B1042-6 Chemo

    Years ago, while I was attending the U.S. Army Chemical Corps School in Alabama, I met a soldier from the Royal Thai Army.  He was an enlisted man by the name of Corporal Chumpol.  It was relatively rare to see foreign enlisted soldiers at the school (we had just two while I was there), although officers from around the world could be seen there quite regularly.
    One day, following a military parade, Corporal Chumpol came back into the barracks smiling broadly and told us, “I just love Ah-May-Ree-Ka (‘America’).  Everybody is so nice to me.”  He had been saluted by many officers and he was clearly enjoying the honor.  His dress uniform had “shoulder boards,” or epaulets, with an embroidered  Royal Thai Army insignia placard, along with three brass cones that looked like Hershey Kisses mounted on them.  In most armies of the world, those three cones would designate the rank of captain.  But Chumpol was just a corporal.  Again and again, he had been mistaken for a captain, and had been called, “Sir,” by unsuspecting officers, who snapped to attention as he passed by and saluted him.  And Corporal Chumpol just loved it.
    Then one day, just when he was about to be saluted again, an American soldier told the officer, “He ain’t nothing, Sir.  He’s just a corporal.  Don’t salute him like he was an officer.  He ain’t nothing.”
    He ain’t nothing.  I supposed that many of us spend a lifetime hiding in that disguise of “nothing,” unnoticed and disregarded, for the most part.  True, we might attract attention from time to time and be recognized by others, perhaps when someone says, “Yeah, that’s him, Officer.  Second guy from the left.  That’s him.”  But usually we can chameleon ourselves so well that we disappear for all practical purposes.
    Which brings me to my point.  Yes, there is a point to this, believe it or not.  Do you know how lucky it is to have cancer?  You’re probably thinking that “lucky” and “cancer” cannot be used together in the same sentence.  You would be wrong if you thought that way, however.  I say that it’s a very lucky thing to have cancer because cancer turns on God’s Sunshine Pump.  And when that Sunshine Pump is running, everybody salutes you and treats you like Corporal Chumpol - even if you don’t deserve it, even if you’re a “nothing.”
    I’m not going to dismiss the pain and suffering of cancer.  It can be quite intense at times.  There are days when it hurts so badly that you’re afraid that you are going to die.  And, after an hour of that suffering, sometimes you begin to be afraid that you’re going to live.  That’s not what I’m talking about.
    Instead, I’m talking about how easy it is for many people to obey our Lord’s commandment to love one another when they are dealing with a cancer patient.  The same impatient people who fly into a blinding rage on the highway when they are cut off by another driver suddenly become mellow and loving around those afflicted with cancer.  That’s what I’m talking about: the utter transformation of people who would like to treat you as if you were nothing at all, but now are kind, and loving, and solicitous - just as our Lord intended them to be.
    I feel a particular debt of gratitude toward those who have sent cards and letters; to those who have called me on the telephone to ask about my condition; to those who have wrapped me in prayer as a gift to God; and to those who have offered to help in any way, and have offered their time and talents to make this cancer journey a bit easier.  At times this endless parade of goodwill makes me feel like Corporal Chumpol: I don’t deserve it; but I love it nonetheless.
    Indeed, it is a lucky thing to have cancer.

