Wednesday, November 04, 2009

I Invent a Totally NEW Word - Please Make It Go Viral!!!

Over at Liquid Egg Product the Mascot has produced, directed and starred in a Halloween Holiday Classic. In the comments, I write:

Seriously dude, I know you’re loyal to Donnie and all but someone with your combination of churtful yet charming snark, slender physique, immunity to criticism, babe magnetism and tolerance for tasteless violence and gore would fit RIGHT IN with most of the Hollywood crowd.

Churtful? CHURTFUL??? I think I meant to say cheerful, then thought to change it to hurtful, and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED! Ma, I done a good thing!

Cheerful and hurtful. And snarky. Yes, that's Hollywood these days. And Washington. And Brussels, for our European readers. You pay for the privilege of going to the movies and finding out THEY are using YOUR money to insult your values and your beliefs, you pay 20-30-40-50+ percent of your income (how high does it go in Europe? About 25 in America right now, but just wait, my American friends, do you think with a $1 trillion ++ deficits year after year that will hold?) to politicians to tell you you're too stupid, you poor sap, to know what's good for you.

You pay, they play and churtfully enjoy the privileges (root-private laws) of being the elite.

Speaking of the elite, Liz Vicary has been on a tear lately, see people who hold views that contradict mine are stupid (part 2) which purports to show through some truly pseudo-scientific gobbledygook that atheists are (of course) more intelligent than all those God-believing idiots:

It just seems so bizarre to me that otherwise intelligent people can believe there is a man in the sky who controls things. And this leads them to kill each other, wake up early on Sunday mornings, wear funny necklaces, talk to themselves, and not do fun things like have sex and eat certain delicious foods.

There's a sophisticated argument. Since atheists like Hitler, Stalin and Mao never kill anyone, and since it's obvious, for example, that those religious types don't have sex, all that sort of thing would presumably end if people would just go atheist and bring about the peaceful, sleep-late-on-Sunday sex-filled paradise they so richly deserve.

Idiots.

But seeing as that was "part 2," let's go back a bit to part 1--have you ever thought that conservatives are all stupid? wherein Ms. Vicary consults some completely different pseudo-scientific gobbedygook purporting that "Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated." I'd like to quote more but do go read her post, which consists almost completely of the article's introduction. The commenters do a good job of questioning the premises, so I don't have to. Remember, if it doesn't pass the "smell test," check your premises.

The funny thing is that with E. Vicary you never know whether she really believes this stuff or she's just playing with the audience. Look at the blog URL...that's the secret of her success. She writes for Chess Life and gets in movies and stuff, and I toil away here, unpaid except for the warmth of my Dear Readers' comments. So, I must say, kudos to her. She's actually a Raven in disguise.

I do hope she was kidding about this one.

One of the commenters there is, coincidentally (really? - ed.), ChargingKing, who recently asked for some link love in regard to my previous post. Here it is, because Chris Harrington is an intersting person and writer, and we played some good games in the old days in Reno.

It's intrguing to me that he seems to be passionately appealing for moderation and middle ground in his comment: Doesn't it ever wear thin fighting and creating conflict? As a philosophical kind of guy I would think Chris would appreciate the Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis process as described (if not in exactly those terms) by Hegel. It is great conflicts that create great discoveries--just like in chess. Fighting and creating conflict are the chessplayer's bread and meat. Just, after it's over, let's all go have a beer, like those conflicting liberals and conservatives do (when we're not looking).

To bring this whole thing back around to the important point, I'm being CHURTFUL here, okay. Cheerfully hurtful. If you would be so kind as to go forth now and use it over and over and over, with full attribution and links to Robert Pearson's Chess Blog, I would be much obliged. I am hoping to see it show up in text messages all over the world by next week.

UPDATE: Churtful is in the Urban Dictionary as a variation of the verb churting "The act of being dull, boring, kind of grey, and specifically draining to the person that is having to listen to you." As you can see, this has nothing to do with my own brilliantly original coinage and we will speak of it no more.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nobody has ever killed anybody else in the name of atheist or because they believe atheist doctrine tells them that it's the correct thing to do. That's because atheism has no book telling them who should be killed and for what reason.

Your mention of the amount of sex theists have just points to hypocrisy not to core dogma.

