Gold-Diggers

Now I ain’t sayin’ she a gold-digger, but she ain’t messin’ wit’ no broke, broke.

Ah, the wistful complaints of a generation and a half retasked to greed. Actually, I don’t think old Kayne was far off here, thematically. It is true that using the word “gold-digger,” male to female, has invariably become a mirror on “whore” to the feminine ear. The notion’s more recent adaptation ‘ho,’ as now also heard when one utters the term “gold-digger” adds a smattering of gully racism to the already sexist vibe therein meant. Expressing that some one is a gold-digger, specifically a woman, is today like to elicit responses of an intensity one might use to verbally thwart off a rapist or to steer a rocket ship full of mental health consumers careening into the sun. Very much in opposition to the politically correct speech continuum, “gold-digger” runs that fine line between being both cuss-free and an arbitrary insult. It’s a PG-13 bullet. The word is never uttered in the positive and while then fully negative, is still a sort of cast-off wording as aspersions go like baldy, shorty, diva, blondie, yahoo, wing-nut, or peon. Kayne ain’t sayin’ it. I ain’t sayin’ it.

I, of course, do not believe that almost any woman is a true gold-digger. Yes, I still have my penis. Traditionally the term is understood as a woman who chooses to marry for money, big money, in the absence of all love, maturity, self-respect, and couplehood. That’s pretty harsh. Yet, as harsh as it may be, there are one or two people out there who’ve done it and pretty much ruined the romance game for everyone else. (I’d make an Anna Nicole joke here, but it’s in poor taste to speak of dead boobs.) Still, the modern take on the word “gold-digger” has evolved far beyond its original affronting intent. So, while no woman deserves to be referred to in such a sexist way, it might also be incumbent upon an intelligent woman with relationship interests to know all the new permutations the notion has taken on.


Why? Well, to explain that, let’s look at a far more despicable word like “bitch” to illustrate. I am going to take it fore-granted that all readers agree as I do that a woman should not be called a bitch. It is a word originally meant to compare a woman to a female dog whose job it seemingly is to immediately bend over and acquiesce to sex as it is dished out, no conversation, no strings, no complaints. Bitch is a morbidly demeaning word in its linguistic heritage, an insult timeline that includes both the typical American tendency to insult through sex words and the typical European tendency to insult through comparison to lesser animals. It is a word used to subjugate, to battle, to goad, and to sometimes reassert a fictional manhood all too fragile to withstand fair debate. Given its origins, it is little wonder why in a society striving for equality we ponder as to the term’s usage at all. Any man worth his salt has set forth a pattern in life to either minimize, eliminate, or to never in the first place find function for the term. That said, and heard resounding in the ears of all the women out there who’ve actually found themselves a good man, have any of you ever wondered, despite how infrequently your man speaks it, how often he’s thought it? How many times has your man, in his head, thought you were a bitch? See, coming to the near collective agreement that the word “bitch” is bad to say, we never truly attacked the root of the issue, perception. We never really considered how much worse it might be to be thought of as a bitch than to be called one once or twice in a lifetime. Both are bad, yes, but is not the thought worse? Is not the word only a reflection of the thought and therefore a revealing of the true self, the underlying barbarian, the invisible demon within? Your man may have never called you a bitch in the entirety of your relationship, but I guarantee even the most evolved among us has thought it on occasion and amongst a small minority even been convinced of it on the regular. Asking does no good. Most men deny it. Those who will not deny it can’t really talk about it now that we’ve labeled the curse off-limits. Admitting this fault for a man is admitting the beast from whence he comes and topples all other hopes at his civilized efforts. He could solve world hunger, but his wife might never let him live down the one time the B-word slipped from his lips as he muttered in his sleep. Plus, let’s face it; nobody can control what another person thinks. It’s just not doable, nor is it ethical.

So, what can be done? Nothing? I disagree. If you work in I.T., for instance, and are thought of as the go-to tech guru of Cinnabon Corporate, but are trying to break the ceiling into management, there are actions you can take. You can change people’s perceptions of you. You can refrain from certain practices, conversation, even projects and engage in newer tasks and interactions shaped to highlight your leadership attributes. “China needs sweet cakes!” It takes a lifetime commitment on your part, but such an outcome is very probable. Well, the same holds true for the perception of you, even the vastly false perception of you, as a “bitch.” Perhaps you are content in the word not being uttered. That’s fine. But if there is even the slightest desire in you for others to never reach that false conclusion, you can change practices in much the same way. You can gain control. You can positivize people’s perception of you, leaping thoughts out from the stagnant realm of cusses and insult and into the domain of mutual respect, perhaps even admiration or hero worship.

Should you have to do that? NO!!!! Not for the pea-brained morons who’d think you a “bitch.” You should not have to change anything about yourself to curtail these bleak prejudgments. After all, the word “bitch” only contains what power you give it, and not any power the speaker wishes to lend the term. But just because you should not have to change these perceptions, does not mean that you cannot. Seizing control is an option. If you had been somehow academically availed of all the practices that lead your husband or your boyfriend or your lover to draw that faulty conclusion, it would be in your best interest to address those points. Mature people will address them in conversation, some in arguments. Others might seek third party psychological help for the man to address his issues. Yet, for those women who might also wish to help the process along, to take responsibility for an outcome that is not her burden to bear, well a neat list of practices that lead to false perception would be invaluable. A tidy database of all the now different male definitions for the word “bitch” would come in quite handy.

I still say “bitch” is off-limits. It is somewhat insulting for me to even suggest that a woman take on the burden of changing another person’s sexist mind. The term is just far too off par to be a genuine behavior-changing motivator. “Gold-digger,” on the other hand, is a far less heated label. Perhaps there are one or two women out there who would actually welcome a useful list of all the ways in which modern men secretly jump to the conclusion that their wife is a gold-digger. Sexist ways, yes. But I am talking about an otherwise secretive mental fact, not a method whereby to defend the unjustified thought. Wouldn’t you like to know what your man thinks? Moreover, wouldn’t you want to change what he thinks if it were to prove unflattering? Asking or ordering him to refrain from a thought is not going to change squat. In fact, most people when told not to think something, picture that something all the more lucidly. Quick, don’t think about a panicked chameleon on a plaid shirt.

What follows here is a compendium of how the term “gold-digger” has socially evolved in the U.S. Each time a woman engages in one of these practices, she runs the needless risk of her husband jumping to a false “gold-digger” conclusion about her. Most do not even fit the idea’s main construct, but it would prove a grand mistake to assume that this popular, figurative definition is the only explanation and to ignore these very common permutations. The list is mildly comprehensive. Given some of the stretches herein to make sense of a male’s sometimes animal mind, each item on the list should probably have a separate name apart from “gold-digger,” but let’s face it; if this were a list of 2000 practices, that would be 2000 more insults we’d have to coin and then overcome anyway. Yes, we’ve a faulty, sexist lexicon used to depict men as well. Bum, deadbeat, slacker, loafer, scrub, small, mooch, leech, couch potato, are among our favorites. Yet, only men can work the change in a woman’s perception of them, just as I here hope to aid women who might choose to do the same. “Gold-digger” is a truly loaded thought. It can be pre-empted.

He’s at fault, yes, but you can still refrain from poor practices nonetheless. Outside of the label “gold-digger,” any person of any gender should understand that all the practices which follow are destructive with regard to relationships, sometimes lives. Do not think that because somebody close-mindedly molded your gender into these faux-pas that the insult taken would justify you continuing the action. For many of these, there is responsibility on both sides of the misogynistic characterization. I reiterate; he does not get to call you a gold-digger based on any of these. Period! Yet, you should perhaps not be engaging in almost any of these practices regardless, and if how you might be perceived mentally, daily, by your husband is motivator enough to change what you are doing, I simply spell out the truth of our unevolved male thoughts here. Check them out. A few are somewhat surprising.


What Modern, Married Men Mean By "Gold-Digger"

Any woman who fits the original definition above, whether or not she is married to the man in question.

Any woman with a career of her own who refuses to contribute equitably or equally to the household expenses, particularly the bills.

Any woman who bounces checks.

Any woman who refuses to work out a household budget.

