The other day when Lin was working on the car, he asked me about the cap on the power steering fluid receptacle. A sentence formed in my mind, and then my self-editor informed me what I was about to say was politically incorrect speech … as I had been informed by a particularly nasty flamewar on a group blog some time ago. Instead of saying what I was going to say, I just said “It’s rigged.”
Now you may think the word I was originally going to put in front of it was “nigger,” but you’d be wrong. I was going to say “jury-rigged” or “jerry-rigged,” two terms I use interchangeably, or at least used to use before someone jumped my butt about it being racist or improper. That argument happened a long time ago. Long before Google. Long before Wikipedia. Long before it was quick and easy to find tons of information about common terms on the internet. The term wasn’t in my dictionary (only had an abridged one at the time), and so I let the argument drop assuming that people older than me were more worldly and wise and likely correct that it was a term one shouldn’t use … particularly since so many of them agreed on the subject.
But I’d been thinking about that term since I self-edited the other day, and today I looked it up. The modern internet was quick to give me an answer.
Jury-rigged: Questions & Answers
jury-rig: Definition from Answers.com
Jury-rig: Wikipedia
There were hundreds of other places that all agreed with those three, and the bottom line is that neither “jury-rigged” nor “jerry-rigged” is in any way racist or improper to use. So without further ado, I am adding it back into my vocabulary after many years of stuttering and self-editing when that was the word I wanted to use … with a hearty fuck you to those people on that group blog who convinced me I’d been saying something awful my entire life. :flip:
Or simply swing by NAPA, get a new power steering cap and render the whole question moot. They’re cheap, just like the fuel pump.
The last one I bought at NAPA that was supposed to fit didn’t, which is why it’s rigged a little to work. The next time I go see my mom, I want to stop at this fantastic junkyard on the way and see if they have an original one (which was metal not plastic). It’s just not something I ever think about until the stearing starts up with the noise (about twice a year).
Actually Orb you have said a lot of thing that have surprised me, but the “N” word, even if it was use to describe a jury rigged whatever, I just don’t see you using that term.
I winced when I typed the “N” word. There’s a pretty long list of words that simply aren’t in my vocabulary. That’s one of the top ones. I can’t even stand to hear African-American commedians use it (which they do far too much, I think). It’s just an ugly word, and some ugly words are best just eradicated. I would include all the big racial slurs with that and hopefully someday people will stop trying to reclaim them for themselves and just let them die already.