So fine me, then

By raising the fines that would be levied against offending broadcasters some fifteenfold, to a fee of about $500,000 per crudity broadcast, and by threatening to revoke the licenses of repeat polluters, the Senate seeks to return to the public square the gentler tenor of yesteryear, when seldom were heard any scurrilous words, and famous guys were not foul mouthed all day.

Yet researchers who study the evolution of language and the psychology of swearing say that they have no idea what mystic model of linguistic gentility the critics might have in mind. Cursing, they say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech, some variant on comedian George Carlin’s famous list of the seven dirty words that are not supposed to be uttered on radio or television.

I completely agree that regulating speech in any venue is ridiculous and contrary to human nature, but sometimes I wish that some of us could use a little more imagination than fucking throwing in the fucking swear every 2 or 3 fucking words when they talk, fuck! I must be aging quite rapidly.

That meshuggeneh undead shiksa

Once upon a time, a bridegroom jokingly recited his marriage vows over a skeletal finger protruding from the earth. After placing his ring on the bone, his mirth turned to horror when a grasping hand burst forth, followed by a corpse in a tattered shroud, her dead eyes staring as she proclaimed, “My husband.”

This chilling Jewish folk tale hails from a cycle of stories about the great 16th-century mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed, in what is now northern Israel, said Howard Schwartz, a top Jewish folklorist and professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. It also apparently inspired Tim Burton’s charmingly ghoulish animated film, “Corpse Bride“.

– via -=JeW*SCHooL=-

It is also the first time since I was a child that animated, non-living have got me all choked up. Take an afternoon off from being all serious and adult and go have fun with this charming movie.