Any woman who refuses to adhere to a household budget.

Any woman who cannot discuss household finances without the discussion ending in an argument or tears. Both are a means to change the subject from even approaching a remote tangent to her spending habits. The truth is that, even if anger and tears are involved, it is incumbent upon both in a couple to work all the way through to good financial decisions. This is a conversation that doesn’t end at all. It is one that starts and continues on or gets revisited all throughout life together. Ending the conversation, by whatever means, is, in effect, the same as never having had the conversation in the first place. Just as judges will take into consideration who threw the first punch in a case, it is wholly important to realize that whoever ends a conversation about household finances first is usually in the wrong.

Any woman who does not keep an accurate and balanced check register. Not-knowing is a guilt-assuaging tactic used by very small minds.

Any woman who considers bankruptcy as any resort other than the final one. She doesn’t want to do the work to fix the problem; she just wants to throw in the towel and start over, dragging the entire family, unethically, down with her.

Any woman who insists upon opening a joint savings account and who never contributes funds to that account. These tend to be the same women who deduct from the account regularly, even if their spouse never makes a withdrawal.

Any woman who has any untreated addiction, especially a shopping or gambling addiction. Getting help is the first step. If one is unwilling to take the first step it indicates and possibly outright proves that she is willing to do NONE of the work to fix anything.

Any woman who shares a car or cars with her partner and who regularly visits the gas station, but only fills the tank part of the way. These tend to be the same women who insist that men always fill the tank completely, who never count the cost of gas in a household budget, and who consume the majority of both the gas they’ve purchased and the gas their spouses have purchased. These also tend to be the same women who will lend a car to friends or share a car with a spouse while always leaving the gas gage on “E” when others need the car.

Any woman who makes the claim, “If I was a gold-digger, then I wouldn’t be with YOU.” Such is a comment on how “little” money you make in her eyes and an expression of her desire for you, not her, to make more. Yes, she doth protest too much.

Any woman who reserves the right NOT to go camping with you, but additionally dislikes the fact that YOU are going camping. Many women do not like camping simply because it is dirty and time consuming and difficult. That is their prerogative. But when those same women do not want YOU to go camping, it is for a much deeper reason. They will claim that it’s a desire to spend time with you. That’s false. They could have spent time with you while camping. Some women do not want you to go camping because they do not want you to realize that minimalist living can be perfectly doable and involve much happiness. They do not want that notion to even enter your head. They are phobic of you finding truer happiness in simplicity and the basics.

Any woman who lies about birth control.

Any woman who jokes about trying to get pregnant so that you’ll have to move to a larger home.

Any woman who insists she’s only slept with one man, making a baby, but for whom DNA testing proves otherwise. Interestingly, we rarely hear the sexist term “gold-digger” for these few because the label gets buried under the somewhat more sexist term, “slut” when this occurs. Forget not, however, that failing to know a baby’s father is an altogether common mistake. The lying insistence that she’s only been with one man, on the other hand, is a deceitful attempt to entrap a particular man’s skills and bank account and father potential.

Any woman who asks for a very expensive gift, even for holidays, and then never or almost never uses the gift.

Any woman who wishes to go green or to reduce a household’s carbon footprint by cutting back, reducing, reusing, and recycling, but only does so in a way that impacts the spouse’s belongings and not her own, the spouse’s pleasures and not her own, the spouse’s needs and not her own.

Any woman who does not know her net income off the top of her head.

Any woman who insists that her spouse work overtime when his boss does not and when she, herself, does not work overtime.

Sort of the inverse of the immediately above, any woman on salary with a partner on hourly wage who would prefer that her partner spend LESS time at work. While this can be a legitimate concern, for instance, when the partner is a workaholic; it can also be a negative practice. In some cases, the only way for that family to achieve a greater income is for the person on wage to work more hours. The salaried person will hold earnings steady over the year. If income is the family concern, the wage earner, given a high enough wage, should perhaps milk their job for more time. Short of finding new jobs at higher pay, or additional jobs to the ones they already have, allowing the wage earner to max out his time is the only short term solution to boosting income. Asking him to be home more often to help with household duties is fully ethical, but really stupid when it comes to income decisions (doubly so if in debt). This would seem to run contrary to the “gold-digger” notion, but it is not. By asking for this time at home, one is attributing an exact dollar value the man’s personal time. If the man would have earned an additional hundred dollars per week by working said hours instead of coming home, you are directly stating that the loss is worth it. You are directly stating that his home time, rather than being priceless, is worth one hundred dollars per week (one hundred dollars per week you now do not have and cannot get). Attributing an exact dollar value to one’s family time, even accidentally, is demeaning and begins the speaker on the shaky path to affixing a momentary value to everything else that is intangible. His sex is worth twenty bucks, his compassion a few Benjamins, his hopes and dreams a cold, plug nickel. Once a person unwittingly starts along this road it is not a far journey from gold-digging. “He should write that cookbook he wants to write because we can sell that easily, but he shouldn’t be spending his time exercising at the gym because it produces no monetary return.”

Any woman who unilaterally makes the decision on how a couple’s joint income tax returns and refunds will be spent.

Any woman who complains about her income tax returns having been larger as a single woman than as a married woman…as if that were the husband’s fault and not the fact that two completely different formulas are applied by the government. By the way, the same perceived, but not factual, “loss” holds true for the husband as well. These tend to be the same women who insist upon monetary recompense (a larger share of the return) to make up for their fictional “loss.”

Any woman who cannot sit down with her partner in a single session having produced the original of every current bill she has. At least some of these women feel that doing so is a trust issue. They feel they should simply be able to tell their spouses about amounts owed and to which accounts. They feel estimates and guesstimates are legitimate data. Sadly, without account numbers, full disclosure, proof of that full-disclosure, interest rates, payment plan details, and a breakdown of costs and fees within arm’s reach, no legitimate plan can be made to curtail debt, save properly, or cut back on expenses. In so doing, the woman will have left that burden to be fully dependant upon the man to resolve, sometimes without even half as much of the data any person would need to do so. Hence, gold-digger.

Any woman who refuses to have any of the household bills in her name.

Any woman who insists upon having ALL the household bills in her name.

Any woman that wants you to finance her parking and moving violations, either directly with cash/credit, or indirectly by cutting back on the household groceries and needs in order to pay her tickets.

Any woman who cooks two separate dinners regularly, one for each partner in the couple. This is a practice that frequently masquerades as benevolence in that it looks like the woman is going out of her way to please the husband. In fact, the masquerade is a simple one to pull off because a great many spouses do, in fact, make a different plate for her/his partner simply to be altruistic. There are a rare few, however, who cash in on this perceived benevolence when deep down, they, themselves were too self-righteous to eat something the husband likes. Those few usually do this believing that a grocery budget is for the birds.

Any career woman who chooses a single household chore that she fulfills on the regular and mentally offsets that chore against multiple expectations she harbors for her husband. For example, a woman who complains that her man should do the dishes because she cooks, but who also insists her man should scoop the litter box, because she cooks, and who further uses the fact that she cooks in every chore discussion that crops up. This is an over-estimation of either what her one chore is worth or what her career time is worth as compared to her spouse’s. It is a devaluing of her spouse’s time, income, and status in the home (even if he makes more, works harder, and completes more) that sets her up never to be satisfied with any chore the man achieves. It is the foundation of a power vacuum, the woman never satisfied and the man never able to do enough to fill that void. Inevitably he always works harder and more in futile hopes that simple money will turn the emotional tide. (Incidentally, number one complaint in couples therapy made by women… “He has no ambition.” Number one complaint in couples therapy made by men... “Nothing ever satisfies her.”)

Any woman with access to free job search tools, services, and materials before she quits who does not take advantage of them until after she quits.

Any woman who conducts job search from a couch.

Any woman who only applies to one job at a time, waiting to hear back before going on additional interviews.

Any woman who cannot stand a husband being out of work, but who thereafter also complains about which job the husband lands and the strictures of said job, despite the fact that those strictures are out of one’s control.

Any woman who leaves money in pockets in hopes of being surprised when she finds it later.

Any woman, at any given moment, who has more shoes than dollars.

