Tag Archives: barbeque

Choosy

Choosy: (adj) overly fastidious in making a choice.

Oh, there goes Webster again.

For some reason, the dictionary feels it’s important to offer a certain amount of social commentary in describing the words that are showcased.

Here is the truth of the matter as far as I know: if you are not choosy, eventually you don’t get to choose, and you’re stuck with what’s chosen for you.

Welcome to Earth.

So portraying “choosy” as a negative attitude is the propaganda of governments, religionists, politicians and Madison Avenue agents, who would really like to plan your entire life, but feel that saying this bluntly might scare you away. So instead, they connote that you are “choosy” if you do not choose what they want you to choose on any chosen occasion.

If the dinner menu for the night is barbecued baked beans with barbecued beef and barbecued corn bread with barbecued pudding for dessert, folks might frown at you if, in a choosy way, you insist you prefer not to “go barbecue” tonight.

The problem in our world is not that people are too choosy. The difficulty lies in the fact that we’re not given enough choice.

  • Politics is divided into two major parties, with a whisker’s difference between the pair.
  • Churches insist they offer varieties of services, while simultaneously delivering the same spiritually tone-deaf message.
  • And the clothing in the department stores settles into shades that are determined to be this season’s preference, with stylings which are the “hit of the catwalk.”

What would happen if Americans actually did become choosy?

If we decided not to let the critics determine the best motion pictures?

If we didn’t leave it up to aging librarians to pick out the top books?

What if we had an open marketplace, an open discussion, an open spirit and an open mind–to give things a platform and see how they fared?

What if the whole world were a blind taste test? How would McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Apple, Democrats, Republicans and the religious system chart?

I’m choosy–and pretty proud of it. I often disagree with other people about my choices, but never in a disagreeable way.

But I’m not about to believe that something being popular gives it any more credence than I am to think that the hula-hoop was meant to last forever.

 

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Aboral

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Aboral: (adj.) relating to or denoting the side or end that is furthest from the mouth, especially in animals that lack clear upper and lower sides, such as echinoderms.

I don’t know why this word made me think about the Mississippi River. I stopped worrying about the weird tendency of my mind to leap to bizarre inclinations years ago, and have chosen to believe it a virtue rather than a vice.

But the Mississippi River has a mouth. It’s somewhere up there in Minnesota, among those stoic German-Lutheran folk, who would certainly be willing to be the “salt of the earth” if their doctors had not told them to avoid too much sodium.

But the further you get away from the mouth, the less German and Lutheran the Mississippi River becomes. It winds its way through the heartland, flirting with Illinois, kissing up to St. Louis, where it throws a quick wave at the Gateway Arch, careens down through Memphis, listening to jazz and smelling the barbecue, but also remembering some of the tragedies, such as the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Having started at its mouth, it now gets deeper into its aboral quest, as it swims its way through the south, landing at a very un-Minnesota-like destination, of New Orleans. Desiring international credibility, it eventually dumps itself into the Gulf of Mexico.

It is a flow of water which separates this country from east to west. Yes, east of the Mississippi live most of the population, insisting they prefer wide-open spaces, while clumping together like year-old peanut brittle. West of the Mississippi, there are regions that appear to be still available for marauding buffalo and Native American tribes.

The Mississippi River is a divider without being divisive. It does something that nobody seems to be capable of achieving–dribbling from one culture to another without preconceived ideas or bigotry. As it goes from its mouth to more aboral locations, it wiggles through accents, belief systems, cultures and states with ease and comfort–absent favoritism.

It is a citizen of both Minnesota and Mardi Gras, without apology.

I’m not so sure if those at the mouth would approve of the aboral destination of the river. But the river does not ask permission. It has learned a valuable lesson:

Go with the flow.