v4.5 - There can be only One

Morning Folks,

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Made it into work a little early this morning so I could get some much needed work done. Can''t believe I''m here at 5:30am, especially with all the crap that has been going on here recently. OH well :)

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I have been building up fuel for the musing over the last couple days. I have heard some suggestions on what I should write about so I thought I would give that a try this morning. One of the first things I want to talk about this morning is the word Fag. You hear it all over the place these days and the meaning of the word has somewhat been lost in the shuffle. Time to set the record straight and show you all the real reason we use that word today :)

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For starters, you may have heard the English call a cigarette a fag. Truth be told, fag meaning a cigarette is actually slang over there. The actual meaning of the word Fag is only a dictionary.com search away:

Fag: A student at a British public school who is required to perform menial tasks for a student in a higher class. (aka Drudge)

So basically, if there is someone under you at work whom you make do menial tasks, you COULD call them a fag and be bang on. Of course, here in North America, we call these people other things like underlings or grunts. I find it interesting to analyze the two cultures and compare our differences. Quite interesting indeed.

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Ok, so now that we have gotten the word Fag out of the way, let''s look at the word Faggot. (ducks the incoming shoes and odd rotten fruit)

You guys need to open your minds a bit more. I also find it quite interesting to see how warped our sense of reality has become with the alternate meanings we have dug up for a lot of words we use/hear on a daily basis.

Folks, Faggots are simple sticks. "Throw another fagot on the fire"

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Of course, many may not realize the word faggot and the word fagot are two different words meaning the same thing. The latter is the actual origional word and the other is the slag word used to describe a homosexual man. They both mean the same thing, just a difference in spelling.

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So how come we immediatly think of a homosexual man when we hear the word Faggot? Let me take you way way back. Back to the days people actually burned women whom they thought were witches. Can anyone guess what they called the bundle of sticks used to burn witches? That''s right, they were called fagots! Let me paint this out in a little story.

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Our story begins with our resident witch, Lucy. Now Lucy always knew she was special ever since she could heal people with herbs and other naturally grown remedies. After all, she was a suspected witch so she had to play the part, right?

Well, the towns people didn''t like Lucy living around them. They asked her to leave several times and she openly refused to comply. One evening, just before dusk, the towns folk picked up their pitch forks and torches and raided Lucy''s little home and burned it to the ground. They took Lucy to the town square and tied her to a big pole which had been erected for such a night.

Lucy was frightened to the point of tears. All she ever wanted to do was help people with her amazing remedies.

Looking into the faces of the people she passed, her eyes fell on Joe who was the local butcher in town. His hands and feet were bound standing only a few feet from the place she would die. He had this grim look on his face which drained completely of all blood when he saw her being dragged to the pole.

Lucy was bound to the pole and sticks were collected and placed all around her feet. Yes, she was to be burned alive! Joe was crying, he knew his fate should the wood run out and the fire started to die. The mayor of the town stepped forward and the crowd silenced. The decree was simple, Lucy was to burn to death under the law as she was declared a witch.

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I''m going to stop there. You can see there are two (sometimes more) people ready to be burned. One is on public display (the witch) and the other is on the sidelines (Joe). What I didn''t tell you in my story is Joe happens to be gay. Why didn''t I tell you? Because it doesn''t matter. Most people, when they saw a man die during a witch burning, they thought he had performed some great crime and was being punished (or cleansed) by fire. Little did most of the people realize was this man was being used as firewood. That''s right folks, when the fires started to die down and there was no more wood collected to keep it going, gay men were used as "bundles of sticks" to keep the fire burning until more wood could be collected. As a result, these gay men were called faggots.

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Why you ask? It is quite simple really. People fear what the do not understand. Most of us "men" have a lack of understanding about gay men. We don''t understand why they prefer other men and we don''t understand why they don''t wish to be with a woman instead. It is that fear that drives us to peform these gruesome acts. Gay people were not considered "people" back in those days and some cultures don''t accept them as "people" today as well. I don''t believe gay people were born gay as nature dictates a different plan for man (penis, meet vagina). If you''ve ever heard the story in the bible about Sodom and Gomorrah, you will understand how (and more importantly, why) christians feel about homosexuals.

I don''t want to get into any debates on whether homosexuality is right or wrong, all I know is I prefer a woman over a man and to me the alternate just seems wrong. I will never burn someone at the stake for being gay, and will never turn down a friendship of a gay person. I will treat them no differently than any other person I meet or know.

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That said, I want to make sure you all understand this musing was created to educate not to make fun of, or demean anyone who is gay. I like to educate and write. Someone suggested I write about the meaning and origin of faggot, and I thought it was good material to do so. This is my little disclaimer :)

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So like I mentioned earlier, work is really kicking my ass right now. I won''t go into the nitty gritty details, just know that we are losing 2 guys (maybe more) within the next month and a half and our work load just increased (again). Folks, as of yesterday, I am offically looking for other work. I''ve had about as much as I can take at this company. I hate going to bed and dreaming about my job. IT''S A DAMN JOB!! It shouldn''t be my life, it shouldn''t affect my life like it does. I should wake, goto work, come home and then relax. Unfortunatly the latter hasn''t happened in a long time. Hard to relax when you have all these worries about your job and whether or not someone is going to quit tomorrow. So instead of worrying, I''m looking for other work so I can be that person to quit tomorrow. Let someone else worry for a damn change, I''m sick and tired of it.

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Anyway gang, I have a ton of work to get done early this morning. I realize the musing wasn''t long, but it was educational :) So this is me signing off. Remember to always wear a seat belt when driving and please please by a hands-free kit for your damn cell phones! ;)

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Cheers,

Al