Any woman that has ever mentioned aloud that she HAD TO buy something because it was on sale.

Any woman who cannot go a month without making a purchase.

Any woman who frequently buys two similar items with the understanding that she will simply return the one that doesn’t work out. This is baseless overspending on purchases, on gas, and on time.

Any woman who keeps buying batteries, but never uses her rechargeable ones.

Any woman who’ll accept a gift without a card, but not a card without a gift.

Any woman who plans free calling to your cell phone from hers, but then frequently calls your cell from her landline and frequently calls your landline from her cell, quadrupling costs.

Any woman who has multiple phone numbers, but who regularly fails to pick up any of them. The multiple numbers presume the need for and the ability to contact her, but ultimately waste the caller’s time and money as he will have to make multiple calls for every one piece of information he’s trying to exchange. An added layer of waste occurs when the same woman fails regularly to check her messages.

Any woman who doesn’t pay her bills on time.

Any woman who creates rolling late charges and fees, mitigating the new delinquency costs as a split responsibility between the she and her husband.

Any woman who welches on bets, financial in nature or otherwise. Her willingness to make a bet, but not adhere to the outcome, is a win-win for her and a lose-lose for the other. These tend to be the same women who cannot adhere to a household budget. It’s a fear of future money needs as if one cannot plan ahead.

Any woman who buys the household groceries, then marks off items the husband is NOT permitted to touch, and who finally helps to consume the remaining items while her “safe” stuff goes uneaten. This is a practice that guarantees that “her” foods last while the “shared” goodies go twice as fast. The result is that the husband perceives his wife always having something to eat while he does not.

Any woman who buys milks out of sync with cereals, sandwich contents out of sync with bread, and main ingredients out of sync with ancillary ingredients. This is an unconscious attempt to both stretch food supplies beyond the next planned grocery trip in hopes of affording more exciting food stuffs and an attempt to increase the regularity of eating out. Eating differently and eating out should simply be decided upon via agreement in a couple. If no such agreement can be made, a woman cannot hope to trick the situation into existence with underhanded tactics.

Any woman whose household brings in more than three times the divider amount that is the national poverty line, but who stands up and claims you are poor. One’s poor handling and decision making with money IS NOT the same as the act of making too little money. This declaration is disgusting.

Any woman who simply cannot save up for a major purchase.

Any woman with a credit rating in the toilet.

Any healthy woman who cannot remember most of the gifts you’ve given her.

Any woman who gives you more sex and/or better sex when more money is coming in.

Any woman who would pay for something she could get for free.

Any woman who uses time that could be spent at work clipping coupons, and then allows the coupons to expire.

Any woman who will organize things at work, but not at home where she doesn’t get paid for it.

Any woman who asks her husband to purge belongings for space, sometimes more than once, and then rents a storage unit to fill with her stuff.

Any woman who has more dollars on her than her children have had books.

Any woman with more credit cards than will fit in her wallet/purse comfortably.

Any woman who thinks comfort is a priority.

Any woman who thinks comfort is a basic necessity.

Any woman who takes sick days from work to do something fun and/or costly, but who goes in to work when sick.

Any woman who, if she were to die today, would leave her husband with marital or secret debt that he could not afford.

Any woman who cannot stand for her money to be in one of her husband’s accounts or portfolios, sans access, even if that money is earning more of a return than she ever could or would. Again, we see a marital trust issue here. The problem is that the perception of her husband not being trustworthy with “her” money can only stem from her own secretive dealings with funds. It’s psychology 101.

Any woman who insists that while the husband earns more money than she does, he should pay a greater share of the household expenses, but who does not or can not do the same when she suddenly makes more than the husband.

Any woman who doesn’t pay taxes.

Any woman who defrauds the government to get checks.

Any woman who has raised one or more frivolous lawsuits.

Any woman outside of the entertainment and intelligence industries who has multiple aliases.

Any woman who’ll wear clothes that the husband likes while she’s out at work or out with her friends, but that she’ll never wear for more than a few minutes while at home with her spouse. While this speaks more to a feeling of dejection in the man, the practice often mentally qualifies in a male’s eyes as “gold-digger” pursuant to how it seems as if the woman is putting on airs, building a façade. He sees it as an indicator that her home life is not good enough to be dressed nicely, ever.

Any woman who CANNOT leave the house without make-up. Men jump to the conclusion that this indicates a gold-digger simply based upon the stereotypically feminine attitude that accompanies the act. Men give little nod to a culture that demands appearance driven professionalism. However, the deeper root of gold-digging here is the woman’s treatment of the make-up musts as normal, somehow balanced and on-kilter. Look, “balanced” is a way of saying, “all things being equal.” Well if all things were equal, even allowing for forced cultural mores, there would still be some days with just as much chance you’d leave the house without make-up as days when chances were you’d leave the house with make-up. It wouldn’t be 50/50. Almost nothing’s 50/50. But, whatever the chances, the “equal” chances over time, non-make-up days would occur. They would happen. They would take place and the woman would be okay with them. If non-make-up days NEVER occur, it shows then all things are not equal. It is an overt display of the mental control a woman exerts to negate any chance of being seen without make-up. It prominently tips her hand and shows how she thinks. She is under a perpetual delusion that she should ALWAYS look better than whom she actually is. It’s the ALWAYS that speaks to gold-digging. Always having make-up will cost the most money possible. Always needing to look better is to never feel good about your natural self to be satisfied. In search for greater satisfaction with one’s self, there will be endless related purchases over a lifetime, few or none of which will bear the fruit of contentment.

Any woman who, in practice, fails to treat her partner’s belongings or the household assets with care and respect. The simple, nitpicking peeve of maintaining ones belongings has a direct bearing on finances, both past and future. A cavalier attitude that undermines or negates this maintenance therefore speaks directly to a frivolous belief that one can always buy and consume more. That attitude applied only to belongings not exclusively her own is a further devaluing of the husband.

Any woman that destroys or discards bills, statements, check copies, passbooks, notices, contracts, agreements, and other documents before they’ve been totally reconciled. This practice reads a little bit in a relationship as “destroying evidence” and, at the very least, indicates the woman’s knowledge that what she is doing is in some way incorrect.

Any woman who will not sign a pre-nuptial agreement based on the fact that it is a pre-nup’ and not based upon the document’s content.

Any woman who believes her job search is open ended, but that her husband’s has a limit to time and date.

Any woman who does not consider the gift of tickets a “thing” because tickets are not a perpetual, physical object that she gets to keep. Most women, I think, do in fact like the gift of tickets, but those few in this rare category tend to expect or insist upon another gift in addition to tickets to be pleased.

Any woman who always chooses the most expensive of all available options.

Any woman who always or almost always chooses the second most expensive of all available options “to save money.” You are not fooling anybody.

Any woman who refuses to revisit spending decisions of the past in order to readjust spending decisions in the future. This is usually a practice highlighted with short fight-ender statements like, “That was two years ago,” or “What does that have to do with anything?” One can only learn from the past, even with finances, and a failure to do so is a simple, foundationless hope that money or a financial solution is going to fall into ones lap before death.

Any woman who reserves the right to be a homemaker, but disallows the same option for her husband.

Any woman who gives her spouse gifts that aren’t remotely within the realm of what he might like or want. Such will sometimes tend to occur naturally after couples have been together for many years. They “run out” of gift ideas. It does not change the fact, however, that some men view this as gold-digging, especially (though selfish) if their own gift choices to her still go over well in kind. Where it is the thought that counts, a woman gifting presents that her husband would never want shows the lack of thought therein. No thought indicates that she hoped the cost of an item would be the sole impressive instrument between them. It might further indicate that she expects the same expense in her gifts, like them or no.

Any woman who relies consistently upon her partner for donations to charity or church.

Any woman who only “volunteers” when paid to do so.

Any woman who doesn’t want you playing in a $5.00 poker game because it costs money, but who would ask you to take her to a $200 dinner.

Any woman who buys or receives electronic equipment that she never learns how to use.

Any woman who talks about passers-by in the negative based upon appearance. This is a self-aggrandizing practice not always exclusively related to bigotry, fashion, humor, or narcissism, but increasingly to a comparison of taste expressed through cost in modern times.

