BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS and OTHER HYPERBOLE

All languages change over time.  New words or spellings of words are added. Sometimes words go out of favor and are eventually considered archaic or are never used again.  If the word or terminology is used for a while, a few decades, it can be show up in the dictionary,  Then there is slang which sticks around for a season or a generation or two, usually a short cut in language.

I had a friend who used the term BOSS. Just about everything she liked was BOSS.

Lately BOSS got turned into THE BOMB...

Technology has introduced new words and definitions for words such as Cookie.

Are you using slang or terminology from another culture or era?

I know I sometimes say something that my mom or dad would have said and I wonder where they got it from.  Sayings that, when it comes right down to it, do not seem to relate to our culture or life experience such as.  "After a while crocodile."  To which one responds. "See you later alligator."  (We did not golf, so this cannot have to do with perhaps wearing the right shirts.)

Film informs us of how people talk or talked, such as all those gangster films (1930's-1940's) which brought organized crime slang into our pop culture language.  I use the term moola for money, which I think of as funny or dismissive of money. (Mafia and criminal slang of more recent times in films overuse the slang term that originated in Germanic language, f*ck.)  I cringe when I hear people calling murder, "Taking Out."

But, re my criticism of a recent Politically Correct film in which historical figures from decades ago were envisioned as heroes of civil rights and used present day slang and terminology such as "Conversation,"  and "People of Color," maybe we should be skeptical of dialogue in Old Hollywood films as well. Maybe gangsters did not all go around calling money, moola, or maybe they too had regional or cult terms. Maybe they were stereotyped in those films.

Why would anyone who knows criminals do damage to individuals and society as a whole want to honor them by using their slang?

Then there are the words used improperly to exaggerate, words that are histronic.

For instance, the term BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS has been used in recent years every time there is a threat of a natural disaster associated with climate change, such as hurricanes. Well, the storms do seem to be getting more and more destructive, impacting thousands. Still, Biblical Proportions always implies the Great Flood in which the Entire Earth was destroyed, covered in water. There has not been a rain storm on earth that Great since, so I do wish newscasters and the reportage media would quit using it inaccurately, as a means to hype people up with fear and make them evacuate.

Think of how subtle but powerful a simple word such as BAD is instead.

You get a phone call about someone who has just gone to the hospital. The caller simply says, "Christine, it's BAD," and I'm on my way to the hospital to see that person as they die.

Another wrong usage of our language seems to have started with young, hyper-positive teenagers and young people, especially girls and young women.  That is the use of SUPER, which is being used as a modifier. SUPERSWEET, SUPERIMPORTANT...

SUPERMODEL is also an exaggeration. SUPERMODEL is applied now to models or actresses and entertainers who said they modeled, which they did a few times perhaps, or did without ever earning a fortune from it. Supermodel has been in our language over 2 decades but should be applied only to those models who appear on numerous magazine covers with the effect of becoming known throughout the world and become rich from modeling. Gigi Hadid for instance is a Supermodel, but what's-her-name Heidi Klum was never and is not. She's pretty, has no embarrassment of showing her breasts, and perhaps has other things that are nice about her personality or talents, but she was never a SUPERMODEL.

SUPER has taken the place of VERY, which is also overused. The words sweet, important, all words, can stand alone in their meaning.

Hyping words up with SUPER actually has a dulling or deadening effect to their meaning. Hyping up attempts to create more importance and drama to the word to the point where we search for or invent a word that implies even more. Overall, we are better off using an exclamation point but, before we do, asking ourselves if really the word or the sentence deserves one.

I know that once one gets the hang of using words like SUPER or f*ck, somehow it's difficult to rid yourself of them.  A good reason why one ought to is that the older you are, the more you sound ignorant or stupid, like you actually don't have much of a vocabulary.

Sometimes I think hyperbole has something to do with the whole Positive Thinking movement, for along with SUPER, SO is also used to exaggerate. In a revved-up, sometimes sing-songy way, the young woman thrills,  "We had SUCH a good time. She was just sooooooo excited.  I am so-ooo going back there!"  

If she's talking about Burning Man, I get it, but if she's talking about a birthday gathering at the local pizza parlor, I take it this person doesn't get out much.

