Front Porch: From carelessness to crassness, we can’t unsee what we’ve seen

I have three odds and ends that don’t necessarily blend smoothly into one column, so I’m just going to lurch from one to another – research blunders, words of the year and flying carrots.

As to the first item, like most people who write, I do a lot of research – for information, to verify facts and, more personally, when something simply catches my curiosity. What was the name of that actor in that movie? What was the name of that Communist-front group in New Jersey in the 1930s? How many elephants did Hannibal have when crossing the Alps in the Second Punic War? (Thirty-seven is the answer to that last one.) Why do lobsters have to be alive when you boil them?

Not long ago I read a story about how fewer young people are engaging in sex, and another discussing how UTIs and “social” diseases are rising in facilities where the elderly live. It occurred to me that there might be a column in this, possibly tongue in cheek and hopefully tasteful, about how we older folks might be more frisky than the public gives us credit for.

So the research began. I needed some credible statistics and was having trouble at the outset finding what I was looking for. And then I carelessly googled a phrase, which I wasn’t thinking at the time could be taken in a different context.

Up popped a page of thumbnail photos that I never in my life wanted to see, nor can I ever unsee. In a nanosecond, I deleted it, shut down my computer and let it sit for a while before I turned it on again.

You know how in all those crime shows, when they catch the criminal, it’s because the perp had looked something up on a computer, something that turned out to be incriminating? And no matter the fact that the item had been deleted, nothing really ever goes away, and the bad guy is caught.

If anyone ever did a deep dive into my computer, all sorts of odd stuff would appear. But now there’s that bit of pornography lurking back there. And while I’m not intending to harm any old person engaged in connubial bliss or start a prostitution ring for that demographic, it just bothers me that those pictures are there.

Moving on.

At the end of every year, I write a words-of-the-year column, in which I offer (and comment on) the words of the year for the year just ending, as selected by assorted organizations that publish dictionaries or are otherwise involved in linguistics and language evolution.

Last month’s column on the subject was filled with puzzlement for me at the choices. As always, I was not able to include the word of the year for 2024 from what I consider the grand poobah of these organizations, the American Dialect Society, which does not make its selection until its annual meeting with the Linguistic Society of America in early January.

So, update – the American Dialect Society chose for its 2024 word of the year, “rawdog.” I had to gulp and blink twice when I read that. The word means “to undertake without usual protection, preparation or comfort,” but is predominantly known as a vulgar term for having sex without a condom.

Apparently it has evolved in use as meaning engagement in any activity without typical preparation or in stone-cold sobriety. As one of the 300 attendees who took part in the voting said: “… rawdog is a great choice for word of the year as we collectively rawdog the future of American politics in 2025.”

I remain puzzled … and a little put off.

Side note: The ADS has a number of subspecial select words, as well, including political words of the year. Since everything is political these days, I’ll include them. For 2024, the top choice was “Luigi,” referencing Luigi Mangione, the man charged in the deadly shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson; runner-up was “bleach blond bad built butch body,” the epithet used by Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, toward Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., after Green insulted Crockett.

This leads to my final item, the crude-ification and inappropriate nature of TV commercials, in general, surely, but especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals and related products. Three ads come to mind.

In one, various people are shown sitting on toilets, pants around their ankles, with cute audio taking about how “everybody poops,” and if you’re having trouble with that – boy, have we got a drug for you. In another, a kind of jolly woman talks about how her armpits stink, as well as other parts of her body, and, as she gazes downward, even stinking “down there.” If you find yourself with the same problem – boy, have we got an all-body deodorant for you.

Worst of all is the commercial which shows individual carrots kind of floating in weightless space; most of the carrots being nice and straight, except for one that has a crook in it. The audio speaks to curves in a man’s erection possibly being caused by Peyronie’s Disease. And if your flying carrot has a bend in it – boy, have we got a drug for you.

I’m no prude. I enjoy a good bawdy joke and have been known to utter a four-letter word or two when irritated – but, really, these commercials are just in bad taste (disguised as clever and cute). The whole issue of pharmaceutical advertising is another topic in itself, saved for another day.

Side note : I hear there’s a TV show called “Dr. Pimple Popper.” Haven’t seen it. Never will.

It does bother me that the words we use (as seen through our words of the year) are getting more base and that our TV commercials have gone from … well, whatever they were to whatever they’re becoming.

Am I really such an old fogey that I can’t be comfortable with or find that normal or funny?

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net.