Any woman who will not sit down with a financial advisor.

Any woman who will dismiss multiple candidates from becoming financial advisor to a household based upon the advisors disagreeing with her poor money management.

Any woman who sends her husband constant email links, pictures, videos, and texts of things the couple cannot afford, but that she would have the husband buy out of his own pocket.

Any woman who plays the lottery regularly, but has not paid her bills.

Any woman who PLANS on winning the lottery.

Given a lump sum or repeated payout on a lottery win choice, any woman who finds fault with the husband for choosing the option that she would not. This practice is actually engaged in most frequently by women in couples who’ve never won the lottery.

Any woman who spends more on her portion of wedding payments than she pays in household contributions in the first five years of the marriage combined.

Any woman who cuts back on necessities to pay a bill, rather than cutting back on what the bill is for.

Any woman who uses multiple payment types and sources without ever consolidating the results into an itemization of what she spends overall.

Any woman who cashes bonds early and pays penalties when she doesn’t have to.

Any woman who invests time, money, and assets in herself, but not her relationship.

Any woman who argues, delays or ignores her half of the responsibility (when present) for the cost of couples therapy, pre-Cana, household financial advisory, rent, mortgage, insurance, or vacations.

Any woman who refuses to include yearly or one time charges on a household budget because they are a seemingly lesser concern than monthly charges.

Any woman who refuses to include line items on a household budget because to her they are invisible or intangible like insurance, student loans, gas, car repair, interest, internet access, taxes, fees, entertainment, dues, club membership, subscriptions, mass transit, charity, tolls, heating oil, landscaping, child care, medical co-pay, online purchases, tips, and so on.
Any woman who cannot make it from work to home on the regular without making a stop or purchase in between.

Any woman who regularly commits to meeting her husband at a certain time and is instead regularly or always late. Again, while this might not seem too much like a gold-digger offshoot, it screams that time is money. A husband waiting, she’s forced you to push off all other things that might have gotten done had you been uncommitted to the time slot. This, in turn, builds up and collectively impacts a person’s maximum possible work schedule, not to mention long term earning potential. When this happens on the regular, husbands WILL make less money, not only less money than they could have, but less money than they should have in their current positions. They will get less sleep, get fewer chores done, get fewer errands run, acquire fewer opportunities to make extra money, land fewer opportunities to properly network, have less effectual mental time, be on a tighter resultant schedule; cleanliness will suffer; caring will suffer; personal time will fly out the window; stress will increase…all because one’s wife does not value his time. All of these negatives accumulate and spill over into one’s work environment. So, if a person is going to make LESS money, why does it qualify as gold-digging? Because anyone who values her own time significantly more than her chosen partner’s time is just selfish enough to still expect that the husband perform up to his maximum potential despite the collective obstacles she’s inflicted. He can’t put in the hours, but she expects him to bring home the same check. Men view women who always make them wait as gold-diggers simply because men value their time more than they value their own money.

Any woman who talks about what would be a second, complimentary purchase to the single purchase she is making at that moment.

Any woman who does not take an overt, unprompted, verbal interest in her husband’s day and career.

Any woman who, on the regular, talks about something she’d someday like to buy before asking about her husband’s day.

Any woman who continues to dream about being someplace else after she’s moved several times.

Any woman who has to go out every single weekend or travel every single month to keep up her self-esteem.

Any woman who refers to shopping as a meditative state or a stress reliever.

Any woman who nostalgically prefers the freedom of her youth, as afforded by funds from her parents, to the idea of making her own living or living up to the vast responsibilities of her current relationship.

Any woman who would take over the household finances by having her husband hand over his paycheck each week, but who would not hand hers to him if the tables were turned.

Any woman who mitigates cost/value via quantity as opposed to quality.

Any woman who enjoys getting flowers from her spouse “for no reason,” but always waits for an occasion to purchase niceties for that spouse.

Any woman whose finances are so out of control that she needs to skip gift-giving occasions with her spouse or children even if her spouse does not.

Any woman who calls her husband’s work number to check that he is at work. While some of these cases have to do with suspicions of infidelity, others are actually a direct attempt to control when the man is earning money and at what times. The latter scenario is the rarer of the two, and of course men cannot tell outwardly which is which in any given phone call. Some calls might be just to see how he is doing or to tell him that he is loved. However, the caller DOES know the reason for her call. She knows if she’s checking up to make sure he’s pulling a paycheck or working hard. If she is somehow unaware of her own intentions, she is the one, the only one, who can and must examine her inward motivation. Have you ever called your husband just to see that he was working?

Any woman who thinks that actually going bankrupt is okay so long as she is not going spiritually bankrupt.

Any woman who makes a mess that outpaces her capacity to clean it. This is an addiction of sorts that once again demands of the spouse excess time to correct her mistakes, time that could be better spent with family or earning. It not only falls into the “gold-digger” category for the same reason as some of the “less money” practices above, but also because a select few selfish women out there have additionally forced this issue as a medium through which to hire a housekeeper or to move to a larger abode.

Any woman that is incensed by any time or effort her spouse spends entering a contest, but who insists upon half of the winnings when the husband hits the jackpot.

Any woman who votes based on looks. This is a power hunger that speaks secondarily to money.

Any woman who frowns upon her husband improving himself by unpaid, non-career means. This closed-mindedness covers a wide range of practices, everything from women who can’t allow a man to read more than a few pages of a book without interrupting, to more complex doings like finding fault with a man’s quest to climb a mountain or to reconcile with an adversary. Women in this category show no qualms about a man improving himself in a bankable way.

Any woman who simply cannot play a game with built-in limits. I’m put in mind of a game we used to play. It was a little, conversational question about what three things you’d want if you were stranded on a desert island. For a select few ladies, three was a limit with which they could not feel comfortable. Those women could not stick to the one parameter within the question. In fact, the discomfort of having been imposed with a limit was such a huge burden to some, that they would refuse to play despite the fact that the game was complete fiction. I’d never again seen such a frightening indicator as to how some women feel limitlessness is the only way to think.

Any woman who would keep a teaching job she fell into when she doesn’t know about the subject being taught.

Any woman who wants to be well off enough to move to a country wherein she would not learn to speak the native language.

Any woman who finds fault with her spouse’s personal decision to not want riches or fame and the inherent problems that come with them.

Any woman who uses any amount of money given to her for child support on any purchase or payment that does not support the child.

Any woman negotiating a divorce settlement who defines “the lifestyle to which she is accustomed” in terms of a lifestyle she had with a different man or in terms of a lifestyle she hasn’t yet achieved.

Any woman who would accept alimony, but under inverse circumstances never pay alimony.

Any woman who insists that her husband not set bad examples of any kind as a father, but who would teach her child, by example, poor money management habits.