Fantabulous, supercalifragilisticexpealadocious, or giamonstrous?

Hell no... these are creative terms but...

Fantastic, fabulous, giant, monster, are all stand alone words.

Even using them, a more accurate description might be good, big, or lizard.

I ask you to think about this and urge you to use accurate words, expand your vocabulary, cut the slang, just as I'm trying to.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

DOUBLE TALKIN' JIVE by MATT SORUM and CO-AUTHORS : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

Double Talkin' Jive " True rock 'n' roll stories from the drummer of Guns n' Roses, the Cult, and Velvet Revolver.  Authors are Matt Sorum, Leif Eriksson, and Martin Svensson.

The best rock and roll memoirs are by Pamela Des Barres, who does not at all appear in this book.

I really wanted to be thrilled with a rock and roll memoir, but as you may have noticed if you read my blog, I've read a spate of them in recent months, just seeking that thrill.  Instead I encountered a lack of introspection,assurances that it was all fun - and typical - to do drugs until one had turned into a a "total burn out" addict, and references to people, events, and experiences where you really had to be there: if you were you would not be reading a memoir.

So I was disappointed in this memoir, just not as disappointed as I had been of past ones.

I borrowed it as an e- book, at a library where I had been number one on the wait list, and I was so bored with it, I think I skipped some pages, as I hit the button to get to the next page. Not much to wrap your mind around in this one.

Too bad, because Sorum is a great rock and roll drummer, and life didn't just happen to him.  He was ambitious and focused and he showed up a lot, which is, as they say, half the reason for success.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

DOREEN VIRTUE'S CONVERSION and MY IRRITATION WITH "CHRISTIANS"

Over the last weekend, I burrowed in.  No phone calls, no going anywhere, although the sun and breeze were out there to be enjoyed, it was enough to see through a window a small portion of garden, still living after the last heat wave burned through and killed off an expansive jasmine and much else.  I worked on a crochet project, something I've been trying to invent without a pattern, endlessly listening to YouTube videos, looking to see what ex-New Ager Doreen Virtue had posted since her radical "one-eighty" conversion to fundamentalist Bible-based Christianity. 

When it came to those associated with the New Age Movement, Doreen Virtue was famous. She may in fact be the person who made the most money and became the most famous among those who toured, giving lectures and classes. (Think Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra and those in the Self-Help business.)

If you've never heard of Doreen Virtue, you must have been living in a cave (not just burrowing into one as I've been) or not living in California. 

She is the person who always said she was a Christian while earning a fortune with books and divination cards that featured Angels. She also holds an advanced degree in psychology and once worked as a therapist. She published about 70 books, none of which I read, but I did own a deck of her Angel divination cards and for a while used them to focus my thoughts. I don't want to use the word meditate, as I don't and have never been in a meditation practice, but let's say I used my Angel cards deck for a few months back in the day to direct my focus to deeply concentrate regarding worldly problems. Her assurances that she was coming from a Christian point of view and that her card decks featured Angels, which were reported in the Bible including the Old Testament, was comfortable to those of us who wanted to be on the side of Good. (That statement in itself could move this post into an entirely different direction.)

Once Virtue, who then lived on and owned an estate in Hawaii, discovered the Bible (King James) portion in which it says that Christians are not to be or involve themselves with divination and so on, and realized that she was an abomination to God, she sold off everything, downsized, moved, and begged God/Jesus to forgive her. Her publisher, Hay House, fired her, which makes sense. She asked them to stop selling her products. She says now her products are being printed and sold without her permission by intellectual property bandits out of China, and is asking people not to buy them. As a side, I happened to see an unopened, pristine Angel card deck being sold for near a thousand dollars on the Internet - wish I still had mine. She now regularly makes videos, all of which are interesting, some of which include guests of her same persuasion. Several witches and others who also run YouTube stations have posted about her; first there was shock, now they sort through betrayal. She emphasizes that Jesus saved her when she was already a senior citizen. (Last minute repenting and redemption.) She is criticized as basically doing all this to redirect her career, as a publicity stunt perhaps, that she could not possibly be sincere. I think she is. 