C1011-1 Criticism and the Writer

     1.    EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT:  Those who have an emotional investment in their writing tend not to have a favorable response to any criticism of their writing.  More often than not they view their particular piece of writing as something that is just as sacrosanct as a member of their immediate family and as something that is simply beyond any kind of constructive criticism whatsoever.  One should no more think of criticizing a person’s family members than one should think of criticizing a sensitive, emotionally-invested person’s writing.
     To a certain extent having an emotional investment in one’s writing is important thing.  Without such an investment the writer would have a problem marshaling the kind of necessary ego to make his writing worthwhile.  However, to place oneself wholly beyond criticism emotionally makes it very difficult for that kind of person to ever improve his writing skills.  A key requirement for a person to improve his writing skills must include some openness to modest suggestions to improve that writing.  When that is not the case, i.e., when the person stubbornly clings to the writing as it stands, then there is no possibility of making improvements to that writing.  That is not to say that there cannot be times when one’s writing is satisfactory to oneself and beyond effective criticism.  To be sure, not all criticism is useful or needed in every case.  At times criticism can actually get in the way, and can be quite harmful.
     Writers sometimes invite criticism of their work, and they do so to elicit some response to their work, but without necessarily inviting criticism per se.  What they really want, more often than not, is a favorable and complementary response to their writing and not some constructive criticism that seeks to improve that writing.  It is often difficult for a critic to tell the difference between a writer seeking to have his ego salved and a writer seeking genuine criticism of his work.  It is often not useful for a person to take a writer’s word at face value when that person invites criticism of his work.  More often than not, the writer is simply seeking complements from a trusted or revered person.  The difficulty, as I see it then, is to tell the difference between the sycophant and the true writing student.
     It would appear to me then, that the critic’s first task is to determine whether he is dealing with an egoist or a learner.  And often that is no mean task.  Sometimes he can simply ask the writer precisely what he wants from a critique.  But the response is often unreliable: the person may say he wants a critique that is helpful in pointing out inadequacies in his writing, when he actually wants and expects a compliment from the critic.  How to tell the difference?
     The critic could tell him that he intends to criticize his work and that he will do so quite brutally and honestly.  Moreover, the critic could tell him that he takes the writer’s word at face value when he asked for frank criticism.  Thus, the critic must make it known that he intends to criticized the writers works and will not praise them heedlessly.  It may be necessary for the critic to ask the writer quite directly whether he wants a compliment or if he wants constructive criticism.  And, finally, the writer must agree to accept the criticism at face value and not see it as malicious or harmful or hurtful.  If the writer agrees to accept the critic’s criticism, then the critic must proceed tentatively in case the writer misrepresents his position.
     From my own personal experience I would say the critic’s best mode of operation is to simply refuse to criticize another person’s writing.  It is actually much safer that way.  The cordiality that existed between the critic and his writer is often maintained in that silence.  The surest, the easiest way to lose a writer friend is to tell him many ways that he is not a good writer.  Pointing out problematic writing is an ego-destroying operation for the person who wrote the work.  And it is often difficult and thankless work for the critic as well.

     2.    LEARNING:  I do believe that writers are born with a certain innate leaning, or perhaps one should say, a proclivity towards writing.  There are others who lack this gift, and no amount of training whatsoever would seem to overcome that deficiency: such persons are doomed to an inarticulate and nonverbal life.  The others - those gifted with being writers - possess only that proclivity and do not possess the accomplished skills of a fine writer.  Instead, those skills, must be developed as a craft.  One is not born a writer.  One is born with the tendency to become a writer.  But the transition from raw proclivity to settled artistic skill is one that is fraught with difficulty and struggle.  One does not wake up one morning to discover that he has become a writer while he slept at night.  Instead, the person must invest a great deal of effort and time to become such a writer.
     Emotional investment in one’s writing, then, would seem to serve as an insurmountable barrier to ever improving one’s writing.  The writer’s first steps are taken with an awareness that he is not a god who produces consistently perfect work every day.  There must be an openness to learning on an ongoing basis.  The writer never ever achieves a style that is perfect and inclusive and beyond reproach.  Always and ever, the writer’s skills can be improved to some extent.  Yet there are many writers who dig in their heels and refuse to accept any suggestions for change because of that emotional investment in their writing.  In some rare and happy cases, there are writers sufficiently skilled that their reluctance to have anyone criticize and change their writing is actually a well-placed attitude.  Such writers are exceedingly rare, however.  One can safely say that the balance of the writers that one encounters are either completely invested in their work and will not allow criticism; or more happily, they are open to suggestion and actively seek it in order to improve their writing.  The problem for the critic is knowing the difference.

3.    THE SIREN SONG:  It is into such a context that a would-be critic often finds himself.  Frequently he is asked to act as an editor or to criticize another person’s piece of writing, and in his innocence, he sails directly at the Lorelei when he takes the bait.  Such persons do not want criticism when they ask for it.  They really want a pat on the back.  They want their work praised to the heavens even when the work is mediocre and unsatisfactory.  They do not want their work subjected to a rigorous examination, nor do they wish to have their work ravaged by the critic who complains at their work isn’t like something he would do.  For, in effect, all critics complain that a piece of writing is either 1), not like their own or 2), not like the writing of some other accomplished writer.  The perceptive reader will see that both of these criticisms are really non sequiturs: to say that a piece of writing isn’t like mine or like that person’s is over there is really quite beyond the point.  Of course it isn’t like mine or his - it’s like the person’s writing who wrote it.  Nonetheless, the critic will crash into this rock, amid stream, like a sailor in a fog.  A critic’s most responsive answer when asked to criticize should always be an inquiry about whether the writer seeking that criticism is able to bear it.  The first question a critic should always ask is this: “Do you want a pat on the back, or you do you really want to know what I think about your writing.”