Any woman who outstretches her arm and leaves it extended, waiting, in an attempt to hand her husband an object while both of his hands are already full. While this is not a practice that might readily force your man to jump to the conclusion that you are a gold-digger, it is an indicator. Build up enough indicators cumulatively over time and their indirect nature may eventually and directly lead to the same false conclusion as other poor relationship practices on this list. This particular practice is a forceful attempt, on the woman’s part, to unburden herself of whatever she has in hand, even if it lends triple the burden to her husband. Such can additionally be viewed as the woman exercising license to remain completely oblivious to the man’s state while insisting he recognize her own state. Both give rise to the gold-digger indicator. A great many American woman actually engage in this tiny practice to an addictive extent without realizing it. Culturally, this gesture derives from older, feudal cultures wherein women were stuffed into impossible clothing, made to balance on precarious footwear, and fed so little that they were physically weak if not all out ill. Plus, at times, they were generally looked down upon for keeping fast to any possession, possessions to which a female frequently did not have the legal right. Pre-pocketbook, men held and carried anything that would not be tied onto a woman’s garment. Note how very many other historical cultures did not show this to be the case, the woman’s doll-like lot. Females from northern hunter-gatherer tribes in the Americas did all the work, for instance, chewing every inch of seal skin ever slaughtered in the bitter cold of the arctic to soften the material for domestic use. Women of polygamist, communal sects in this nation sling 60 pound bags of feed over their shoulders, dig wells, prep entire sides of beef. Tribal Amazon women of the mid-to southern Asian continent are described as having purposely severed a single breast from their bodies to give them superior accuracy with their warring bows on horseback. Try moving up the corporate ladder or getting equal pay for equal work if you are a woman in modern day corporate America. No, women in almost all cultures have always carried the brunt of the nastiest, most laborious tasks. So why do women today socially look so longingly back to one, solitary, feudal example? Why do they idealize the only culture that did not exhibit their strengths? The example has been romanticized. If you were a woman stuffed into a corset, it was “romantic” for a man to realize that and to help you carry. If you were so weak you could not lift a pea or even bend over to do so without getting dizzy, it was “romantic” for a man to understand your circumstances, particularly a handsome stranger. This minority of women receiving such treatment, however, was of the court, walking trimmed gardens and frequenting secure, stone dwellings. It is neither to the greater populous of the Italian Renaissance nor to the throngs of feudal serfs that modern women reach for this false romanticism, but to the ever so tiny court culture. They peer back to perhaps one of only a handful of social settings wherein men made it proper for men to help women in this way. They look to a time where only the richest women with the richest clothes and the richest expectations would need hand off a balance-impacting trinket. They look so steadily and with such a fixed eye to the tiniest “romantic” pocket of all the cultures that have ever been that they’ve unwittingly preserved a gesture from second-class citizenry which no longer has any factual gravitas.

Any woman who will risk a $65.00 parking ticket to save a quarter.

Any woman who before marriage looks at all the couple’s possessions as divided into “his possessions” and “her possessions” and who after marriage looks at all the couple’s possessions as divided into “marital assets” and “her possessions.” These women are mentally practicing the very same archaic notions that once legally banned women from ownership.

Any woman who borrows luxury items on more than just special occasions.

Any woman who has never changed her vision of a perfect life, even once, since junior high school. Dreams are fine. Inflexibility is not.

Any woman who does not take an active part in even one of her husband’s hobbies when invited. While hobbies usually have little to do with finances, most of them cost at least a little doe and a significant amount of time. Not taking part in any single one when invited, the woman shows that she wishes to use that potential together time, instead, on a separate hobby of her own. Not always, but in some rare cases, this translates in a woman’s mind and demeanor to “For every hobby he has, I should also get one.” That attitude can be costly. He should take part in one of yours. You should take part in one of his. This will decrease the number of household hobbies by two and save dollars. Otherwise, the problem is a practice that ignores relative cost and instead compares the number of hobbies in a 1 to 1 ratio, as if that has any bearing on life.

Any woman who cheats. While this too gets buried under the other comment, “slut,” the ire that results in a man’s response is a “gold-digger” sourced ire. When a man cheats it is either about sex or having been dehumanized in his existing relationship. When a woman cheats it is because she wants more than she already has, whether that’s more sex, more money, more understanding, or more love. She’s mining for gold from another mine.

Any woman who demands that her husband literally write her a blank check or checks to save time. Again, this sounds like more of a trust issue with regard to what amount the woman might fill in on a blank check, but the fact is that the woman has squandered her valuable time to the point where the mere moments it would take to write down a few numbers and words is a concern. It is once again the husband bailing the wife out of a sticky situation in a way that requires no trust or risk on her part, but both trust and risk on his.

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George Carlin... dead

I've always been fond of saying that comedians are the prophets of our age. Among them, George Carlin was the greatest.

I started listening to him when I was 13 - A Place for My Stuff. With the volume so low we could barely hear it, my cousin and I tried as hard as we could to keep our laughter quiet so we wouldn't get caught listening to dirty jokes. We were rarely successful. Later in life, he taught me so many things: That it was the absurdities of life that made it both intolerable and interesting. That outrageous statements and behavior were ok. That I didn't have to think or speak like everyone else. That social mores are arbitrary and ridiculous. The joy of fucking with the English language and that words were more important than almost everything else. That intelligence is more important than compassion. I can't credit (or blame) him with my liberal use of dirty words, but he was obviously an influence.

He's also the reason I don't have a tattoo, reminding me on one of his specials that they can be used for positive identification.

Some of my favorites:
(apologies for the paraphrasing)

• "You over here. You seven. Baaad Wooorrds”
• (As Jesus) "I really coulda used a bicycle. You realize all the walking I did?”
• (Still as Jesus) "[The loaves and fishes]wasn't a miracle. Turns out, people were puttin' 'em back. Didn't like 'em."
• "Fuck the children!"
• "L.A. is a small woman saying, 'Fuck me.' New York is a large man saying, ‘Fuck you!’"
• "Apparently, in Los Angeles, people will stand on a corner, even when there's no traffic (or very little traffic that you could easily dodge) and wait for a light to tell them that it's OK to proceed."
• "If you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem."
• "Nigflot blorny quando floon!"
• “Even in a Disney movie you can say, ‘Snatch that pussy and put it in a box.’”

My very favorite, since the first time I ever listened to him:

Ratshit! Batshit! Dirty old twat!
Sixty-nine assholes tied in a knot!
Hurray, lizard shit!
Fuck!

Exactly.

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Attitude Adjustment

With all the attitude I've been spewing all over the 'tubes the last few days, this struck me as an appropriate addition:



Once again, thanks to xkcd

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No Cuss, No Muss

Yep, while our backs were turned, feverishly reading my ever thought-provoking piece, Bar None, on the proposal to ban cussing in bars in St. Louis...South Pasadena, California snuck in like a cat burgling rapist and officially declared an annual "No Cussing Week."

AP Article via MSNBC

My conclusion, as before, Pasadena, California is now off of my tourism list. In fact, since the town went the step further to actually implement the idea, I may have to take a step further and march a million people to the Rose Bowl parade to scream out FUCK in unison every ten seconds, just for families and cameras.

Unlike the St. Louis idea, I don't read any criminality in Mayor Michael Cacciotti's move. The official week reads more like a Breast Cancer Awareness Day or a Great American Smoke Out. In a way, that might be considered endearing to have promoted civil discourse on an official level. However, it is again the subtractive phrasing of the observance that represents the slippery slope to free speech issues. "No Cussing Week" could have just as easily been called Professional Speech Day or Expansive Language Awareness Month, Pride in Our Civility Celebration or Champions of Maturity Week. With these titles you can build projects at school. Grammar assignments can turn into forensic debates, words-of-the-day contests can be implemented and involve speech games and communications fairs. The point is that recognizing the power of the English, verbal form in a positive light gives one something substantial with which to work. The possibilities, following a positive name, become as boundless as the imaginations of the program's willing participants. All a "No Cussing Week" offers is the restriction, "don't cuss."

I'm not splitting hairs here. To the reader, what the week is called might seem irrelevant. Few may care about the subtractive verses the proactive. Still, the subject at hand is one that deals with LANGUAGE, speech specifically, and therefore should have had consideration toward the language used to promote it. My complaint is a direct outgrowth of that content. The Mayor's people should have considered that the simple function of a negative phraseology on a speech driven initiative is a tool others use to try to undermine free speech. A "No Cussing Week" can easily lead to "no cussing laws," or "no cussing zones," or "no cussing in film." I mean, can we not see a correlation, extreme though it may be, between a "No Cussing Week" and a town-sanctioned book burning? Far fetched? One modern society did it. How are we immune from repeating those mistakes?

Don't take my alarmist word for it. Right in the MSNBC article it already goes beyond the intent of the official week and speaks of "no cussing" as one day becoming a "quality of life issue." That is so short-sighted. The Pasadena week just got approved and already the foul tool is working its dark function. I guarantee there is no family living in a slum with cracked windows, roaches, heat turned off in winter, hungry kids, and zero health coverage that would consider a cuss free environment an improvement on their day.