While touting the Protestant Bible, Virtue and her peers are anti-Catholic, anti-Latter Day Saints, anti Jehovah Witnesses ; you see these three entirely different religions can be put into a category.  

I'm always irked by Protestants who are anti-Catholic and have absolutely no desire whatsoever to be involved in the competition for souls or the whole Protestant versus Catholic debate, for I will always be ethnically Catholic, if not a devout believer; It seems in the Protestant versus Catholic debate the very Christian ideals of empathy and tolerance are challenged. (And if you get involved in a church or group that claims to be Interfaith or Ecumenical and does not include Catholics, get out of there! They are fraudsters.)

I listened to hours of Doreen Virtue's new YouTube videos, that included her friends, going against the New Age Movement.  Her list of things Christians don't do includes yoga for exercise, Reiki and other forms of energy healing, enigrams and personality tests, anything Buddhist, anything Hindu, astrology, of course - on and on it goes. 

She and her friends also go against ART, any representation of Jesus, so I suppose they are in that category of people who want historical statues taken down, the equivalent of book burners. Like Muslims, they claim that representations are IDOLATRY. Even the Shroud of Turin and relics are idolatry. 

However, Virtue does make some points, all of which I could argue against.  

She says that people who are attracted to the New Age Movement are basically broken people who are in desperate need of healing. I would say that just living on this earth is enough to break just about everyone, more or less. I don't know anyone who isn't stressed a little or a lot. I would say that spirituality or religion in any form is about dealing with the stresses of life on earth.  I've met people who think this IS hell.  Some say it's a school.  I think we are all tested.

She also says that it's supposed to be about what God wants, not what we want and the New Age is focused on knowing what we as individuals want and getting it.  Well, I say, God has not done a great job of protecting his People (The Holocaust) and so many babies are born to die, most humans on this earth are struggling to survive.

What she describes as her experience as a New Ager, I would call religious addiction. She describes taking very many classes, very many certifications.  All of it ultimately unsatisfying.  She stopped her seeking and settled. And now claims to be at Peace.  

She says she honestly thought she was a Christian, as she had been raised in Christian Science, which she says is a false church, one of many. (My guess is that in her world view only the one percent who think like her are going to be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven and almost all churches, including the particular Protestant preachers she targets, while claiming not to target them, are false. In one of the more recent videos she says that the Bible says women are NOT to be leaders in the church, not to be preachers, but they can be Women's Bible Study teachers. That's RIght. In Christianity, women have their place, and that is not to have equal opportunity to men.*)

Demons pop up all over the place, pretending to be nice and helpful, and demons are the ones telling mediums and psychics what information they relay to you, just to get you hooked.  There is one and only one diety/person you should rely on, that is Jesus.

(I once had a friend who was earning a Doctorate in a science, but who was no doubt addicted to love in an infatuation that was going nowhere, and having Tarot card readings once a week.)

Near Death Experience are not to be trusted because it is not true that it's all good, that you can do no wrong, that there is no punishment.  Hell is forever and people involved in New Age activities and ideas are going there when they die.  

Ok, I personally hate the idea that people who have done wrong to me - the predators and opportunists and users - will get away with it in the afterlife, just as they may have on earth. However, the idea that a person who is broken from the earthly experience and seeks healing and who does that through the New Age experience such as scented oils or trying to not be overwhelmed in negative thoughts, though they are in a terrible time, will be punished in hell for eternity is ridiculous.  (You can read my doubts about the whole Positive Thinking thing elsewhere.)

She says the New Age denies that evil exists.

I know evil exists.

She says it is not enough to be a "good person." One must also believe in Jesus, that he died on the cross for our sins; depending on which of the many variations of Christianity you're into, this belief in itself may be your Salvation. I never trust the last minute conversion of the evil.

I do think evil exists but not everyone is demonic and out to get you.

Can she, or any "Christian" actually face someone who does not believe as they do, say a Jewish person, and treat them with respect?  I doubt it.  What such Christians do is become exclusive and avoid those who do not support their notions so they don't have to deal with them.  When you think cult, don't just think Moonies.  Certain Christians become cultish too.