4.    CRITICISM WITH UNDERSTANDING:  I know that it might not make sense to you to hear me say that you shouldn’t listen to your critics when they say that they think your [name of story here] is something for old ladies.  The hardest thing that you can do as a writer is to close your ears to criticism.  Yet, it is something you have to do.  And I say that because, at the end of the day, all criticism complains that your writing isn’t like “this writing over here” or like “my writing,” or like the writing of “Miss Big Britches Best-Seller Over There.”  You thought it was more complicated than that, didn’t you?  But it isn’t.  The critics can help you only in so far as they point out the mechanical errors in your writing: spelling, grammar, etc.  But when they get into your motivation for telling a story, they’re really bursting into the bathroom while you’re sitting on the toilet: They’re being rude and uncivilized.
     You need to tell them that, 1) you’ve created something (your story) that didn’t exist before, 2) that you’ve created this story to understand yourself and your existence, 3) that you’ve made a creative thing for which you were paid, and 4) you need to tell them all to shut the hell up.
     Now, they aren’t going to understand any of that.  People who do not write cannot understand the demon that chases writers through the woods.  They could lie on a beach for a week, watching the waves lapping the shore, and never give it a second thought.  But you and I would be searching for a pencil and notebook after 20 minutes to tell ourselves how those waves lapped the shore.  We make sense of the world through the medium of words.  And that’s a wholly private thing.  Making sense of the world for you is your business and not the business of others who do not have your vested interest in the outcome of that sense-making enterprise.  That is why almost all criticism is so off the mark: it complains that your attempt to understand the world is not like someone else’s attempt to understand the world.  How dumb is that?  It’s yours; it isn’t supposed to be like someone else’s stuff.

     5.    KEEPING OUR OWN STUFF:  Let me stick my neck out here, if you don’t mind, and make several points about writing - our writing and their writing.
     First:  At some point, when the critics have ravaged our writing because it doesn’t meet their expectations for clarity, or readability, or cadence, or whatever, we will be forced to say that what we have created is ours, and that we will not surrender any more to their strident demands.  At some point we will no longer be willing to turn our honest efforts into mere journalism in order to satisfy some juvenile standard of readability.  Appropriately then, there comes a point when it becomes impossible for us to continue pruning our work so that it can join in with their mindless, fifth-grade topiaries.  At the end of the day, our work is our work, and not theirs.
     Second:  We understand, further, that our obstinacy and unwillingness to modify what we have written could have very real commercial implications.  Still, there are things that we may have written that have what I call idiosyncratic value.  These works may not be well-written; they may lack readability, or clarity, or cadence; they may contain words that some will find bizarre or incomprehensible or offensive.  But they are ours, and they may be so personal, so personally intimate,  that they cannot be shared with the world.  Think of your personal journal.  Would you change it so that it read like the New York Times?  Would you post your entire journal on the Internet?  I didn’t think so.
     Third:  We are aware that there are many, very practical, things that we can do to improve our writing.  Often we can improve readability, for example,  simply by replacing commas with periods, i.e., breaking long sentences into short, readable sentences.  Some word processing programs can count word-length, average sentence-length, and maximum sentence-length, and those programs can be helpful in assessing the “fogginess” of our writing.  As an aside, I remember how I was once attracted to the Lorelei of a comma-obsessed short story writer, and how I emulated his long and rambling sentences, and how I wrecked on the jagged rocks of incomprehensibility.  And I still do it, to my everlasting shame (see the preceding sentence if you don’t believe me).  Yet, improving our writing is something that we discover that we must do to be better writers, and not something that others do for us.  As we study and seek to improve our craft, we make the necessary changes.  If we allow others to dictate those changes, we will seldom internalize the rationale for making the changes in the first place.  The moral of the story: We do the changing; not them.
     Fourth:  You might have explored around the Internet looking for a writers’ forum.  You may even be a member of such a group.  But eventually almost all writing forum members become disenchanted with the forum for one reason or another, and go on to other, more productive, ventures.  I was a member of www.mywriterscircle.com for some time.  I enjoyed the chit-chat, and actually posted a few things there.  Then a funny thing happened.  Some members went on vacation (only they might have called it a “holiday”) and others became busy with personal concerns in their lives and went silent for a time.  And then the crazies swooped in and hijacked the site.  It was then that I dropped out.  I couldn’t tell you what is happening with that site today.  I check back in from time to time, and I’ve noticed that some familiar names are still there.  But many new members - all it seems with chimera-bearing names, such as dragon, witch, wizard, wolf, unicorn, etc. - have arrived to spread their form of silliness on the site.  Perhaps all writing forums undergo such a transformation over a period of time.  At any given moment a particular group may interact well with its members, to the enjoyment of those participating in that group.  But it seems that small things (vacations, etc.) upset the equilibrium and destroy the cohesiveness of the group.  And then the members drop out.  I found that many secularists (one is tempted to say, satanists) suddenly appeared on the site and started their wearisome antichrist stuff.  So I exited in disgust.  MyWritersCircle shows a great many members on its roster.  Yet, the number of very active and participating members may be as few as 50 members.  You may benefit as a writer from an interaction with some of those people.  But the balance of them will waste your time.  And that is the real danger of any writing forum: it may degenerate into mere gossip and destroy your opportunities to become a more effective writer because it will rob you of the time necessary to write more serious stuff.  If you like fluff, there’s much to occupy your time there, however.  One posting about limericks, for example, has attracted almost 30,000 views!  I’d give it a look if I were you.  I’d even participate for a time.  But honestly, then I’d go on to better things.