Not enough? The 14 year-old that started the club, perhaps even a grass roots movement, is quoted as saying, "I don't cuss...If you want to hang out with me, you don't cuss." It's a line in the sand. It's exclusionary. For instance, I don't drink alcohol, but I wouldn't ask others not to drink around me and I would never, ever imply that failure to refrain as I refrain carries with it some sort of punishment, even the simple penalty of depriving others my invited company. This is what happens when you let a 14 year old determine political policy. The kid had a great idea. He showed awesome initiative and objective. He displayed bravery and exemplified the gut American notion that one person, even a kid, can make a difference. I don't expect a 14 year old to grasp the nuances betwixt the subtractive and the proactive. I do, however, expect the full-grown, mature adults in any mayor's office to understand this and to act accordingly. Their mistake came in taking the idea of a 14 year old and implementing it unrevised, untempered with maturity or wisdom.

Inherently, days, weeks, and months made into official declarations of practice or awareness need to do so in the positive. Black History Month doesn't mean that you need to refrain from knowing other ethnically grouped accomplishments, or trickier, refrain from being a skin color. The Great American Smoke Out is called such for a reason. "Don't Smoke Week" might get some poor schmuck with a Marlboro stoned to death in line to see 10,000 B.C. Bring Your Daughter To Work Day would not work if it were called Ignore Children With Penises Day. I jest, but the philosophy persists into every facet of governing, including many far more important than Secretary's Day or Groundhog Day.

For instance, is it any wonder that of all amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the only one that "failed" or required correction was prohibition? Amendments are used to enforce rights, to acknowledge rights newly realized or admitted at the highest levels of leadership. Prohibition instead tried to take away, not to grant. It tried to limit, to control, to have people refrain from. At its heart, it failed because its attempt ran counter-directional to the purpose of a constitutional amendment. It's why I know that a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution preventing same sex marriage would never pass or last long. It too would run counter-directional to the purpose of ENFORCING rights or ACKNOWLEDING rights.

In short, LAWS are meant to prevent, to have folks refrain from well defined practices we as a society view as bad. They operate in the negative as counteragents to those who'd squelch life, liberty, happiness, and free market. That is the function of a law. Hence, nobody can open up an idea in the negative and sanction it officially without also opening the door to that notion one day becoming a law. The two practices are of the same grain. People who do so, even unintentionally, have their hand tipped. What they are saying may sound like a decent and feel-good proposition that everyone can agree upon. Yet, they are bluffing. If what they had at heart was in any way positive or feel-good, they shant have skewed negative in its expression. They shant have opened that dangerous, dangerous door. For what it's worth, with all our millions of laws on the books, chances are (barring new technological innovation) that everything that requires prevention already has a law against it. Logically then, pretty much anything that's existed for 200+ American years which does not have a law against it, most likely should not. It should remain in that grey area between controversy and blind acceptance that teaches us all how to get along and how to see alternate points of view. We are not just agreeing upon these measures as an existent society in 2008, but as a civic society in the broader sense that includes all American citizens from 1787 until now...possibly even into the future.

This was the vision of our founding fathers. They knew that the pursuit of people driven government and equality would rest upon a body of laws enacted by said people, specifically so that no one person with a myopic mindset could seek office to screw it up. They acknowledged that volumes and volumes of laws might be created in this pursuit and made room for that to be okay. Yet, at the same time, they created a structure and a list. No matter how many preventive laws might ever come to be in their future, every single one of them would be held accountable to, held subjective to this pervading structure and to this pervading list of acknowledged rights. The ability to prevent, to exclude from freedom, would forever be measured against this higher purpose, this documented inclusion or admission into American freedom. The negative would be governed by the positive.

“No Cussing Week” sounds pretty good. It’s not unlike a makeshift Lenten practice or a really good diet. I bet nobody ever explained to the youth that, phrased as such, it is also unconstitutional. Implemented officially, it is therefore a cause for concern. It means there is another upwardly mobile politician holding office in the U.S. who would forego the U.S. Constitution for either his own purposes or for lack of the two seconds of concentration it would take to change the name. His most likely accidental blight on our nation’s governing structure and on our rights masquerades under the guise of ceremony, holiday. If that’s to persist unchecked, why not KKK Appreciation Day? Open a present, burn a cross. Why not a Torturegiving holiday? Turkey, stuffing, and water boarding while we watch a parade.

Look, there are plenty of reasons not to cuss. Variant ethics aside, I like to refrain from cussing as often as possible because I think it means that much more when I do choose a cuss word in the craft of writing.

Refraining from cussing on the regular is also an exercise that elevates intelligence. One stretches the mind by always searching for alternative expressions to aptly describe anger or dismay, sort of the way an improvisational artist, while near boundless in presentation style, can keep a performance PG-13. It’s her/his boundaries that create the intellectual challenge until such time s/he would again artistically choose to reintroduce the blue language.

It almost goes without saying, even in a post-industrial, psychology-aware nation, that cussing in marriage is antithetical to what both people wish to achieve via marriage. Cussing interrupts real communication and thus partnership and slows the journey to common goals with innumerable, needless pauses to marital momentum.

Perhaps refraining from cussing can be used as a tool to set examples for young children, new comedians, etc. We all do it. Nobody would cuss in a job interview or a convent. We have no problem choosing alternative wording and tone when running for office, broadcasting news, or critiquing literature. There is a merit to practicing language in the subtractive from time to time, circumstance to circumstance. It’s a type of extra-sensory deprivation that achieves particularly coveted intellectual results.

However, theoretically that merit cannot be achieved if not for the greater prevalence of the explicative in common usage. A metaphor…the viceroy butterfly. The viceroy butterfly looks exactly like the more prevalent monarch butterfly and is named accordingly. The monarch butterfly is poisonous to birds. Birds have evolved to “recognize” monarch butterflies by sight alone and therefore steer far clear of them as food. The viceroy butterfly contains no such poison, but has instead evolved to look like the monarch butterfly as a form of defense against being eaten by birds. It’s an amazing interrelationship that deepens our understanding of the evolutionary process. Yet, as with all evolution, a delicate balance had to be struck and maintained for us to not yet see further changes in the viceroy. Meaning, the viceroy population must always remain in the minority to the monarch for the subterfuge to work. Once the viceroy might gain numbers over the monarch, the odds of a bird grabbing a poisonous insect go down. Without knowing an iota of math, birds would slowly begin partaking of the food again when fewer resources exist and fewer of their own kind die off in turn. In fact, to exist, the viceroy must always be limited in numbers as compared to a completely different species. Guess what, they don’t know math either.

The same holds true when we examine the relationship between the merits of not cussing and the pathology of cussing itself. The countless merits there are to be found, several of them enlightening in nature, cannot be achieved if there is nothing more common to refrain from. Challenging one’s self to use language empty of swearing would fail to be a challenge unless swearing itself not only existed, but existed to a far larger degree than the unique, individual choice to refrain from it. Cussing, like any other word or word group, MUST be far more commonplace in raw numbers than the personal choice to refrain from it in order for us to procure virtue in the attempt to subvert it. We can neither alleviate the need for the one nor the practice of the other without denying ourselves the rewards to be culled in the contrast. Picture it. How much more expansive would your vocabulary and your speech become if you honestly attempted to refrain from using the word “the” for a year. That would be quite the journey. “The” is throughout common usage in numbers too great to count. Your attempt to the contrary would be a grand challenge with who knows how many intellectual and disserting rewards? Now picture trying, instead, to refrain from using the word “otolaryngology” for a year. It would be far less of a challenge specifically because it is nowhere near as common in usage as “the.” Its raw numbers pale in comparison. Less of a challenge means less of a mental journey, less of an intellectual reward. In a Cartesian sense, we require vast platitudes in mere order to doubt them properly or advantageously.

Mr. Mayor, my fangs would retract if only you’d positively alter the name of your newfound, annual observance. Until then, in my mind, I have to question what you understand about this democratic Republic. Your intentions seem honorable, but your fitness to govern, suspect. It’s like when Katie Couric called freedom of speech a “privilege” or when former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer claimed people should “watch what they say” in response to Bill Maher’s firing from ABC. I’ll give you that cussing can be viewed as bad. However, to whatever degree it might be bad, your official “NO” week is far worse.

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Bar None

While I’m not up enough on the early release of AP affiliate news around the globe to bring you information you probably haven’t already heard, I did think this article about the proposal to ban swearing in St. Louis bars deserved some further debate.

