Scathing

Sunrise on the Fraser, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley

Scathing is one of my favourite words, and it’s a pity it can’t be used in situations where a negative emotion isn’t involved. What can scathing modify as an adjective? Indictment, review, assessment. Not much else, really. Scathing is all about passing judgment, which is a shame, because I try not to be judgmental while retaining the right to be highly opinionated. I like the way it’s spelled, I like the lack of ambiguity in its meaning, and I love the way it’s pronounced. The soft ess followed by the hard cee, then that long and uncompromising vowel – it’s really quite onomatopoetic, if you think about it long and hard enough.

The Old or Middle English verb from which the adjective is formed, scathe, comes from the Old Norse and means to ‘harm or injure, especially by fire.’ And so visions of Vikings pulling up in one of their high-prowed long ships and laying waste to an entire innocent coastal village come to mind. When they’re done rampaging and have pulled down not only all the ramparts but all the buildings as well, when they’ve finished using those uniquely frightening maces to split skulls and when they’ve sated their lust by raping all the women before killing them, it’s torch time. One does not really recover from a ‘scathing’ attack – one gathers a headless doll, a coin or two and maybe a pot from the rubble and slinks away to create a new life in a safer location. If, that is, one has been lucky enough to be out of town the day the verbal Vikings arrived.

In today’s world, we are beginning to realize that negative reinforcement creates a society of messed up people who react rather than act, whose perceptions and actions are always suspect because they’re damaged emotionally, and we are beginning to acknowledge that you do indeed get more flies with honey than with vinegar and that this is not a bad thing at all if more flies are what you want. American Idol may be the cultural exception to this trend. And perhaps that’s why Simon Callow’s opinions get so much attention and even respect. Here’s a man who seems bitter and twisted and whose negativity seems to colour his judgment. Devastating though it may be for the various warblers who appear before him, isn’t there something really satisfying about the way – and the fact that - he delivers his scathing assessments? Every once in a while it’s nice to hear a spade referred to as a spade, rather than as a ‘gardening utensil.’ Every once in a while the talentless ever-hopefuls need to be told to confine their singing to the shower where it belongs rather than continue to inflict it on the world.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scathing

And now for something completely different. How can I say no to a free course about blogging? Dog knows there doesn't seem to be a decent book on the subject yet published (might have to do something about that one of these days). Check this out, and I'll check it out as well and report back.

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.