I totally disagree that it does not count that you are a Good Person.  I think we should all be active in trying to make this world a better place.

As a society and culture we struggle with What Is Good?  I realize.

When actually we are often choosing between The Lesser of Two Evils or even kidding ourselves that we have Choice.

This all ties in with a recent foray though, which is what made me think to check out Doreen Virtue's latest.

I have a neighbor who works all night and sleeps most days, who has been in the same little house rental for years and can barely keep up with the rent. Her landlord told her to get a room mate but I was in there once and there is no room for a roommate. The asshole also has not repaired, repainted, refloored, in years. I saw a roach going up the wall.

Once in a while she goes for free food distributions. During Covid the LA Food Bank set up in the area. I went over there a few times and picked up items for her, knowing she was not able to. Recently she lost her job.  I know her many children do not live local and only one of them sometimes looks in on her. (I sure hope they are able to pitch in and pay their mother's rent when she is unable. I get the feeling she is very much alone.)

So, I spotted a newish food pantry set up at a church not too far away and went over there to see who was behind it and what they had. It turned out to be a Christian group, which is not surprising since their set up was at a small old Protestant church. They had moved from another location that was too expensive for them. I'm aware of that location as a friend who is active in another church near it said they were massive pain in the asses with their overly loud praise-God amplification that boomed out of the doors and disturbed the quietude of other church's services.

A few years back I met a woman who was working on a book, for which I did a tiny bit of free editing on. A relative of hers paid for her to publish her book, which was full of poetry she had written that was spiritual/religious Christian. I'm not putting her down for this.  She had tremendous odds to deal with after being severely injured in an accident. She credits her faith, her prayer, as slowly overcoming a long period of hospitalization and much else. This works for her.  Great!

But there she was, at this new food distribution site, volunteering. I knew this was her third, possibly fourth Christian church that she had been involve with.  If she is church hoping seeking the right congregation, I understand, however, after cries of recognition and hugs, she actively sought to make me pray, leading me into the rental church to see it. She was glowing and happy, but she was also pushy, giving me the congregation business card, telling me they had a huge meeting house elsewhere in another town, urging me to go inside the church. I felt like saying :I love architecture but a person does not need a physical church to pray. When I packed up a few items for my now unemployed neighbor, I was asked by someone with a board what my name was and if I was there for food or prayer.

It was OK; a couple nice stained glass windows, a young guy facing the stained glass window with a guitar turned up loud, and a woman with her hands upright in the "praise" position, which always makes me think "Beam Me Up Scotty" (Star Trek) or, when done in groups, perhaps the worst scenes of conformity from the Steven King film "Cell."

There are just some things a person feels to be wrong for them, uncomfortable, in the gut. This type of worship is uncomfortable to me. 

Why do we think God or Jesus or Angels or Saints are always UP in the sky? Why is "heaven" UP.  Is this a posture to admit we are LOWER?  Should we grovel?

Really, is 21st century religion still about some time in the past when there were Gods on earth?  Giants on earth? Beings that needed to be pleased or they would (and did) punish?

Is this planet being visited by Aliens in UFO's?  Have they always been Watching us?  Interfering in our evolution? Harvesting our DNA? Killing animals to feed?  Doing genetic experiments? 

Are demons showing up in our bedrooms at night and paralyzing us?  Or is that actually a physical, medical, sleep disturbance issue?

I looked around the rented old church and said "Nice stained glass windows. This looks like it was built in the 1930's, maybe the 1920's?"

I barely escaped without forking over my phone number.  As much as I have liked this woman and in a sense admire her, I knew without a doubt that I did not want to hear from her. I was not, ever, going to join this church. Her glow may have come from inner Peace or being Favored by Jesus, or it might be that over-zeal of the recent convert.

I took the bag of groceries over to my neighbor and said, "You may want to go over there next time since you're not working. They have produce but they want to pray for you or with you, which I can't stand."

She nodded and said "I'm O.K."

She was standing there, with a Mexican blanket over her head like a hood. I got the distinct feeling I had maybe interrupted her while she was doing her own form of prayer.

