TVs reality-show trend. I have several ideas, but they may need some work before I approach the networks. Here’s what I’m working on:

ISLAND CUISINE

This idea grew out of Survivor, but I have a new twist: You put twelve people on a barren island, and you let them starve to death. You make sure they get no food, but you provide plenty of fresh drinking wateryou don’t want them to die of thirst, you want them to starve to death.

That would be entertaining enough, but here his the fun. You make sure hah0 the contestants are large, aggressive, physically fit individuals, and the other half are small, mild-mannered and physically weak. Then you wait them out and see who survivesand, more fun, you watch how they do it. The show is called Guess Who ’sfor Dinner. The only part I haven’t decided yet is whether to provide utensils.

GETTIN’ HIGH AND HAVIN’ FUN

Here’s another idea I think has a good shot: Maniac on Drugs. Each week you put a different homicidal maniac in a van filled with assault rifles and you provide him with large amounts of speed, crack, acid and PCP. Then you let him drive around New York City for several days, and you videotape everything he does. Naturally, you clear all this with the police, so they don’t interfere with the smooth flow of the show. At the end of thirteen weeks, you take all the psychos, give them a fresh supply of drugs and turn them loose at Disney World with rocket-propelled grenades. Actually, now that I think about it, this idea is too good for the networks; I’m gonna put it on pay-per-view.

Here’s a variation for the finale, in case the Disney people get squeamish. You give the maniacs the same drugs, but instead of grenade launchers, you go back to the assault rifles. Everything’s the same, but this time you put them on an ordinary, nonstop passenger train from New York to Los Angeles. You strap

video cameras to their heads and let them run loose on the train, allowing them to befriend the other passengers. Remember, it’s nonstop, no one can get off. I guarantee you’d get some really great footage. By the way, to save a little money, this could also be done on a Greyhound bus. But you’d need a really good driver who isn’t easily distracted.

GUYS’ NIGHT OUT

Here his the one I’m proudest of because it took the most thought. I call it Lucky Bachelor.

Our chosen guy is selected from letters sent in to the show. In step one, the lucky bachelor is sent out on three separate occasions to pick up women in cheap bars and bring each of them to a hotel where he tries to fuck them. If they go along easily, he then convinces them to commit a perverted act involving a floor lamp, a woodpecker and a box of rubber bandsan act most people would consider completely depraved. All this activity is videotaped.

In step two, we stop three men at random on the street, show them the videos and ask them which of the women the lucky bachelor should marry. That woman is called the designated bride. We then ask the two losing women to vote on which one of the three random street guys looks like the best fuck. That guy is called the designated, best-fuck street guy.

In step three, we take the two losing street guys and the two losing bar girls and feed them near-fatal doses of aphrodisiacs, put them in thong bathing suits and turn them loose in an adult sex shop with unlimited credit. This footage, strictly an added feature, could possibly be some of the liveliest on the show.

Now, the alert reader is probably wondering what happened to our original lucky bachelor. Well, in step four we arrange for him and the designated best-fuck street guy to stage a bare-knuckle fistfightto the deathin the center aisle of St. Peter’s in Rome during a papal high mass. The two men

must keep fighting until one of them dies; it’s important to the show. As a side feature, we keep a camera trained on the pope, and every time he falls asleep during the fight, we give the guys an extra hundred dollars.

The reason it’s important that one of the two men dies is because the next day, in the same church, we’re going to hold step five: a combination wedding and funeral. The loser of the fight gets the funeral, the winner gets to marry the designated hotel-fuck bride, with the remaining, losing bar and hotel participants serving as bridesmaids and pallbearers. We then give the newlyweds all the leftover drugs from Maniac on Drugs and send them on a honeymoon to some nice, conservative golfing resort on Hilton Head Island, where they are required to take large amounts of drugs and two weeks of golf and tennis lessons.

LOOKS AREN’T EVERYTHING

This next one is a makeover show. My working title is Try Looking Like That For a Change!You start by picking three incredibly beautiful, successful supermodels and then, against their wills, you sedate them, strap them down and subject them to extensive plastic surgery. You give them big, misshapen noses; sagging eye-bags; and plenty of wrinkles and drooping skin on their faces. Then you pump enough fat into their asses, hips and thighs to make them really unhappy. When they come out of the anesthesia, the audience yells, “Try Looking Like That For a Change!” Fm so excited about this one that I’m working on a variation that involves involuntary sex-change surgery.

WRAPUP

Well, that’s about it. I suppose all that’s left would be for me to tell you about a show called Bowel Movement. Basically, it’s a show that involves a fixed-position camera, a toilet and a series of guys with diets organized primarily around beer and extra-spicy Mexican food. Perhaps it’s better if I don’t go into

too much detail at this time. And you know something? This one might actually belong on cable.

That’s it, folks. I’ve done all I can to develop a hit show. But the creative process can only go so far; the rest is up to you, the public, and I’m counting on your good taste.

WE JUST WANNA WATCH

First, let me say that most people take these so-called tragedies like Columbine and Oklahoma City far too seriously. You have to remember, it’s all part of the American way of life. If you live in America you have to go along with these things. You can’t be sitting around whining, uOhh, a lot of people got killed.” These things happen, folks. People get killed.

But concerning the guys (it’s always men) who commit these mass killingsand other less dramatic murders for that matter: After the sentence of death is passed, you will usually see the whining families of the “victims” insist on watching the execution up close, through a little window. They want to see the guy die. Don’t these people know there’s nothing to see? It’s uneventful. An attendant gives the guy an injection; it’s like watching someone get a flu shot. There’s nothing to see. But they often get their wish and are allowed to witness what’s little more than a medical procedure.

Now, my feeling is, if you’re going to let people watch some guy get executed, it would make much more sense to put on a little show for these ghouls. Entertain them. Place the guy in a small steel room and send in four or five of these sadistic prison guards with steel pipes and let them beat the guy to death. For about an hour. A constant, uninterrupted, sixty-minute clubbing would seem far more in keeping with our national values.

And, of course, this method would be much more satisfying to the families of these so-called victims; these fine, upstanding religious families who believe in a merciful God. They’d enjoy watching these psychotic, animalistic prison guards doing what comes naturallyadministering a nice, brutal clubbing. Prison guards who, by the way, dare I say, are also all fine, upstanding religious people as well. Folks, if you’re gonna do these things, don t settle for halfway measures. Do them right. Do them the Christian way.

KEEP AMERICA CLEAN

As a public service, next weekend Boy Scouts will be picking up litter and trash from America’s highways and dumping it in America’s rivers. If you’d like to pitch in and help the Boy Scouts, bring some of your own trash from home and throw it out the window of your car as you drive along your favorite road. You’ll be doing your part to keep the highways clean. By the way, if you have any ideas about cleaning up the rivers, let us know.

GET THE FUCK OOT

I’m tired of these Canadians who have worked in the American news media for years and still haven’t learned to pronounce the words out and about. Peter Jennings is one of them, and there are about three or four more. These people need to be taught that it’s OLTand uh-BOUT, not OO7″and uh-BOOT. I say if you can’t learn the language, it’s aboot time you got the fuck oot of here. Besides, Canadians are just disguised English people, and it’s a well-known fact that all English people deserve to die.

UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU

Things I wonder about the FBI’s list of the “Ten Most Wanted” criminals: When they catch a guy and he comes off the list, does number eleven automatically move up? And does he see it as a promotion? Does he call his criminal friends and say, “I made it, Bruno. I’m finally on the list”?