Aggravated Vocabulary Battery

I am not a fancier of big words, like I've mentioned a sickening amount of times before. For me, communication is all about getting the message across, the best way it can be done. Even if it means using simple, common words and impressing no one.

Don't get me wrong, I agree there are times when pretty words and obscure sentences are not only welcome, but necessary. If you're writing poetry, for example, or a song in some cases, simplicity doesn't always work. In fact, I love poetry so much I think it should always be beautiful, and that it's better to not write one at all if one can't do a good job of it, or write it, but don't publish it or push it in people's faces.

Crap poetry is more painful than a toothache, and the practice of writing them should be vehemently discouraged. In the same way, people who write nursery-rhyme-type songs that rhyme like, well, nursery rhymes should be strongly persuaded to stop writing and take up some other hobby. Like knitting. Or cross-stitch.

This song (courtesy of BW) is a good example of bad song writing. Apologies to all fans, but I think it's an uninteresting, extremely banal song. I, of course, also know that I can't do any better, but that is precisely why I'm not writing any, going around fancying myself a poet or a song writer.

Conversely, simplicity, even though it's hard to go wrong with it, also can be disastrous sometimes. Like this message I got from someone I know, whose identity will not be revealed, which makes it okay to use the person's message as an example here - he said "dear, no one waste time, in waste thing."

That, to me, is more baffling than 'phenomenological' or 'sesquipedalian septuagenarian.' I needed an interpreter, and who better than the Wise Macavity! Her explanation - "Ah! Profound. So the way I see it, you cannot waste time when you're wasting it on something that's to be wasted, it's like the angst of life, a wasted life. Therefore, what is time, in this spectrum of wasted life? Nothing! Therefore, not wasted."

I think that's a brilliant interpretation. But it's not right to have to need someone to interpret you when you're not even quoting poetry.

Maybe sometimes it's just our fault. For our lack of comprehension and inability to grasp things. Particularly words and sentences. We were googling a certain song writer when a convicted sexual offender from Tennessee by the same name came up in our searches. Which led us to the Tennessee Sexual Offender Registry site, which, to say the least, was of huge interest to us - looking at the offenders' pictures, wondering about their lives, and what crimes they committed, which in most cases was 'AGGRAVATED SEXUAL BATTERY.'

Macavity was as perplexed as I, we were not quite sure what exactly that felony involved. We deciphered that whatever it was, it involved the offender battering someone, in an aggravated manner, sexually. Which was not really sufficient.

We decided to do a search, and Wiki tells us that "Sexual battery may be defined as non-consensual touching of the intimate parts..." "As successor to the common law crime of mayhem, this is sometimes subsumed in the definition of aggravated assault."

Our first encounter with the word subsume. Oh glory! A new challenge! I didn't like the word, because it makes me think of the word 'exhume' and consequently, rotting human flesh. Macavity says it makes her think of Science and academics. But according to Dictionary.com, no rotting flesh or science or academics, subsume simply means "to consider or include (an idea, term, proposition, etc.) as part of a more comprehensive one."

This infuriated Macavity greatly. "Why cant they just say 'include'? Pompous, and full of themselves! They should be battered, and fried, like pancakes." she said. I agree with her.

Anyway, abandoning the subject of words, and on to sexual battery, if sexual battery means non-consensual touching of the intimate parts, do you realise it happens ALL the time in India? And the people who do it get away scot-free, no police to catch them, no sexual offenders site to put up their pictures on, for the world to see, to shame them?

I know for a fact that most women have had their breasts and butts rubbed, squeezed, pinched, poked at, innumerable times - while walking on the streets, in a crowded bus, or market area. They're everywhere. In all the places I've lived in or known well, the city with the most sexual offenders roaming the streets - Chandigarh, followed by Delhi, followed by Guwahati. Hyderabad is better than most cities I've lived in, but it does have its own ugly offenders.

I'd like to batter and fry them all. Starting with all the sexual offenders, followed by big word users. Then maybe we can go after the politicians next. Keeping in mind to do Mizoram politicians first.

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