Everyone is wrong about zombie metaphors.
They shuffle exhaustedly. Their eyes are dull and empty. They're falling to pieces. Their lives are gone but they're forced to carry on. They're creepily obsessed with consuming the organ of experience of those still alive.
Zombies are a metaphor for parenthood.
Political correctness is both simple and benign. It's telling someone who's being a dick (to people who don't deserve it) that they are being a dick. That's all. Yet the response is generally along the lines of, "Boo hoo hoo! I'm so oppressed! I was being a dick, but you called me a dick! Boo hoo hoo! You're worse than Hitler!"
Sack up, dick. You apparently see yourself as mentally tougher than the crybabies who can't handle mean words, but this "poor, poor me" tantrum casts doubt on that, to say the least. You're being a dick. Own it. Otherwise, you're also a pussy.
Political correctness can be tedious at times, but the backlash against it is both tedious and pathetic.
I'm not going to claim to be politically correct, but I hope I never whine about how oppressed I'm being. You know, by those jackbooted thugs with their... disapproving looks and wagging fingers. Or something. What kind of weapon of authority is it that they wield? I forget. Maybe it's too horrifying to remember.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, the term was coined at a time when Communist Party members in the U.S.S.R. were being criticized by Socialists for keeping to the "correct" position on political matters "regardless of their moral substance". In the seventies it was picked up in the western world by the New Left as a joking "guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts."
In the nineties, conservatives picked up the ball and ran with it. "Political Correctness" is a perfect term to use when you want to paint your opponents as being intolerant. As, sweet irony! "I'm not being intolerant by not tolerating [group]. You're being intolerant by criticizing my intolerance!" It's practically guaranteed to work, not because it makes sense but because it takes the burden of guilt off the shoulders of your ideological followers and places it squarely on anyone who criticizes their philosophy.
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| 12 Years, Gone |
I had twelve years. For some that may sound like a lot, but a parrot like my dearly departed Eutychus should live to be 25, give or take. Besides, how can that few ever possible be enough, let alone a lot? She was my baby. I raised her from when she still needed to be hand-fed. She was my first and only pet, although parrot folks might argue that the relationship tends to go the other way. I miss her so damn much.
Now, when I'm coming home and I step inside, the lack of her hits me almost physically. It did even when she was at the boarding facility before and after a vacation. More so when she was at the vet. Now the routine of our reunion is gone forever. No more whistles and squeaks when I say, "Hey, little bird! I'm home!". No more dancing green bird waiting to be taken out. No more little bird head rubbing against my cheek. No more satisfied noises as she settles in on her perch: me.
Now I'm greeted by silence and a covered, empty cage.
I was thinking that when a person dies and we're covered with grief we can imagine them encouraging us. "She'd want me to be strong and happy and move on," we think. It doesn't really work that way with pets. Perhaps if Eutychus really were capable of thinking such thoughts, they would be thought. But she wasn't and she definitely isn't.
What she would want is scratches. And maybe some apple. More than anything else, though, she would want her perch: me. She missed me every time I went away. I think, to be honest, that she would want me to miss her.
I do. I miss her so damn much.
