2002-10-30 -

Fire on the Euphemism

Another day, another Liralyn trip to McDonald's. Parents, for the love of god, teach your kids to keep the noise down indoors. If you can't do that, then at least have the decency to NEVER REPRODUCE AGAIN.

I've been sticking to my usual routine the last couple of days, which is why I haven't written a lot. I don't feel like sharing my current weight levels on the Bowflex with the world, the Liralyn quotes will get updated on her page after Halloween, and there's not much I want to say about work.

Let's see, the last interesting thing I did was... oh yeah, Monday night I watched "Fire on the Mountain" on the History Channel. The author got all worked up at a government report, because it criticized firefighters for having a "can-do" attitude. He argued that you can't fight fire without a can-do attitude. I think that's probably true. However, I've read enough excerpts of government reports on military screwups to have a sense of the standard euphemism. If someone was obviously reckless, but you don't want to use such a pejorative word to describe our brave fallen heroes, you call it a "can-do attitude".

How do I spot that and not a published author? Or did he feel the need to invent this quarrel with the language just to add energy to the writing? If it's the latter, it was more distracting than useful.

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