The article contends that police officers in the area need greater leeway in promoting the public peace, specifically in rowdy, night-crowd bars. The proposal is said to lump in the act of cussing with a short list of other “questionable” practices which, if outlawed, would give police the exceptional berth they’d need for better crowd control.

Um, am I allowed to say “screw debate” or “this is fucking ridiculous?” Perhaps “pish-tosh” would be more appropriate. Our illustrious Bullet of My Pants once put it very succinctly. “You cannot make being an asshole against the law!”

I suppose, however, that my mere swearing in an obscure blog entry does little to show these life-o-phobes for the mental nonparticipants that they are. I am absolutely certain that the St. Louis meeting scheduled to discuss the topic will be all but laughed out of existence. Nonetheless, if I trust only in the skimped human gathering of a far off Metropolis to learn from this proposed, obtuse doctrine, I’d be failing my readers. Okay, reader.

Why? Why bars? Well, let’s first handle the “why not” of the tale. This is NOT to give law enforcement officers more leeway for crowd control. That’s a lie. I am well aware that the tenants of freedom as observed in our nation leave a great many law enforcement officers with the feeling of having their hands tied. It is the observance of that feeling that actually makes a great many heroes, their awareness of their limitations, their need to supplement allowable force with immense doses of simple human appeal. An officer who refuses to overstep bounds or who acknowledges the privileges awarded her/him in enforcement is usually a fine example for the rest of the force. More often it is the staunch, black-and-white philosophy of law enforcement that sees hypocrisies and even law breaking on the part of officers and legislators.

I guarantee this “outlaw swearing” idea is not coming from an officer(s) who feels her/his hands are tied. Those officers already know that there is far and away enough existing legislation to do what they need to do in a bar crowd or any other crowd. “Disorderly conduct” ring any bells? Do “noise ordinances” sound familiar to anyone? A heavier handed “inciting to riot” might even come into play here. “Public intoxication” laws have a million incarnations across the country. “Failure to comply” is another funny derivative of “resisting arrest” that, dare I say, might take place in a St. Louis bar from time to time. “Indecent exposure” continues the list while “disturbing the peace” sees countless applications and “reckless endangerment” pretty much knocks the point home. By almost any of these existing laws, the law enforcement officer is provided the authority to exercise good, common sense between arriving on the scene and determining if an arrest is necessary. With any of these laws, it is up to the officer to determine whether somebody just advised him to go fuck himself or if the patron uttered “fuck” when his quarterback’s pass was intercepted in the third quarter. The simple fact is that sometimes swearing constitutes disorderly conduct, and sometimes it does not. Sometimes swearing is part of inciting to riot, sometimes it is not. Sometimes swearing is a direct failure to comply, and sometime it is not. The determination is now up to the officer on the scene. Legislate anti-swearing law, and the officer will have no choice. Any cuss would represent a failure to comply. Any drinking game would be tantamount to disorder by definition. No reasonable police officer wants this. They do not want what little authority they DO have, even with “tied hands,” to be taken away, therefore further tying their hands. It’s a no-brainer.

So, if it is not officers who feel they have tied hands bringing the topic up for proposal, then who…and more importantly why?

The first possibility is the staunch black-and-white legislators and enforcement officers mentioned above. Look for the hypocrisies people! If good cops would never bring it up, then bad cops have an ulterior motive in doing so. Don’t fall for it, whatever it is!

The next possibility is the Disneyfiers of the world. These are the corporations that think all reasonable people want to live in a Magic Kingdom and wear purple pants with great big buttons. Not too long ago, New York City’s Times Square and its surrounding areas were home to an urban nightlife which included a huge real estate swath of cheap, overtly disgusting, adult-only entertainment services. During the day, Times Square was a tourist attraction like none other, drawing in families and theatre-goers, PG-13 seekers and photophiles. Late night Times Square was a completely different place, a place that would sell double-sided dildos on the street, third hand, and home to a clientele who would buy them. Several conservative mayoralties later, for better or for worse, Times Square now looks like the Lion King threw up on it. Candy shops, Mickey merchandising, authentic Bugs Bunny tie-tack outlets and retro’ themed cafes have all obliterated any trace of a single glow-in-the-dark condom within walking distance of the Marriot Marquis. While I was no fan of 25 cent peep shows or those who’d freelance the same outside at 8th and 42nd, I can’t say that I’m all that enthralled with New York City being a big Betty Boop cartoon either. Sex slave DVD knock-offs disgusted me, but near zero variance in the available, touristy, consumer wares, none of which I would ever buy, doesn’t seem quite like Times Square either.

Growing up in the suburbs, we used to have a chain of franchised stores called Times Square Stores. It was a department store, of sorts, following on the heels of Grant’s and their competitors, with the exception of the fact that in each TSS department, some different franchise was making the profit. The only reason anyone ever went to Times Square Stores in the suburbs was the selection. It was the nincompoop, working class dream that one could get a new set of Good Year tires just paces from tiny, pink, Easter shoes that made it attractive. You could get a full set of earthtone, stoneware dishes in the department right next to the sale on imported newts and newt tank accessories. Before Wal*Mart and Kmart, before Target and Caldor, Times Square Stores made selection diversity synonymous with convenience. I knew about Times Square Stores before I ever knew about Times Square. Once I learned about the place the store was named after, I couldn’t wait to grow old enough to go there. I mean, if the price and selection at the store that BORROWED the name was so colossal, then the real Times Square was going to have products I’d never even imagined on the shelf. Sure, I was dismayed to eventually discover that the “products I’d never even imagined” were nipple clamps and assless chaps, but a guy’s got to learn somehow. Though I never made these impulse buys either, still, they were in fact things I’d never imagined, just as I’d suspected. Besides, lewd toys weren’t the only items available in Times Square, just the majority of them. Today, I can get the same Minnie Mouse pom-pom socks in Times Square that I can get in the Disney Store in Boise, Idaho. Figuratively, that’s about all I can get. Granted, I have to acknowledge the place is much better and that there is more to Times Square than shopping. However, homogenizing Times Square, in the end, gives me absolutely no reason to go there. Their money now comes from some one else and goes someplace else, eventually reaching old Walt in his hyperbolic chamber.

That’s the rub with the theory of Disneyfiers promoting anti-swearing law in St. Louis. If there is any truth to it, one must follow who’d be making the money. The city? The superstores? Special interest groups? Who would profit from a master plan to Disneyfy the area. Step one, make grown men say fiddlesticks. Step two, bring back floor length house frocks and put saltpeter in the food. Step three, build a rat in pants that can be seen from space. St. Louis, I ache for you.

In the end, however, I think it is neither of these groups that would try to suggest such legislation. I think, in our gut, when we look at both the absurdity of the law and the fact that it would only apply to bars and not St. Louis as a whole, we’d have to put our finger-pointing money on FAMILIES WITH SMALL CHILDREN! Ahhhhhhhhh!

This is my generation’s fault, yes FAULT! Oh sure, they lump us all into this Gen X category straining to find any one pan-spawn factor that unites us. That’s because they are looking for something positive. In practice, it’s much easier to find lists of similarities when we look directly at our own faults. We Gen Xers think that since the first step of a process is the hardest, we don’t have to take any of the other steps. We think that if we haven’t heard of something before, it must not be true. We think that part of the determination of whether an act is right or wrong is whether or not we get caught. We think that a two page email is way too long to read as books collect dust on our shelves. We think that everything old is useless and that everything new needs to be user friendly to be worthwhile. Convenience and comfort are actually priorities. And, and, and we think that every place we might ever set foot, even by accident, has to be completely innocuous to our children!

To quote George Carlin, “Fuck the children!” Listen, I write as a brand new father of an absolutely perfect 14 week old daughter. I hold her and feed her and change her diapers every day. I joke about her becoming U.S. President in 2042. I speak both baby talk and educational lingo to her on the regular while always making time for play. She is my light, my heart, and my hope. We waited and tried for a very long time just to have her and I relish what will be our time together. I fear for her safety, plan and wish for her future, pray for her happiness, and even wonder at her simple presence with my own child-like eyes.

