You have a lot of potential, but if you have sex with me you will win

When did we start replacing proper words with their soft cock shadowy options?
When did 'Second Place' become 'Runner Up'?
When did 'being crap at something' become 'having room for improvement' ?
When did 'I am fucking stoked I've won, I've earned it and it's no surprise because the others were shite' become 'it's been an amazing opportunity and I am grateful for all the support of everyone in this competition' ?

Yes, yes.....political correctness.

I'm not new here.

I know.

We soften the blows because we want everyone to feel good about themselves.

Ugly girls have great personalities, insane people are creative, and small dick men know how to use them.

(Christ how I hope that that's true, Dear Baby Jebus PLEASE let that be true, I somehow feel that's not true)

Since the day that Janet Jackson ripped off her blouse to show us her star swaddled Boobie, Gen X's such as myself have lumbered under the weight of 'wardrobe malfunctions, imitation jewellery, pleather and faux fur'.

In my mothers day they would have called all that stuff 'attention seeking, cheap tat, vinyl and fake shit'.

It's the same number of words- go ahead and count them- it's just a LOT less letters.

The prefix that irritates me most, and yes, I know that sounds pedantic, is 'MAL'.

In Latin it means bad, badly, harsh, wrong, ill, evil, abnormal,or defective.

I have mentioned one here already 'Malfunction' which basically means 'busted' or 'broken'....but it appears we no longer wish to hurt the feelings of inanimate object as well, so instead of saying " This computer is BROKEN" we say " This computer is MALFUNCTIONING". Because 'broken' sound so harsh and final, whereas 'malfunctioning' has the word 'FUNCTION' in it, and therefore sounds like there might be some hope.

For that reason we use the word MALADJUSTED instead of PSYCHO, MALCONTENT instead of ARSEHOLE, MALINGERING instead of LYING, MALODOROUS instead of SMELLY and MALICIOUS instead of BITCH.

Note the 'licious' part of that word. Sounds yummy doesn't it?

"What's your new boss like?"

"Oh she's really mal........licious".

"Well, that's nice".

When we add the word 'lingering' to the prefix for 'bad' it sounds like we are hanging back a little, and not terribly well, just wasting time in a sort of romantic manner.

What it doesn't sound like is that we are being an irresponsible cheating twat.

I blame the state we are in on cheap and plentiful education of the white middle classes.

We think big words make us sound smarter.

Everyone knows it is human nature to complicate the simple for the sake of drama or a bit of sport.

When we all went looking for nuts and berries, no one was fat.

Now we can have entire cows delivered cooked to the door, we need gyms.

And weight loss pills, and personal trainers, and running shoes, and support groups, and nutritionists, and sports bras and hand held weights and nautilus machines, and organised fitness classes with excellent names like BODY COMBAT and PUMP UP THE MUSCLES SO YOU LOOK FREAKIN' AWESOME, ALRIGHT GOOD JOB !!!. ( that's not a real one).

We used to take the stairs to get up to the tops of buildings, now we take the lift and go to the Gym to spend an hour sweating with 2 dozen others as we go up and down on an extruded plastic stair.

Of course to do this, we need to take our water bottle, towel, shoes, gym clothes ( including sports bra), membership card and lip gloss- just in case we see someone nice.

It's complicated.

And it is a lot to remember.

And sometimes I forget things 'cause I'm getting old.

But I digress.

Lets bring language BACK to the point where it has meaning again.
Let's scratch of the slough that we have allowed to form over the scabs that are The Wounded Words.

I'm not suggesting cruelty.

I don't think telling the father of a new born that his precious bundle is neither better nor worse looking than any other newborn who has been squeezed from between the hips and out of the vaginal canal of it's mother and that it just looks like a baby.

Coo all you want.

But for Pete's sake, lets at least get back to a place where a kid failing Maths at school is told " You are failing Maths, it appears you are shit with numbers, so you had better find something that you are good at or you are FUCKED" .

'Cause that is a hell of a lot easier to say, and carries more meaning than" There certainly is some room for growth and development in areas such as numeracy and there appears to be some malalignment between expectation and output, although I can see you are defiantly making some inroads and with some more guidance and encouragement you may achieve a level of success, in the meantime you might consider your options and strengths in other areas or you may discover a reduction of options at a later date".

A Spade, A Spade.

It will hurt less than you think, and in the long run it will go a long way to healing the pain of a generation of men and women in their late 30's and early 40's who discovered too late that their androgynous pop stars were all actually closet homosexuals, their Ergonomic Chairs were a ploy to sell broken furnature to yuppies, and that Janet's Wardrobe Malfunction was a publicity stunt with a built in tear away patch and a stuck on nipple shield.