Explanations have an odor

To explain or not...here's a bit of swirl from backchannel conversations...

From: John Bennett

To: John Bennett

Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 8:02 AM

Subject: RARE MOMENT! BENNETT MAKES STATEMENT BORDERING ON EXPLANATION ...

A good friend sincerely inquired if I was trying to put people off with the language in my Shards. The word used as an example was "Retard," which appears in the title of a recent Shard.

I wrote a brief response last night in a state of exhaustion, and looking it over this morning with a more or less clear head, it seems worth brushing up and sending out to my list in lieu of a Shard. Plus I ain't got no Shards handy. The cupboard is bare. The well dry.

Anyway, for what it's worth, what follows is a close to an explanation as you'll ever find me. Explanations have bad body odor. Don't ever get stuck sitting next to one on a bus ...

Subject: Re: SHARDS ABOUT JELLYFISH AND RETARDS

I guess by "put off" you mean "shock." Some people may well be shocked by some of my Shards, but my intention isn't to shock. I'm not sure what my "intention" is. "Intention" is as loaded a word as retard, faggot, nigger, kike, but in a different way.

There are so many words that have been groomed to make things look benign in order to disguise raging ugliness. In fact, this process renders these groomed words profane, although to call them profane gets you in about as much trouble as saying nigger.

People are programmed to become indignant about the use of certain words, regardless of context, words like nigger and faggot and retard. It's seriously politically incorrect to use them, and the term "politically correct" is a protective umbrella for all the pseudo-benign co-opted words, which are legion.

Do you see the one-two punch of it? Give people a pseudo-benign vocabulary with which to gloss over ugliness and brutality, and then give them another set of taboo words that triggers spontaneous righteous indignation in them whenever these words are spoken (or written). This combination of word manipulation is a strong form of thought control. It obscures reality. It causes people lose discernment and think in platitudes and generalities....

John,

Ye mean Lenny Bruce cried in vain...?

Skulkin' around with my Webster's New World in a plain brown paper bag, looking over my should...er - when I delve in hunting ...well, who knows, maybe.... Talking in SHARDS like everybody from Presidents and their holy Graham-cracker advisors to cute little middle school kids talk? Shocking, absolutely shocking.

Putting, or knocking, off readers, tripping them up as they jump from word to word hunting for the Awful ones...?

"Give people a pseudo-benign vocabulary with which to gloss over ugliness and brutality...", misses that this ain't what's being glossed over, mainly. It starts out as "sex and violence" and they throw in "name-calling" to make their morality sound like it's got some basis in humanity, and the folks bein' "nice" c'n focus on the name-calling. And violence is finally accepted, as in Mel Gibson's homo-erotic masochistic writhing to which church-goers take their kids (while the good reverends burn Harry Potter in southern U.S. and Australian streets, insuring, of course, that all kids in town will read it). Violence, then, okay. But, SEX ...well, there's Janet's wardrobe malfunction and Howard Stern's mentions of where waste products get wasted - leading to gov't-backed tithes....

All shocking. Very shocking. Bein' sensitive, I'm shocked.

Well, Johnno, I've got it all out of my system....

So, with fond regorges, ...eh, regards,

your loving, (or is

that f***ing)

friend and foe,

with lash-envious

thots,

Gino

__________________________

"Lenny Bruce cryin'

the bluest blue blues

I'm tellin' youse

always singin'

them bluest blue blues

"Lenny Bruce dyin'

the bluest blue blues

I'm tellin' youse

always flingin'

them bluest blue blues

..."

--Anon

-

Editor

Juice online

http://www.juice-press.com/poetry