Something else I don’t care for, these organ donor programs. That shit bother you a little bit? Sounds like Josef Mengele’s been sitting on some of those meetings or something? Organ donor programs. The thing that bothers me the most about it is they’re run by the Motor Vehicle Bureau. I figure, hey, shit, you got to wait on a line that long for a kidney, fuck it, do without. It’s the Motor Vehicle Bureau in most states who send you the little card you’re supposed to carry right next to your wallet, right next to your driver’s license, in your wallet, little card. You’re supposed to fill it out and on it you’re supposed to list the organs you’re willing to give in case you die. Are these people out of their fucking minds or something? Do you honestly believe that if a paramedic finds that card on you in an automobile accident, he’s going to try to save your life? Bullshit, he’s looking for parts, man. Absolutely. Look, Dan, here’s that lower intestine we’ve been looking for. Never mind the oxygen, this man’s a donor. Bullshit, they want something of mine, they can have my rectum and my anus, that’s all I’m giving, take them and get out of here. Put them in your bag and get the fuck out of my life, that’s all I’m giving. I don’t want some guy poking around in me, hoping I die. I want to live. I don’t want to die. That’s the whole secret of life, not dying. I figured that shit out alone in third grade.

And don’t be pulling any plugs on me, either. Here’s another bunch of macho asshole bullshit floating around this country, people talking about ah, pull the plug on me. If I’m ever like that, if I’m comatose, if I’m like a vegetable, pull the plug on me. Fuck you, leave my plug alone. Get an extension cord for my plug. I want everything you got, tubes, cords, plugs, probes, electrodes, IV’s, you got something, stick it in me, man. You find out I got a hole I didn’t know I had, put a fucking plug in it. Vegetable, shit, I don’t care if I look like an artichoke. Save my ass. There’s three things I want if I’m ever in that condition, three things I got to have, ice cream, morphine and television. You give me that ice cream every two hours, give me that morphine about… every ten minutes, and turn on the fucking TV. I want to see Geraldo. And don’t be coming to visit me, I got no time for life people, I’m brain dead here. You people got no respect for the brain dead? Hey, you got to be brain dead to watch Geraldo in the first place. You might as well watch him when you’re clinically brain dead. There’s one other thing I thought about concerning this comatose thing, and this might help you someday. This little piece of information might come in handy sometime in the future if you’re in this circumstance. If you knew a family, if you knew a family and one of them was a homosexual and he was in an automobile accident and he was comatose, you could always comfort that family by saying, well, look at it this way, he was a fruit, now he’s a vegetable. Listen, at least he’s still in the produce section.

Now I probably got some other group pissed off at me because I said fruit. There’s a different group to get pissed off at you in this country for everything you’re not supposed to say. Can’t say fruit, can’t say faggot, can’t say queer, can’t say Nancy boy, can’t say pansy. Can’t say nigger, boogie, jig, jiggaboo, skinhead, jungle bunny, moolie, moolie yan or schwarz. Can’t say yid, heeb, zeeb, kike, mackie, dego, ginny, wop, ginzo, greaser, greaseball, spick, beaner, oya, tiger, PR, Mick, donkey, turkey, limey, frog, squarehead, kraut, jerry, Hun, chink, jap, nip, slope, slopehead, zip, zipper head, gook. There is absolutely nothing wrong… There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those words in and of themselves. They’re only words. It’s the context that counts. It’s the user. It’s the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral the words are innocent. I get tired of people talking about bad words and bad language. Bullshit. It’s the context that makes them good or bad, the context that makes them good or bad. For instance, you take the word nigger. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the word nigger in and of itself. It’s the racist asshole that’s using it that you ought to be concerned about. We don’t care when Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy says it. Why? Because we know they’re not racists. They’re niggers. Context. Context. We don’t mind their context because we know they’re black. Hey, I know I’m Whitey, the blue-eyed devil patio, fake gray boy, honkie, motherfucker myself. Don’t bother my ass. They’re only words. You can’t be afraid of words that speak the truth, even if it’s an unpleasant truth like the fact that there’s a bigot and a racist in every living room on every street corner in this country. I don’t like words that hide the truth. I don’t like words that conceal reality. I don’t like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms, because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation. For some reason it just keeps getting worse.

I’ll give you an example of that. There’s a condition in combat, most people know about it. It’s when a fighting person’s nervous system has been stressed to its absolute peak and maximum, can’t take any more input. The nervous system has either snapped or is about to snap. In the First World War that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language, two syllables. Shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was 70 years ago. Then a whole generation went by, and the Second World War came along and the very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now, it takes a little longer to say, doesn’t seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock, battle fatigue. Then we had the war in Korea in 1950, Madison Avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called Operational Exhaustion. Hey, we’re up to eight syllables now, and the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase, it’s totally sterile now. Operational Exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car. Then of course came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about 16 or 17 years. And thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it’s no surprise that the very same condition was called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Still eight syllables, but we’ve added a hyphen, and the pain is completely buried under jargon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I bet you if we’d have still been calling it shell shock, some of them Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. But it didn’t happen, and one of the reasons is because we were using that soft language, that language that takes the life out of life.

