{"id":2950,"date":"2020-08-13T13:47:48","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T18:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/?p=2950"},"modified":"2020-08-13T13:48:54","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T18:48:54","slug":"pandemic-ponderings-heinous-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/pandemic-ponderings-heinous-division\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandemic Ponderings: Heinous Division"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the\u00a0Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For over 20 years the word \u201cheinous\u201d has been hammered into the American vocabulary via the opening lines of Law and Order: SVU.\u00a0 Originally obscure, this word can now be heard any day of the week, multiple times a day if you dip into ubiquitous SVU marathons.\u00a0 Heinous is now so commonplace that it has infiltrated the active vocabulary of millennials, who might say, \u201cThat dress my mother wants me to wear is, like, so heinous.\u201d\u00a0 The SAT has dropped heinous from its menu of challenging words.<\/p>\n

The dictionary provides the following synonyms:\u00a0 hateful, odious, abominable, reprehensible, atrocious, villainous, nefarious, infamous, flagrant, and flagitious (which the dictionary defines as heinous).\u00a0 In an effort to steer clear of any \u201cme too\u201d offense, Vocabulary.com provides \u201cclubbing of baby seals\u201d as an example of heinous behavior.<\/p>\n

Among the synonyms, heinous is the best descriptor of sexually-based offenses.\u00a0 Nefarious implies cold and calculating, which eliminates the spontaneity of hormonally-fueled offenses.\u00a0 Flagrant implies obvious, so does not capture the dark nature of the crime. (Jaywalking can be flagrant.)\u00a0 The onomatopoeia of heinous is an attractive attribute.\u00a0 The announcer\u2019s somber tone implies something evil and dark.\u00a0 Viewers must know that heinous cannot mean sunshine and light.\u00a0 If you casually drop the \u201ch\u201d you are left with an allusion to a dark, dank, and forbidden piece of anatomy, a place where the sun don\u2019t ever shine.<\/p>\n

After twenty years, SVU has showcased every depravity multiple times. \u00a0The \u00a0writers struggle to find new plot lines.\u00a0 Perhaps rethinking the story\u2019s intro will provide a fresh jolt of creative energy.\u00a0 Below are options from other writers.\u00a0 These are their stories.<\/p>\n

Cat in the Hat<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is Thing One and Thing Two that make something heinous<\/p>\n

Trafficking of children and crimes against gayness<\/p>\n

Oh dear, what a shame, what a shame<\/p>\n

That such things happen that have such a name.<\/p>\n

When a mess is too big and so deep and so tall.<\/p>\n

We cannot fix it.\u00a0 There\u2019s no way at all.<\/p>\n

But the man on the corner, he\u2019s wears a blue hat<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll do the job, so thank him for that.<\/p>\n

King James Bible<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither pedophiles, forceful fornicators, nor peddlers of flesh.\u00a0 Yea all are especially heinous unto him.<\/p>\n

The Lord calleth them to kneel before an esteemed tribunal and they shall be judged.<\/p>\n

The Lord also decrees that a man may now lieth with a man and woman with woman, and women may wear what pertaineth to a man, and a man may put on a woman\u2019s garment.\u00a0 These are no longer abominations and whosoever says so has committed a heinous act and will be judged.\u00a0 So sayeth the Lord.<\/p>\n

Ernest Hemingway<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Man\u2019s behavior is a moveable feast of good and bad.\u00a0 Moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.\u00a0 That old fisherman made one mistake, and he felt bad, but it was a heinous mistake, so they took him to the big house.<\/p>\n

Paul McCartney<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yesterday, all my troubles were far back in time<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m a victim of a heinous crime.<\/p>\n

Oh I wish it\u2019s still yesterday.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Suddenly, I need a man from a special squad<\/p>\n

To get a fingerprint or a DNA swab<\/p>\n

Oh, yesterday come back to me.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are bad apples everywhere, but mostly from Mexico.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really know, it\u2019s just what I\u2019ve been hearing, that M-16 gang out there on Long Island is especially heinous.\u00a0 That\u2019s a word from that cop show Law and Order, so you all know what I\u2019m talking about.\u00a0 I know lots of cops.\u00a0 They are very, very good people.\u00a0 I used to say Make America Great Again, but then I became president so now I say \u201cI Made America Great.\u201d\u00a0 Get that, I went from make to made, so that\u2019s a success.\u00a0 A really very big deal.\u00a0 The police, who are really very dedicated people, they work for me to keep great what I made great in the first place.<\/p>\n

