Tag Archives: billboard

Advocate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Advocate: (n) a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy

I shudder. Honestly, this definition scares me.

  • Publicly supports.
  • Recommends.
  • Cause.

I just look back in history and realize that the vast majority of people who have lived on this planet called Earth have, at least for a season, been advocates of immoral and ridiculous ignorance.

It is so easy to jump on the bandwagon and begin to play out of tune. Why do we DO it?

Maybe a better question is, are there ideas or standards that need to be defended, or, if they really are good ideas and standards, are they going to survive a little critique and analysis without me bullying people into following them?

I don’t know if I’ve met an advocate who I think is actually contributing to the common good.

For instance, I certainly believe we should treat animals with respect and honor their space, but I find those involved in the cause of animal rights to be overwrought and obnoxious.

I also believe in God and the loving mercy He wishes to bestow upon His children, but I find the tedium of religion to be tiresome, burdensome and even vicious in its intent.

I absolutely love my country, but those who are advocates of a political party and beat the drum for votes are not only aggravating, but at whim can shut down the very government they promised to serve.

Maybe our goal should not be to become an advocate, but rather, a billboard–to quietly pursue our dreams and beliefs, demonstrating them through our successes and personalities. Perhaps mankind did not evolve from the monkey, but I will tell you this–like the ape, we are much better at mimicking than we are at taking orders.

We seem to more enjoy looking around and finding things that appeal to us and are beneficial, adding them into our own lifestyle, than we do having someone preach it, teach it or advocate for it.

What would I be willing to publicly state as truth? What would I believe is still going to be around a hundred years after I’m dead, maintaining its validity? Doesn’t that narrow it down?

The only one I’ve come up with is: NoOne is better than anyone else.

I guess if you were pushing me, I would have to say of that assertion and statement that I am an advocate.

Adorn

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adorn: (v) to make more beautiful or attractive: e.g.pictures and prints adorned the walls.

If you’ve never been fat, it’s an interesting journey.

First of all, it’s one of the few physical conditions that has degrees of intensity. For instance, we don’t say that someone is “black, blacker or blackest.” But we DO say that people are “overweight,” “fat,” “obese” and “morbidly obese.” (I guess you have to find your slot and try to slide your plump form into it.)

But extra pounds do give you one interesting advantage: you have to commit to the concept that you’re ALWAYS on a diet (whether you are or not.) So when you notice that folks are eyeballing bulbous parts of your being, you can inform them that you are fully aware of your deficiency and are aggressively addressing it with some new-fangled regimen. Unfortunately, there are times that you see the same people again within a three-month period, so then you have to resort to trickery. Otherwise, the more aggressive members will ask you how the diet’s going and the others will look upon you with sympathetic eyes.

This is why you have to learn to adorn yourself in certain types and colorations of clothing, in order to mask the magnitude of your mass. Now, one would think that the looser the clothing, the better off you would appear visually. Not so. After all, if you want to make a beach ball look bigger, drape it in a tablecloth. If you want to make a beach ball look smaller, you must constrict it some way–perhaps in a bag, preferably of a dark color.

So one of the tricks about being a big person is to know that your salvation during seasons of “blossoming” is to have that perfect all-black outfit, which includes black socks and black shoes. If you move to a pattern, a color, or God forbid, a plaid, you will be advertising yourself as the billboard you have become. But simply wearing well-fitted black clothing can convince all your friends that you have suddenly lost twenty pounds.

It’s called adorning yourself well.

If you’re going to be unwise–one of those portly people who insist on wearing current fashion even though it was never envisioned for any size above an eight in a woman and a medium in a man, you must be prepared to be pitied. Adorning oneself is recognizing your weakness and instead of resenting the hell out of it, finding heavenly ways to disguise it. This is why a beige wall always looks better with a picture hanging on it.

The picture doesn’t even have to be very good … just not beige.

Abstain

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abstain: (v.) to restrain oneself from doing or enjoying something 2. to formally decline to vote either for or against a proposal or motion

l have discovered the quickest way to make sure that I eat a chocolate candy bar in the next twenty-four hours. All I have to do is promise to abstain from them.

This works with almost anything else, too. It’s like the decision to abstain is really similar to purchasing a billboard in your brain to advertise the product. Once I’m convinced that I’m deprived, it’s is an easy journey to convince myself that the deprivation is … terminal.

This is why I have to giggle when people talk to me about encouraging teenagers to take the “vow of abstinence.”

When I was sixteen years old, I only thought about two things: food and sex. And most of the time, in some bizarre way, I mingled them.

So to turn to an adolescent and suggest that he or she should make a vow of celibacy when they are sitting on a raging reservoir of tempestuous hormones is to create the tiny cracks in the dam of their resistance, which will certainly lead to a flood of error.

I raised a whole bunch of boys. Here’s what I found out about their appetites: unless they were totally exhausted, ready to fall into bed, to enter a coma of sleep, they were constantly pursuing, through their curiosity, the entire panorama of feminine mystique. To eliminate the power of exhaustion from a teenager is to grant them license to explore their lusts to an inevitable result. (After all, the Catholic church has learned that asking its clergy to abstain from the “pleasures of the flesh” does NOT mean that they will not find divergent methods.)

Abstain is a funny word–and by funny, I mean strange, unusual and not particularly helpful.

I taught my sons to be busy, active and to burn off a lot of their physical energy instead of sitting around studying all the time, having temptation lure them into porn sites on the Internet. I also instructed them in the intelligence of masturbation as an alternative to becoming a daddy with pimples. It was quite successful.

And when I sensed that they were still bursting and bubbling with sexuality, I sat down with them to talk and giggle about it until they were saturated and once again ready for a good night’s sleep.

Abstain. It’s a word old people impose on the younger of our flock–once the elder rams have lost interest in what now preoccupies the young bucks.

Like I said … it’s a funny word.