I don’t know much about Mark Twain. Here are a few things I do know: what he looked like in his later years; he gave life to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; he was very intelligent and witty and liked cats; and he is considered one of the greatest American authors. I probably even read Tom Sawyer at some point in my life, but it didn’t choose to linger in my mind. After a little research, I found out that he was probably an atheist. Sounds like someone I would have liked to have met.

The reason I even mention Twain is that I stumbled across this quote on Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts comics web site:

Mark Twain’s summing up of reality wasn’t, in itself, a fresh insight. John Milton (another author whose works I’ve never read) had a similar view in Paradise Lost:

Milton and Twain (along with thousands of other writers, artists, and philosophers throughout history) knew then what cognitive therapists know today: how you think can affect how you feel. Some people have the good fortune of living within minds caressed by calming breezes. Some poor souls suffer unpredictable, destructive gales. Others are oppressed by gloom and discouraging drizzle with intermittent sunshine.

Today I’m thinking gloom and feeling tired. Just posting to distract myself for a little while. I’d write it in a journal, but then I’d have to burn it someday. This way, if I die suddenly, there’s less for everyone to throw away. Just select all and delete.

According to the MPAA, “A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words, though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating.” This is just a really fucked-up way of saying that in a PG-13 film, you can say “fuck” once, but only if you use it the way it is almost always used: the way it wasn’t first used. They say it must be used as an expletive. That would mean it can only be used as when a bullet rushes past the hero and he says, “Fuck!” But this isn’t the case, based upon actual films. For example, in the PG-13 rated Bourne Identity, Bourne says, “Fuck it!” In that sentence, fuck is clearly a verb, even if the clause serves as an expletive. It is not shocking that the MPAA is ignorant of basic grammar; they are ignorant about just about everything.

The only way that you cannot use the word “fuck” in an PG-13 film is as what Ruth Wajnryb, author of the excellent Expletive Deleted: a good look at bad language, calls its referential sense. That is, you cannot say, “I want to fuck you.” Why? Who knows! It makes no sense. Wajnryb, in particular, would likely be very unhappy about this. In her book, she spends a lot of time lamenting the fact that fuck has all but lost its referential base. It’s used in many and various ways, but increasingly not for the act itself. And the truth is, we don’t really have any good replacement for it. “Make love”? A lot of times, people are just fucking. “Having sex”? That’s awkward. And why not just “fuck”? Everything else is either too clinical (coitus) or too silly (hide the salami).

But the MPAA continues to hold onto its power: restricting children from seeing homosexual kissing, doing drugs, and saying bad words. But most of all, children cannot see realistic depictions of violence. What’s left? Idealistic depictions of violence where children can learn that guns are safe and they just cause people to fall down. Thanks a lot you fatuous, ignorant, conservative bastards.

I highly recommend Kirby Dick’s great documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated. Check it out!