David Foster Wallace[1]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I binged all 248 episodes of SVU, I perseverated on the grammatical errors in the introduction.\u00a0 The announcer says \u201cespecially heinous,\u201d but heinous is already at the far end of the spectrum of behavior.\u00a0 There can be nothing worse than heinous, so to say something is \u201cespecially heinous\u201d is meaningless.[2]<\/p>\n

The intro switches from \u201cespecially heinous\u201d crimes to \u201cvicious felonies.\u201d\u00a0 This is repetitious.\u00a0 Are there heinous felonies that are not vicious?[3]<\/p>\n

Remember that the SVU introduction is ad copy, not great literature.\u00a0 The copy writer is not playing to the lively mind, but to the spittled doper whose feebly firing synapses require repetition. \u00a0I\u2019ve been that slacker on the couch.\u00a0 Don\u2019t change a word.<\/p>\n

[1] From the Editor:\u00a0 This pandemic summer seemed like the perfect opportunity to tackle DFW\u2019s 1,000-page acclaimed novel, Infinite Jest.\u00a0 The novel features extensive digressions at the slightest provocation and over 200 pages of footnotes that could themselves be considered a novel.\u00a0 Infinite Jest is not a \u201cbeach read,\u201d its title poking fun at determined readers, such as me, who have stalled out on page 238 but still display the book on the coffee table.\u00a0 DFW was a fanatic about grammar and described the correct usage of the words \u201cnauseous\u201d (causing nausea) and \u201cnauseated,\u201d (feeling nausea).
\n[2] From DFW:\u00a0 \u201cEspecially\u201d is a category of adverb known as an \u201cintensifier,\u201d a word that amps up the companion adjective or verb. Writers who use adverbs are too lazy to find the better noun, adjective or verb.\u00a0 Gratuitous intensifiers include \u201cvery\u201d or \u201creally.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cA really very big deal\u201d is bad English.\u00a0 You can delete \u201creally,\u201d \u201cvery\u201d and \u201cbig\u201d and say, \u201cIt was a blockbuster.\u201d\u00a0 Or if you are both a pathologic and pathogenic egomaniac, go ahead and use the all-purpose f-word intensifier, \u201cI am fucking great.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t tolerate \u201cvery\u201d and \u201creally\u201d in my writing. Or in conversation.\u00a0 However, \u201cexquisitely\u201d has emerged as my go-to verbal tic intensifier. It is mostly used in a positive sense, but I like to pair it with a negative word, such as \u201cexquisitely ugly.\u201d\u00a0 A word check of my writing reveals references to exquisite hygiene, exquisite ass, exquisitely-designed sphincter and exquisitely painful.\u00a0 I first encountered the latter description in a medical journal and liked the juxtaposition.\u00a0 Yes, the sado-masochist might thrill to exquisite pain, but I see another meaning \u00a0– intense pain that has some redeeming value.\u00a0 I asked the Moms if she had experienced exquisite pain and she told me about the first time she breast fed me – that wincing, close-your eyes, hold-your-breath, suck-it-up, slap the arm chair pain, a pain like a pair of pliers twisting a tender nipple, but in the end worthwhile.
\n[3] From the editor: DFW goes on an extensive riff about the etymology of various sexual offensives.\u00a0 He seems particularly entranced with the mythological origins of the words \u201csuccubus\u201d and \u201cincubus\u201d, i.e. men who violate dead women and women who violate dead men, respectively. \u00a0He contends that succubus and incubus are only heinous crimes if the perpetrator has killed the victim.\u00a0 If not, the act is a crime of opportunity, only a misdemeanor, not a vicious felony.\u00a0 The discussion then veers to a detailed anatomic description of the exquisitely choreographed facial and tongue musculature to pronounce succubus, describing the word as sibilant and susurrus with a great mouth feel.<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the\u00a0Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.\u201d For … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-words-mean"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-LA","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2950"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2959,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950\/revisions\/2959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}