Factory-replaced by Plant.

Handicapped-replaced by Physically Challenged

Swamp-replaced by Wetland

What the fuck? Supposedly a “factory” suggests a building with looming smokestacks billowing forth vile and odius pollution. I don’t know if you’ve looked lately, but that’s what it is!!! A plant is a beautiful green organism that I have growing in my yard, how dare you defile such a pristine word with an image such as that!!! Changing what you call something ain’t gonna change the thing itself, and if people know better, it shouldn’t change how people think of it, either.

I looked up the definition of “Handicapped.” Know what it is? “Having a condition that restricts one’s ability to function physically” That sounds pretty close to “physically challenged” to me. If “handicapped” is offensive, how could “physically challenged” not be? How can it even be consitered changing the word if you’re simply changing the word to its definition?

The swamp thing arises from these environmentalists who are wishing to save these areas of wetness, and them not wanting to carry around signs saying “Save the Swamp!” Swamp apparently carries an image of a stinky, bug-ridden bog more than the desired marshland of abundant wildlife. …Fuck, i actually agree with this change. Probably should have thought ahead a little better.

Anyway, it still leads me to my point which is that just because a word becomes politically incorrect is no reason to drop it from our language. These words tie into us reading the book “1984″ for English class, in which the negative Utopian society tries to create perfection by writing a new language that inhibits independant thought in every way. Newspeak, the language is called, contains only words that are absolutely necessary to function, any words that express thought or feeling have been dropped. Personally, I’m all for getting my feelings across, and words that have a little emotion behind them assist me greatly with this. Down with Big Brother!

If an artist wants to be famous, ________ must have unique ideas.

Okay, let us examine the possibilities. If there is any context to suggest one gender or the other, you can use he or she with confidence. But if there is uncertainty, as there usually is, he is the correct choice of olde. I suppose that was the way things used to be. But as any language evolves, popular culture will change words and even the definition of correct grammar. He has become archaic, and even chauvinist. I suppose we have Latin to thank for that. Latin and its brood of romance languages use the masculine form, corresponding to he in English. But I think the English language has moved on.

Around the time of the Women’s Liberation movement, society decided that gender-specific words had to go. Equality for all words! Stewardess became flight attendant. Mailman became mail carrier. The replacement for he became he or she, or sometimes even the radical she. Using he or she became politically correct, and it still is today. It offends no one, it is neutral. But it still sucks. It is three whole words, for one thing. And it sounds very indecisive. The replacement also spawned a corollary, s/he. While you mostly see s/he in writing, it attempts to solve the three-syllable issue. But s/he suffers from a lack of eye-appeal and can take a second to pronounce. The quest continues…

The current trend is to use they, but that is by far the worst. They is just an evasion from the syllabic burden of he or she. It implies a plurality that simply does not exist. English teachers will not accept it, but most of my generation uses it without second thought. That could be remedied if a new word were to take its place.

So, what does that leave us with? We cannot use he, he or she, or they. That leaves us with precisely nothing. That is why I think we need a new word. It would solve all sorts of uncertainty problems. You could finally write in this situation with confidence, instead of rephrasing your sentences. I spent a little while brainstorming a word, and here is what I came up with: Shey.

If an artist wants to be famous, shey must have unique ideas.

It takes getting used to, but it works. It combines all the previous forms of he, she, and they. If someone can come up with a better idea, be my guest. But for now, shey is the solution!

Two weekends ago I worked at the Nevado Classic Youth tournament. Most of the games were very clean, easy to ref, pleasant to watch. There was one boy’s game, however, in which one team was very fond of “flaking,” which is exaggerating a fall in order to get a free kick, and the other had a coach who was, to say the least, verbal. A player would pull a spectacular dive off the ball and this coach would grumble and rumble and yell at our center about how he can’t let the other team “play him” like that, and this was after the center had warned the player who had played up the foul too much. It isn’t just the coaches who are unhappy, the parents as well get into the act, though usually not as openly. (However in the game afore mentioned, a parent had to be kicked out of the game due to some vulgar language directed at the other sideline.) Parents won’t yell at the ref as much as the coaches will, but every time I would trot past them, flag in hand, they would be commenting on how the ref is soo biased, how he doesn’t know what he is doing. I know that it shouldn’t affect me as much, I’m not the one being commented about, but it still is biting to hear my coworker talked about like that. These parents don’t realize that we as refs are doing the best we can and that their childs team is not in the right all the time. You’d think that these people would be a little more grateful that they have refs in the first place; their teams wouldn’t be able to play if they didn’t.

And what’s funny is that the people who seem to get riled up the least are the players themselves (though, especially in the case of a bad ref they will…first hand experience), it is mostly the coaches and parents who whine and complain and this is what, if anything, gets the players riled up. Referees just aren’t appreciated…fact of life. We are the enforcers, so as a result anything we say will fall in the wrong with someone or another. Perfection is expected, so every little wrong call is pounced upon while the right ones are overlooked. Such is the life of a lawkeeper…and it’s a good thing I get paid for it.

Hire a consultant to get you on TV. That’s right, pay money to make yourself look like an idiot! Woohoo!

There is a new site that, for $25 a year, will try to get you on TV. Just jot down all your exotic qualities (TV likes people who have nipple piercings) and a bunch of execs will comb through the database of applicants for the right kind of idiots. You know, one black guy, one jew, and twenty blonde retards. Then they’ll contact you and get you on TV. Nothing could be easier!

Millions of Americans apply every year to be on Reality Television for personal fulfillment, to find love, change careers, or simply to experience a once in a lifetime opportunity. RTVStar.com provides you with the most simple, yet sophisticated, way to pursue your RTV dream.

HA! How very sad.

Okay, so a common argument for creationism is to look at how well a complex organ such as the eye functions, and to speculate that something so complected and perfect could never evolve naturally. But further examination of the eye shows that this organ is not in fact perfect. In fact, it’s fairly poorly planned out. An omnipotent being would not make such a simple mistake as this.

So here it is. The retina, which receives the light entering the eye, has hundreds of little sensors that turn the visible light into nervous impulses. All these receptors connect to nerves which all twine together behind the eye to form the optic nerve. Our intangible creator needed a place to put it, so he decided to make the beginning of part of the retina. That area, called the optic disk, cannot have any light receptors due to the fatty nerve that’s in the way. This creates a blind spot that we usually don’t notice, right, because we have two eyes. But if you have one eye closed, there will always be a spot in your near peripheral vision that cannot be seen.

No problem, right? I mean, it’s not like I walk around with one eye closed all the time, right? Well here’s the kicker: This supreme power actually fixed it once! Octopi have there optic nerves attached to the backs of their retina. They have no blind spot. Their eyes are the perfect ones. Ours still have flaws. He decided that we weren’t good enough to have perfect eyes.

We didn’t evolve from Octopi, so we didn’t get the non-blind eye that evolved after our common ancestor (probably a jellyfish, or something).