And it is a function of time, it does keep getting worse, give you another example. Sometime during my life, sometime during my life toilet paper became bathroom tissue. I wasn’t notified of this, no one asked me if I agreed with it. It just happened.
Toilet paper became bathroom tissue.
Sneakers became running shoes.
False teeth became dental appliances.
Medicine became medication.
Information became directory assistance.
The dump became the landfill.
Car crashes became automobile accidents.
Partly cloudy became partly sunny.
Motels became motor lodges.
House trailers became mobile homes.
Used cars became previously owned transportation.
Room service became guest room dining.
And constipation became occasional irregularity.
When I was a little kid, if I got sick they wanted me to go to the hospital and see the doctor. Now they want me to go to a health maintenance organization, or a wellness center to consult a healthcare delivery professional.
Poor people used to live in slums. Now the economically disadvantaged occupies substandard housing in the inner cities.
And they’re broke. They’re broke. They don’t have a negative cash flow position, they’re fucking broke.
Because a lot of them were fired. You know, fired, management wanted to curtail redundancies in the human resources area, so many people are no longer viable members of the workforce.
Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins, it’s as simple as that.
The CIA doesn’t kill anybody any more. They neutralize people, or they depopulate the area.
The government doesn’t lie, it engages in disinformation.
The Pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation and something they call Sunshine Units.
Israeli murderers are called Commandos.
Arab Commandos are called terrorists.
Contra killers are called Freedom fighters. Well, if crime fighters fight crime and firefighters fight fire, what do Freedom Fighters fight? They never mention that part of it to us, do they? Never mention that part of it.
Some of this stuff is just silly, we all know that. Like on the airlines, they say they want to pre board. Well, what the hell is pre board, what does that mean? To get on before you get on?
They say they’re going to pre board those passengers in need of special assistance. Cripples. Simple, honest, direct language. There’s no shame attached to the word cripple that I can find in any dictionary, no shame attached to it. In fact it’s a word used in Bible translations, Jesus healed the cripples. Doesn’t take seven words to describe that condition. But we don’t have any cripples in this country any more. We have the physically challenged. Is that a grotesque enough evasion for you?
How about differently abled? I’ve heard them called that, differently abled. You can’t even call these people handicapped anymore. They’ll say, we’re not handicapped, we’re handy capable. These poor people have been bullshitted by the system into believing that if you change the name of the condition, somehow you’ll change the condition. Well, hey cousin doesn’t happen. Doesn’t happen.
We have no more deaf people in this country, hearing impaired.
No one’s blind any more, partially sighted or visually impaired.
We have no more stupid people. Everybody has a learning disorder, or he’s minimally exceptional. How would you like to be told that about your child, he’s minimally exceptional. Oh, thank God for that.
Psychologists actually have started calling ugly people those with severe appearance deficits.
It’s getting so bad that any day now I expect to hear a rape victim referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient.
And we have no more old people in this country, no more old people. We shipped them all away, and we brought in these senior citizens. Isn’t that a typically American 20th Century phrase? Bloodless, lifeless. No pulse in one of them. A senior citizen. And I’ve accepted that one, I’ve come to terms with it, I know it’s here to stay. We’ll never get rid of it, that’s what they’re going to be called, so I’ll relax on that. But the one I do resist, the one I keep resisting, is when they look at an old guy, and they say, look at him, Dan, he’s 90 years young. Imagine the fear of aging that reveals, to not even be able to use the word old to describe someone, to have to use an antonym. And fear of aging is natural, it’s universal isn’t it. We all have that. No one wants to get old, no one wants to die, but we do. So we bullshit ourselves. I started bullshitting myself when I got to my 40’s. Soon as I was in my 40’s I’d look in the mirror and I’d say, well, I guess I’m getting older. Older sounds a little better than old, doesn’t it. Sounds like it might even last a little longer. Bullshit, I’m getting old, and it’s okay, because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won’t have to die. I’ll pass away. Or I’ll expire like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital, they’ll call it a terminal episode. The insurance company will refer to it as negative patient care outcome, and if it’s the result of malpractice, they’ll say it was a therapeutic misadventure. I’m telling you, some of this language makes me want to vomit. Well, maybe not vomit, makes me want to engage in an involuntary personal protein spill.