C 2022  Christine Trzyna

Note: this post was slightly edited for more clarity 9/29/2022

MORTIFIED : EXPERIENCE THIRTY-THREE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

 Write about an experience in which you were MORTIFIED.

C 2018-2022  Christine Trzyna 

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love.  It's karma.

THE QUEEN IS LAID TO REST : I WATCH THE CEREMONY OF THE FUNERAL FOR THE WORLD'S LONGEST REIGNING MONARCH

Long ago my friend who exaggerated everything called me an "Anglophile" simply because I had asked her to read a short fiction piece from a woman's magazine - maybe a Cosmopolitan - that I really liked - in which there was a romance in Britain.  (If I remember it was something to do with a bog man?)  So, to clarify, I have never considered myself an Anglophile.  

It's easy, comparatively, to know of Great Britain, the Royal Family, and Queen Elizabeth II, because they are all over the news.  This has something to do with that we speak some version of English and that the United States and Great Britain have been allies.  Language defines us as members of the same heritage as does American History.  My personal heritage has nothing to do with Great Britain or British History, or Colonial, Expansionist empires. Still, I watched the funeral of the Queen, just as I had with an associate who grew up in India, Princess Diana's funeral.

To also clarify, I'm not much into pomp, parades, military. I've never been a member of a marching band or such. Still, I found the whole thing fascinating.

Here is my take:

1) I did not know a single song or hymn sung or played and I did not understand a single word sung. s I thought the choir voices were beautiful but I no more understood the lyrics than my parents did the lyrics in rock and roll.  I thought maybe these are PROTESTANT hymns and that is why.

2) I wondered how all those members of the Royal Family LEARNED how to lock-step and remembered which way to go.  It appeared they ALL had a lot of practice. I wondered if anyone's somber expression had to do with counting steps so as to know when to go left or right or up or down stairs. 

It is an image of cooperation, but also conformity.

I also thought what amazing endurance and fortitude the family and others who are not in the military must have.  Maybe it's genetic.  If I had to do all the walking they did behind a coffin, I would have been exhausted.  I might have even been one of those who fainted.

3) I've long thought Charles II should be King and Camilla, the Queen (er Queen Consort), and considered most of the speculative "news" over the decades, such as that the Queen would skip over Charles to appoint Prince William instead, to be "filler."  

4) Though the thousands of spectators had a different view and were not in hearing range of the same dirge played over and over again, as someone who was streaming video I surely wished that there were more variety.  I grew impatient watching because of that same ominous marching music.

5) Lovely touch, all the Queen's horses, and her Corgi's too!

6)  Very Lovely touch, spreading the flowers that had been left at Windsor Castle all over the grassy areas along the The Long Walk, which is more than 2 1/2 miles in length.

7) Were I in London at the time, I would NOT have waited for hours - days - in order to get into Westminster Cathedral for a glance of the Queen's coffin. However, I did one time stand in a line to vote early for at least 8 hours which was insanity, but for meeting a fascinating person and speaking with her for a while before someone came out to announce that people with drop-in ballots did not have to wait in line.  

8) I don't like funerals.  I think the funeral industry is marketing the lie that funerals are for the living and somehow help people get "closure." Don't spend money on a funeral.  Go on a cruise, send the kids to college, provide someone a down payment on a house instead. 

In fact the whole idea of "closure" is a lie too. Closure, getting over grief, is supposed to be the healthy goal, and now there is a NEW kind of mental illness defined as not getting over grief - going on too long. (More ills and pills?) The Queen said something like "Grief is the price of love."  If you do love someone, you will grieve them for as long as it takes, maybe even forever.  That said, funerals as they are played out, are usually horrible. Better to not force people to look at embalmed made-up dead bodies laying in caskets with ghoulish webby synthetic lining.  Rather let the dead be in privacy and peace and hold a memorial service some other time.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

CARLY SIMON INTERVIEW on HER EXPERIENCE WRITING AND PUBLISHING HER MEMOIR BOYS IN THE TREES

I USED TO BE A KING : GRAHAM NASH

A SONG FOR YOU : LEON RUSSELL

 Happy Birthday My Old Friend!  You Know Who You Are!