B8005-2 Moron Ideology: Instead We Ought To...

      A common argumentation strategy in energy discussions  is the “Instead We Ought To” routine.  Notice how many times a discussion of, say, drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico or in Alaska terminates in the hopeless non sequitur of “instead we ought to develop sustainable alternative energy sources such as wind, solar or nuclear energy.”  What makes that statement a non sequitur is its wholesale abandonment of the basic argument about oil.  Remember the discussion or argument is about oil.  Let me repeat: the discussion is about oil.  It is not about alternative energy sources that have no applicability to oil-based processes, fuels, and lubricants.  Wind mills do not and cannot power automobiles in any practical way in an expansive nation like the USA.  So why take the argument away from a discussion of oil drilling (as a means of reducing dependence on foreign oil or reducing the price of gasoline, etc.) and into an inapplicable foray into silly assertions about alternative energy that inherently cannot deal with oil dependence or gasoline prices.  Its just as silly as saying, “Instead of paying such high grocery bills, you ought to plant rose bushes in front of your house”
      Notice, too, that a discussion of high gasoline prices begins as an economic argument when some assert that increased drilling will result in larger supplies of oil that will reduce the price of gasoline.  When the discussion is deflected to alternative energy sources, it ceases to be an economic argument and, instead, becomes an ideological argument. When we assert that we ought to do something that does not address the crux of the argument (the price of gasoline), we engage in ideology.

B1042-5 Moron Politics: Dumb Mythology & Other Diversions

Saddled With Stupidity:  Sometimes I think about the accepted mythology of Montezuma when the Spanish conquistadors hit the beach in the Sixteenth Century.  The Spaniards were not seen as invading, threatening beings; rather, they were seen as gods bringing the fruition and fulfilment to history.   By the time Montezuma figured out that the Spaniards were not as benign as their fanciful Mesoamerican mythology would have it, it was really too late to resist the conquistadors. Some would blame Montezuma for his failed leadership.  Others would see the corrosive effect of a faulty world-view on a civilization.  I’m going with the dumb world-view option myself.  Montezuma wasn’t a poor leader.  He was just plain stupid in the face of a sharply-evolving reality.

a.    Science:  Failure to see the world as it is - rather than as one would like to imagine it - is really a common problem.  And this impairment goes across many lines of human endeavor.  The young “scientist,” for example, struggles to incorporate the mythology of science into his thinking while he is in college.  Once he masters the jargon of his field of study, he is no longer capable of being a scientist in the truest sense of the word.  Instead, he becomes a perpetuator of accepted and conventional scientific myths.  In other words, he becomes a cheerleader for the staid enterprise of established science.  He becomes part of the welcoming party on the beach when the mysterious galleons sail into view.