Liquid Egg Product said...

We were trying to be diplomatic in avoiding pointing out "churtful", but since you seem to be so proud of it...you've made the quotation rotation! (for better or worse.)

In my humble chessic opinion, no one should be calling themselves "Charging King" unless they open with 1. e4 2. Ke2 3. Kf3 as White.

ChargingKing said...

Hey Robert,

I, like you, saw how ridiculous Lizzy's so-called sci data was and I am really sick of everyobdy letting dogmatic ideology overide there sense of logic.

I love a good debate but not when it is strawman attacks on people that disagree.

Attack an idea, not the person's intellect.

= )

wang said...

Wow brother you have definitely opened a can of worms here. I now have to go to Vicary's blog and check out what all the hullabaloo is about.

I will try to use churtful in a sentence 3 times to make the word my own.

Now on to the conservative bashing.

E. Vicary is from NYC I believe, this is a very liberal town, I know, I grew up there. Unfortunately for conservatives the mouthpieces of the party are not doing it any favors right now.

Certain folks on radio who have a penchant for yelling and brandishing a lot of labels do little to elevate the political debate. Liberals, while somewhat more civil can be damned condescending. Bottom line these are the exact kind of stereotypes that the other side feeds on.

Add to that a rather confusing 8 years of the past administration and yes, people let their emotions get the better of them.

The problem is that all of this emotion clouds logical thinking and now both sides use labels, and fear, but mostly fear to rile their base up. The end result? We all become dumber for the process.

Sad news to everyone out there. President George W. Bush didn't hate America, he wasn't actually a buffoon, and President Obama is not a Nazi or a Socialist or the Joker. (and for the record fascism and communism are pretty much mutually exclusive, sheesh)

These men might have had different ideas for the country than you did, but they aren't evil incarnate.

Oh and by the way, for the love of GOD, when you refer to a president of the United States (past or present) YOU SAY OR TYPE "President so and so". This is called respect and it should be shown to whomever the commander in chief is period! Yes even if you don't like him/her.

Robert Pearson said...

@Anon--100 million or more people were killed in the 20th century by collectivist governments, specifically and avowedly atheistic. They didn't need a book. The results speak for themselves. Religiously motivated killing over the last 3,000 years is a drop in the bucket by comparison.

@LEP--I am proud that I now have at least two quotes there. Perhaps Chris should change his handle to ChargingKing Pawn since he opens that way.

@Chris--Yes, let's have battles of ideas. Dogma belongs to theology, not politics. By the way, I see that Rick Arteaga held you off in double overtime for the Reno CC Class C Ch. We want a full report!

@Wang--just wait until you read my upcoming article comparing the USA today and Republican Spain and Republican France circa 1936. your last three paragraphs are so spot on! Respect for those who we disagree with is a requirement of "civil society."

Thanks much for the comments all!

Liquid Egg Product said...

I've noticed you've seem to have drifted away from using the Wahrheit moniker. Am I deluded, or is this an intentional shift?

Francis W. Porretto said...

I know nothing about Miss Vicary, but I know something about the proclivities of the militant faith that calls itself atheism. They posture and rave as if the theists of the world were utterly determined to force belief on them.

Hot flash to Miss Vicary: We don't demand that you believe as we do. Christians are aware that we can't prove the existence of God, nor that Christ was divine. That's why our convictions are called a faith, not mathematics or science. We acknowledge your right to freedom of conscience and would appreciate it if you would acknowledge ours...without insisting that we must be "idiots."

If Miss Vicary can prove, rigorously and with full respect for the definitions and processes involved, that God does not and cannot exist, I'll adopt her creed. But that, of course, would require that she treat a believer as a thinking human being capable of respecting evidence and logic. Even if he's a mere Catholic with a doctorate in physics and an international reputation in real-time software engineering.

The one objective data point of interest in this matter is that as an aggregate, American theists are generally happier than American atheists. We have stronger marriages (i.e., we divorce less frequently) and larger families. We're also more community-oriented: we do less complaining and more helping. And -- specifically with regard to the militant atheists -- we're less of an irritant to those around us.

(What's that you say? Atheist women are "easier?" Perhaps...for certain values of "easy." But anyone who thinks that's a plus has never raised a daughter.)

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