Tag Archives: steal

Debit Card

Debit Card: (n) a plastic card that resembles a credit card but functions like a check 

No one should have a debit card if they don’t know the value of money.

And if they use their debit card poorly, they will soon have a nasty lesson on the danger of money.

I think a debit card is an absolutely marvelous invention—as long as you have money in the bank and you’re just swiping it away.

Yes—how apropos. “Look at me! I’m swiping my own money. I am stealing from myself. Don’t tell anyone.”

Of course, someone is told.

Whoever is in charge of keeping the tally on your balance—well, that individual knows fully well how much money can still be swiped before you are not only a thief, but a criminal.

Money is serious business that should never be taken too seriously.

But when money is not taken seriously, you can get into serious trouble.

I am happiest when I am not dealing with money or debit cards or credit or paying for anything.

I’ve never gone fishing in a lake and had a crab crawl up to me and charge me for the fish I just caught. (That may be because crabs don’t live near lakes.)

But there’s something beautiful about entertaining oneself, or even feeding your face, without spending a dime. But it is not interesting enough that I will actually pursue it.

It does, however, make great verbiage for an article, where you’re trying to be just a little bit cutie—and bitchy—about debit cards.

Cussing

Cussing: (n) the act of using profanity in speech

Since I am not God and certainly not even piously positioned, I do have sins I think are worse than others.

When I was a kid, I was told that cussing was just as bad to God as killing.

Even as a young person, this pissed me off. How could words flung into the air be anywhere as volatile as bullets taking a similar path?

I didn’t buy it.

I don’t buy into it today.

If God is just, God knows there’s a difference between “get your shit together” and “get over there in the corner where I can shoot you.”

I think it’s religion at its very worst when people start pecking at other human beings for language just because they’re chicken to live their own lives at full throttle.

So I will tell you the top five sins in my mind, counting down from #5:

5. Stealing

4. Self-righteousness

3. Selfishness

2. Lying

1. Killing

Cussing doesn’t even crack my top five.

Why?

Because as human beings, there are times we need to release our frustration—so we don’t steal, get self-righteous, become selfish, lie and kill someone.

Cussing is a better choice.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cul-de-sac

Cul-de-sac: a street or lane closed at one end.

Because the traffic does not flow through, all the neighbors at the end of a cul-de-sac end up being fully aware of the life and times of the people around them, simply because they know—or certainly believe—that there’s little beyond them.

It seems to me to be a very dangerous thing—to try to turn our country into a cul-de-sac.

Is America a cul-de-sac, where we know our neighbors, we know their cars, we know their pets—so anyone who happens to turn down in our direction is either lost or an intruder?

How selfish can you be with the idea of freedom?

Every group of people—every nation or tribe that has contended they had superiority over the other inhabitants of Earth usually ended up vicious, arrogant and destroyed.

Do we really want to exist in a time when nostalgia rules our thoughts?

Where fear of the enemy makes more of them in our minds than there actually are?

Do we want to sit at the end of our American cul-de-sac, conversing on our porches, glaring at the travelers who happen to have turned down the road into our space, looking for freedom?

There’s something really bizarre about a cul-de-sac.

I’ve only lived on one, and I didn’t stay long enough to be part of the “chosen four”—those houses near the end that cluster and become intolerant about accepting any other.

Because if you believe you have a special thing that sets you apart, other groups may want to come and steal it from you and will become very angry when they realize that you never had anything worth killing for.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crackhead

Crackhead: (n) a habitual user of cocaine in the form of crack.

Let me start off by saying that what I’m about to write on is not like I’ve invented the wheel. It has been a topic of conversation for some time.

But I do feel it is my duty to roll that wheel along.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

We are a society that despises outward evidence of bigotry while encouraging—and even in many cases, promoting—internal methods. We mainly propagate these misrepresentations through our art.

The Law & Order series on television will happily and continually distinguish between its affluent and impoverished characters by assessing wealth and position to the use of cocaine, and denigration and crime to the crackhead. But as the definition has already told you, both substances are derivations of the same poison.

But cocaine is a “phase” that rich people go through, while crack is evidence of urban blight and proof that the inner city is perniciously flawed—and therefore continually dangerous.

It is a racism that continues because we feel that if we don’t have some release for our fears of color and culture, we might just go back to wanting to lynch again. So we become party to socially acceptable principles that have no basis in anything but bigotry.

If you take crack, it affects your head. That’s why we insist you’re a “crackhead.” But there is no such thing as a “cocaine head,” or a cocaine user who is going to break into your house and steal your television to support his or her habit.

Bizarre.

You fight racism by noticing the little places it crops up, and confronting them as simply as possible. If you wait until racism is actually in your presence, it’s too late.