A LITTLE HEAT SICK AND A WHOLE LOT BOTHERED

Up at 5:30, sticky, and not a little upset.  

Have to make a phone call at 9.  It could be a long hold.

If it goes well... 

Then I'm going to devote the weekend to doing things I WANT to do.  I anticipate frustration and having to make a long journey in bad air.  I want to skip that call and just go ahead and do the things I WANT. 

I have no courage.

I might have more if the air were cool.

In cool air everyone is more civilized.

The high heat brings out the worst in people. Even those who head for air-conditioning.

Last week or so, we who care decided to save water by drinking it but not showering.

Remembering C from London who said, of her Americanization, "I was used to people smelling like people."

My friend L's dog, part French Bulldog I think, is panting morning, noon, and night. I carry her to the sink where I splash her fat tummy with cold water.   It does not seem to help.  This dog needs to live where it snows.

I hold this dog up to the bathroom mirror and say, "Who is that"  She blinks without self awareness. 

How strange it must be to be conscious and in body, but without awareness of what one looks like.

I drink water, glass after glass. Yet my skin appears dehydrated.

Flash upon the day a few months ago, my dog alive and with me, the two of us sitting under a tree, blanket on the grass, with a wonderful breeze off the ocean, the kind of day you would go ahead and fall asleep if only you didn't have to worry about being taken advantage of by criminals.  

Here came a man with a small dog on leash.  The dog heading straight over to us.

"You must have a good vibe," the man said to me. "He never does that.  This is a dog that was badly abused and I fostered him for months before he was willing to come close to me."

My dog and this once abused dogs looked at each other.

They did doggie mental telepathy.

They wanted to lay next to each other on the grass. 

Was my dog the attraction to the other?

So we talked for a few minutes, the man and me.  He had a clean and pure vibe himself.

He said in a straightforward way, simply being honest, that he lived in one of the tall condo buildings in the area that overlooked the ocean, that he walked his foster dog every early evening through this park, and recently down below there had been a murder.  

Perhaps the park was just so beautiful it was deceptive.  We could not assume safety.

He said that he had come from a small town in Pennsylvania where he'd been raised as a Jehovah Witness, implied he had left that all behind long ago, and financially he "didn't have to worry."  He said, by way of explaining, how he came to foster abused dogs. He said it simply because it was true.  There was no snobbery involved.  It was not said to provoke me to tell my tale.

It was the sweetest meeting of a stranger I'd had in a long time.

C 2022  Christine Trzyna

QUINCY JONES ON CREATIVE PROCESS

From his book 12 Notes On Life and Creativity

Excerpt pages 94-95

As I learned from my two mentors, Victor Young and Alfred Newman, it's important to "just write and turn the page. Never look back." This proved to be an important aspect of creating  in the alpha state, because it's important not to block what your subconscious mind is trying to tell you. Sometimes it's difficult to get started, but you've got to stop overthinking and just begin, even if it's just a single word or shape. Before I pursued music, I explored various art forms such as drawing and painting, and I would always start with a charcoal sketch.  Even if I didn't know what I wanted the end product to look like, I just put down a basic structure or contour.  Then from there, I'd add watercolors and finally oil. When I started producing music, I used a similar process.  That is, I tried not to get locked in right away with an expectation of a final product.  Instead, I followed my instincts and translated them into a basic shape or sound.  The, I built on top of it by defining dynamics, colors, density, and so on.  Start with an image or melody, and let it out.  And as the sketch or song takes shape, you can lay on the watercolors.

Creativity is informed by what you feel, not what you think, and learning to tune into those feelings is what is ultimately going to carry you through when distractions come. I've 100 percent relied on my instincts throughout my career; without doing so, I know I wouldn't have been able to create art that has stood the test of time,  I recognize that it's easier said than done, but the next method I'm going to share with you is without a doubt the best way to do it.

And that method is "the Goosebump Test."

If the music I'm creating gives me goosebumps, odds are it'll do the same for at least one other person on this planet. But if it doesn't move me at all, and I'm trying to do it for the sake of getting a reaction out of someone else, I'll get stuck in a never-ending cycle of mediocrity.  It doesn't work....."

BLUE JAY WAY : TRACY BONHAM