Even I, however, realize that there is a difference between a child and an adult, the adult being the first tier. It’s not as vast as say, the difference between another animal and a human, but it is an enormous difference nonetheless. For me to expect that every single threshold I might cross, that each and every doorway I might darken, has somehow keenly brought itself up to the benign specs that would fascinate, but not negatively impact a six year old is the epitome of self-centered drek. Overwrite that MP3! Wear bulkier pants! Picket HBO! Give that guy a ticket for spitting! The color of that blouse is way to close to fleshtone! It’s like we want to raise a nation of Eloi.

As long as there are both adults and children in a free enterprise society, there will be businesses that target every niche. There are going to be some businesses that cater directly to children: Gymboree, Fruit Roll-Ups, rated G films. There will be others that cater to adults with a particularly naughty feel: Hooters, strip clubs, casinos. There will be still others that cater to adults with no such naughty feel: sports bars, cigar bars, red carpet affairs, wine tastings, gaming tournaments. Lastly, there will always be businesses that cater to the whole family: Red Robin, parades, zoos, Friendly’s, amusement parks, museums, etc.

To attempt to make EVERY place “family friendly” only serves to put other family friendly businesses out to pasture. Claiming and asserting that everything or that almost everything is supposed to fit into a single, American, child-proof niche, makes a shitload of competition within that niche and puts people out of work while dumbing down the consumer. Yet, you do not need demographics and economic mumbo jumbo to convince you. What you need is to swallow a much more jagged pill!

Starbucks is not responsible for raising your children! You are! Oh sure, it’s easy to agree with when stated like that, but have you examined where you’ve failed this test? In truth, the very existence of “family friendly” restaurants and their kind is because YOU are too much of a baby to make a sacrifice for your child. In American decades past, families took children to visit other family members and that was about it. The rest of the time, babies and kids were at home and at least one adult was too, parenting. Babies and kids, for the most part, were completely unseen in hotels, in restaurants, on planes, or wandering the exquisitely safe aisles of the local hardware store. Just the outside chance your child might cry was considered embarrassing, even rude. You’d catch a child or two at the movies or in a shopping cart, but they were frequently the exception…and if they so much as spoke too loudly they were immediately removed by the parent. Somewhere along the line, you, you who wanted to be a rock star and have the world on a platter, you decided that you weren’t willing to give up your daily mocha frappuchino. You weren’t willing to miss the limited time only bacon cheeseburger burrito at Taco Bell. You felt that just because you had a kid, that was no reason you had to give up going out on Saturday or had to put the last place bowling league on hold for a while. You didn’t want to learn how to cook for your child so you decided that the grillman at the local T.G.I. Fridays was going to do it for you, along with all the unyielding nutrition that the occasional cockroach and rat tail have to offer. You couldn’t miss the Joe Namath look-alike contest at Stumpy’s so you insisted that Stumpy add curly fries and clean peanuts to the toaster-oven menu. You decided that the seven dollars that was supposed to go into your child’s college fund was better spent on a Happy Meal because you just had to get out of the house. You were not okay putting your child first and your friends second so you dragged your little toe-headed pumpkin to every booze cruise, antique show, monster truck rally, spa day, tech expo, whites sale, treadmill workout, police auction, and quilting bee on three continents. Sure, you claimed to have ultra-modern parenting skills by virtue of the fact that your kids were exposed to so much, but we know you. More importantly, you know you. You filled the child’s days with all your personal, trivial pleasures because you, yourself had so little to expose them to at home. When it came to raising a child, you were a void, a vacuum of anything remotely relevant and you chose instead to distract your offspring from that with breads and circuses for as long as possible. If you truly wanted to infuse diversity of exposure into your child’s life you’d be taking them to poetry readings and religious studies, to live theatre and on camping trips, to political campaign headquarters and national monuments, to volunteer in assisted living facilities and to charity bike rides, to fireworks displays and to county fairs. Instead you took the child to Pizza Hut and came out the cool parent when you sprang for an extra topping.

Of course, anyone would have to acknowledge two more recent points of order to this trend. First, no one wishes to downplay the sheer torture it is to hold down a job or two and raise a child as a single parent. I doff my hat to those who do. You are heroes. Second, it is true that the very decades I speak of when explaining that kids spent much time at home were decades where a family could get by on a single income. Today, almost all similarly classed families require two incomes to make the same headway. It is not your hardship or schedule at which I target my venom.

I speak only of the parents of my generation that think the money they make is 100% their own to spend. I speak of the thick skulls who honestly believe they cannot leave the house without make-up, the lonely masses that have actually developed an addiction to shopping, the fence post geniuses who cannot “make it through the week” without a Krispy Kreme, the intricate thinkers that claim it will cost more to buy school supplies than it will to shut off the cable for a month, the consumer hoarders who claim that a cluttered house is still a clean house because clutter is not dirt. It is you. You with all your flimsy, flighty, whimsical personal wants, not a one sacrificed at the sudden alter of parenthood, you who still think you can have it all if you try and that dying by trying is somehow admirable, you have paved the way for the outcry, “Give us family friendly!” It is you, the enabler. You need someplace to go, go, go. Your condescending, uncompromising, unwillingness to stay at home and read a book aloud or just take a walk in the woods with your kid has sprinkled fast food chains and tabloid magazine racks over the blemished face of a once great country. Now, having expanded your kid-friendly options to McDonald’s and drug stores and Ikea, fashion outlets and racquetball clubs and virtual reality kiosks, travel and concerts and dance clubs, now you want to go further and take the bars too. Sure you could drag the entire family on an Amtrak excursion to the Mall of America, but you miss having a beer with the boys and watching the instant replay of the Chargers’ shoddy defense. You know Dr. Phil will hate you if you do it by yourself, so the only way to accomplish it is to drag Buffy and Jody into happy hour. That means unplugging the juke. That means you’ll demand pork nuggets and crayons at the table. That means the seat at the end of the bar is now the homework seat that makes your bartender no money. These are things you’ll demand to make yourself look like a good parent after having failed miserably at it. Not being a bar-goer myself, I’m almost apt to let you have them. After all, it’s no skin off my nose. You do all the work and that’s all the many more places I’ll be able to take my daughter to pee at the drop of a hat. However, when you are willing to rescind the basic tenants of freedom of speech by FORCING Big Tom and Stinky to say, “Fudge that coach in the patooty,” BY LAW, that’s where I draw the line. Every establishment will not be molded into a haven, bar none, that prevents me from calling Child Protective Services on you. If there is nothing good at home, then you are a crappy parent anyway and I am not going to reward you with cheesy fries and malt liquor.

There are plenty of words that offend me. There are even more words that I just do not want to hear. However, I am not indigent enough to think that people need to be ticketed or to go to jail for their use, even around my daughter. Has no one in the St. Louis legislature seen Demolition Man? Exactly what you are proposing was one of the biggest running gags in the film. Are you trying to be the laughing stock of the U.S.? Is there not one city representative who’d ever watched Footloose? Is Kevin Bacon coming to dance at your meeting? St. Louis, I love your zoo. I marveled at your basilica. The steamboats, the arch, every fiber of visitor in me found plenty to satisfy in your fine city. Again, I don’t even go to bars. Yet, if you see fit, under any cockamamie excuse, to pass a law against parts of speech; slang, cuss, or otherwise; you’ll pretty much be off my destinations list for good. Legislators are not lexicographers and passing the bar does not give literal dominion over them.

To conclude, I am probably wrong on all counts. Perhaps there are no bad cops, Disneyfiers, or marginal parents screaming for this St. Louis meeting to take place, for this law to become a reality. But you are having the meeting and you are then stretching for a way to explain it. Somebody out there has their underwear in a knot or is salivating at the prospect of making money at the expense of others. Somebody out there is hankerin’ for a Beverly Hills Cop style take-down technique or the chance to overtly redeem himself from being a crappy father. Whatever the source of the idea, you are not truly saying. You’ve refrained from stating a viable reason and in the doing are basically calling your own St. Louis citizens too stupid to notice. I don’t believe the people of St. Louis are that dumb for a second! St. Louis, you’ve got your work cut out for you and I hope the meeting is severely baptized in what will prove history’s greatest morphology of creative and everlasting profanity. Good luck pig fuckers!

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