I remember when I was renting my first apartment and I discovered cockroaches, I hired an exterminator, and when some of the cockroaches were still hanging around two weeks later, I angrily called and asked him to come back and “do his extermination right.”

After spraying one more time, he patiently turned to me and said, “I am more than happy to spray your place, but I must ask you to do something on your part.”

He walked over and pointed out dirt on the counter and food that was laying out. He looked me in the eyes and said, “If you want the cockroaches to go, you’ve got to stop feeding them.”

I will tell you—likewise, if you want the cockroaches of racism to go, you’ve got to stop feeding them with your quick smirk, your nervous titter or your frightened silence.

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Bizarre

Bizarre: (adj) very strange or unusual

Dictionary B

The pursuit of normal has grown to abnormal proportions.

It is more than a mindset–it is a deep, ingrained fear that the slightest step from the prepared pathway will bring ridicule or destruction.

This has brought our society to an unnecessary impasse. We’ve divided into two unseemly camps–unseemly in the sense that neither gathering has acquired the high road.

There are those who believe that anything that cannot be lifted up in righteous glory from the King James Version needs to be extracted from our country, out of a fear of heavenly judgment.

Then there are those who are so uncertain where to place the lines that they’ve removed all the grid and assumed that everything is all right as long as it makes someone happy.

So we have no definition for right and wrong, just a judgment of what is wrong and a free pass on what is right.

What is bizarre?

I think anything that kills human beings is bizarre.

I would venture to say that stealing our life force and joy is also bizarre.

And certainly, it is bizarre when we set about to destroy ourselves or other people through gossip and vapid hatred.

If we could determine what is truly bizarre and agree upon the parameters, we could begin to progress and surprise ourselves at how happy we actually can be.

But until then, there will be two camps warmed by two very different fires.

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Bad

Bad: (adj) of poor quality; inferior or defective.Dictionary B

Speaking of bad, Mr. Webster, that is really a bad definition.

Truth is, something can be very high quality and still be bad. And we also have to consider what is generally bad versus what is bad for the human race.

General badness, if you’ll pardon my phrasing, is pretty obvious. Noticing that something is defective usually requires only the cooperation of the eyeballs.

But what is bad for the human race demands that we use wisdom while applying a sense of history.

So I will tell you right now, there are three things that are bad for human beings: anything that kills, steals or destroys.

I don’t care how high its quality may be or how much pedigree it may carry or whether we really enjoy it–it ultimately is bad.

That would include some things we deem to be good.

No one would consider it bad to be religious, but religion has certainly done its share of killing, stealing and destroying.

You would receive great criticism if you suggested that culture is a bad thing, but every day of the week culture is used as a motivation to kill, steal and destroy.

So what does it mean to:

  • Kill: Taking that which is living or is headed for life and terminating it.
  • Steal: Removing from someone’s possession a gift, attribute or portion that belongs to them.
  • Destroy: Eliminating something that has been accomplished and bringing it to nothing.

So I find bad things in religion, politics, entertainment and even in what we consider to be patriotism.

Bad often arrives with a promise of innovation and good quality–but it takes innovative people with a good quality outlook on life to identify the bad … before it kills, steals and destroys.

 

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Annihilate

dictionary with letter A

Annihilate: (v) to destroy utterly; obliterate.

Universally, historically, chemically, spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally and internationally, “destroy” is one of those words that is part of the three heads of evil.

Linking with “kill” and “steal,” it forms the only empire of darkness of which I am aware.

And even though we like to focus on extreme examples of destroying by citing genocide or even ecological malfeasance, we do better if we embrace the danger of sinister activity in our own breast instead of attributing it to villains.

What am I doing to annihilate anything in my life? What am I destroying which, if I would cease to do so, would enhance my possibilities and the people around me?

It’s a powerful thought.

The first thing I have to overcome is my defensiveness and fear of being exposed as a destroyer.

The second goal would be to accept the fact that even a little destruction is annihilating something of importance.

So I will busy myself today with a bit of analyzing on this issue.

  • Of course, we are all in danger of annihilating ourselves through bad habits.
  • Some form of annihilation is inevitable when we maintain prejudice, which lends itself to bigotry.
  • And even the acceptable position of being opinionated tends to annihilate fresh ideas from peppering our minds.

We must be willing to forgive ourselves.

After all, we sat in Sunday School as children hearing stories of the Children of Israel annihilating whole tribes in order to gain the Promised Land.

We read about the thousands of casualties during the Civil War, fought in our homeland, never considering the individual soldier.

And of course, none of us were present for the terror of the first two atomic bombs, which annihilated a pair of cities and hundreds of thousands of people.

To annihilate is the killing edge of not giving a damn.

To avoid it, I must be willing to consider where calloused reasoning has made me susceptible to such treachery.

 

 

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