The Electron Pencil

Slut

One of my least favorite words in the English language is slut. Honestly, can you think of a more ridiculous word? Let’s take a look at it.

The Oxford Living Dictionaries, an online resource, defines the word thusly:

That’s it. Slut means a woman who, essentially, likes sex. Yet, it’s one of the worst things we can call a woman.

Men who like sex are…, well, men. Swell guys. Good old boys. Leaders. Professors. Senators. Football stars. Frat boys and high school dropouts. Doctors and lawyers. Radio personalities. Comedians. Newspaper editors. Movie producers. Any and all of them can engage in the supreme refreshment every night and twice on Saturdays, and still be considered pillars of society (as long as — thankfully, now — they don’t compel workplace female colleagues or underlings to service them or criminally assault them). Again, guys who like sex are just guys.

Women who like sex are sluts.

Me? I’ve always found women who like sex to be swell girlfriends or live-in lovers or wives. Sorta makes the whole cupid thing worthwhile, no? Is there a man out there who doesn’t want his wife or girlfriend to like sex? I suppose. Hell, I’m sure of it. We’re really a pathologically weird species when it comes to thinking about sex.

That’s why we call women who like it sluts.

And that’s why I detest the word,

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Honey

I brewed up some mandarin orange non-caffeine tea this AM (I’ll explain why below). As it steeped, I squeezed a healthy dollop of honey into the mug. Nothing like a good hot sip of sweet mandarin orange tea. Well, not much.

Anyway, as I waited for the tea to cool down enough so I could put my lips on it, I read the honey bottle. I satred at the word for a long moment. Honey. It’s funny, I thought, that we should call those for whom we have great affection honey.

It makes perfect sense, though. Honey is sweet and soft and is really, really good. And it’s natural, by and large, unless you buy the economy brand and who on this green Earth knows what’s in that? In any case, whoever was the first to call her or his kid or paramour honey was employing the highest good sense.

It got me to thinking. We’re calling the people we care for a food name. Honey is food, natch. Okay, good sense still carries the day. Food fulfills us, makes us feel good, sends streams of dopamines and/or endrophins coursing through our bodies. Just like the people we like a lot or love.

So why don’t we use other food terms that way? Well, we do. Cupcake. Sweetie pie. Sugar. And more.

They’re all dessert-y words. As if only something chock-full of sucrose or fructose or whatever -ose you may prefer is comparable to eros and agape and philia.

Me? I can eat as many double chocolate muffins as the next person. But my tastes extend far beyond the confectionery. In fact, I want to start calling The Loved One something I constantly crave, something that fills me, that nearly drugs me, that brings me deep happiness. That, after all is why we call our precious ones one or another variety of sweet, no?

My Darling.

I want to start calling her pizza. Thick or thin. Plain cheese or loaded with green peppers, Italian sausage, black olives, anchovies, salad shrimp, mushrooms, or whatever. Piping hot or fresh out of the fridge for that breakfast of champions.

You think she’ll go for it?

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Pharma

Speaking of drugs, scads o’ folks around these parts are either off the grid or partially so. They reject all, most, or a fairly decent portion of modern society’s so-called benefits. One of the biggest bete noir‘s for these people is Big Pharma. Talk to some of these rejectors of the conventional and you might come away convinced that the pharmaceutical companies have never, ever sold a substance that in any way benefits us, relieves our agony, heals our wounds, or prevents sickness.

To these people, the populations of centuries, millenniums, past used whatever they could scrape from tree barks or toad skins and were magically healed or relieved. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: These people are full of shit.

Example: Somehow I contracted a hell of an infection this week. It started out with a seemingly inconsequential sore throat on Sunday. Then it went away, only to return with a vengeance on Tuesday and Wednesday. By Wednesday night, my right ear was tickly, my sinuses were stuffed with concrete, and my right eye was puffed out with conjunctivitis. I hardly slept that night.

We’re Lucky.

Things got worse on Thursday. I could hardly see out of my eye. I was exhausted and headachy. I felt dizzy now and again. So, late afternoon, I dashed over to the clinic. The doctor gave me the once over and concluded I’d been infected by something. I like it when the doctor and I see eye to eye. He prescribed Clarithromycin pills and a different antibiotic eye drop, both to be taken twice a day. I began the regimen Thursday night but then experienced the worst night of all. I consoled myself by thinking my body had shifted into high gear to defeat the invading army of germs that’d started this whole miserable thing, with the help of those drugs. I stayed home yesterday and lie around for much of the day. By mid afternoon, my eye had stopped seeping and weeping, my throat was clearing, the concrete in my nasal passages had broken up, and I could feel nary a tickle in my ear. I jumped in the shower and felt a new man, albeit spent.

So far, so good.

W/o antibiotics, I’d still be suffering. Who knows? Maybe the infection would have done some real damage. You know, the way infections maimed and even killed the populations of centuries, even millenniums, of the past.

Big Pharma’s got a hell of a lot of sins to answer for but the truth is w/o it, we’d be stuck scraping barks and licking toad skins and praying. And suffering and dying.

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