b.    Economics:  One of the more durable myths in economics today is that of Keynesianism as an effective countermeasure for economic ennui.  The scheme has been tried repeatedly since Lord Keynes first promulgated the theory.  In every instance it has been shown to be an abject failure.  Every. Single. Instance.  Yet, each new generation of would-be economists is paraded through the Hall of Mirrors in the House of Keynes as if the theory itself were worth discussing and teaching.  It is the economic equivalent of science’s Phlogiston Theory: It sounds good, but it simply doesn’t work.  To be sure, it should be economics’ most pertinent example of Bad Ideas Gone Wild.  It should only be shown as a Bad Example.  It isn’t, however.  Endless lines of academics recount the horrid lessons of Keynesianism that they learned in Econ 101 as if those lessons were true.  But they are not.  Ms. Christina Romer, former chairman of the president’s council of economic advisors, is one of the latest victims of pretending that a manifestly false economic theory has any merit.  Some  believe that Ms. Romer resigned her chairmanship.  I’m of the opinion that she was fired, not for advising a bad public policy, but rather for a fundamental and obstinate stupidity about things economical.  If it hasn’t worked for five-hundred-and-fifty-times, why would anyone think it should work on the five-hundredth-and-fifty-first time?  How many times does Keynesianism have to stub its toe against the end table of reality before it decides to walk around that object?

c.    Politics: A common Democrat myth in today's world might be simply categorized under the heading of "Taxing the Rich."  Many Democrats believe that the rich should pay their "fair share" of taxes, and they propose that the tax rates for the super wealthy should be raised. They explain why those rates should be raised by saying that the super-rich should pay for the deficits that the country experiences in its tax accounts. Yet, when it is explained that if the United States took every single dime of the super wealthy and applied them towards those deficits, those funds wouldn't begin to cover those deficits. The Democrats' counter-argument to that statement is to stare off into space blankly and then to repeat the talking point that the tax rates for the super wealthy should be raised. In other words, they argue by repeating a basic false premise without supplying any further, supporting evidence. Their counter-argument is simply a non sequitur of belief rather than logic.  That the rich should pay their "fair share" of taxes is an article of faith among Democrats. "Fair share," however, is never defined in constructive ways that anyone could discover.   Exactly what percentage of income that should be confiscated from the rich is never stated definitively. Rather, it is always stated in such a way that the amount should be sufficient to eliminate the debt. Notice that the amount is always open-ended.

B9013-1 Stoppin' Kloppenburg from Floppin'

    Some thoughts on the recent (04-05-11) Wisconsin Supreme Court election.  JoAnne Kloppenburg (D) challenged the incumbent David Prosser (R) for the seat on the Court.  At the time of this writing, Kloppenburg seems to have lost the election by some 7,500 votes out of 1.5 million votes cast.
    As I understand it, Kloppenburg has now lost five judicial elections.  Five elections!  Normally, a candidate is asked to hit the bricks after two or three losses.  Why all that Democrat union money went into such a candidate and why the Democrats ran Kloppenburg again with her losing track record is the mystery for the ages.
    But here are some insights.  If you have a name like Kloppenburg - that cries out for ridicule and mockery, and lends itself to easy satire - you should either, 1) forget about being a candidate in the first place, or 2) have you name changed legally to something that resists parody.  Then, too, if you bear an uncanny resemblance to Margaret Hamilton (a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the West) in The Wizard of Oz you might want to soften that image with a touch of makeup and a different hair style.  Get rid of that Stern Librarian scarf and those school marm clothes, too.  There are some principles involved here: If you have a clunky name and forbidding looks, and you act like the neighborhood scold from your childhood, don’t expect a warm embrace from the public.  Just sayin.’

B9014-1 Smothering With Lies

            All of us, in our own way, are living out the encouragements of childhood.  And though we pretend to think that our lives today are directed by some cool, rational thought arising within us, more often than not our lives are driven by some anachronistic remnant of childhood still whiplashing us today with its sugary praise.  What began as a harmless compliment to a young person may, in time, grow to become an all-consuming passion for that person later in life.  The youngster who is praised lavishly for a mediocre drawing may spend the rest of his life as an artist trying to recapture that moment.  If adults are not completely honest with young people, then the lie may dance with its hapless recipient for a lifetime.  And sometimes only in the hollowness of old age does a person realize exactly how he has been beaten to death with the hard stick of falsehood wrapped in the soft cloth of kindness.
            I remember especially the time when I was forced to take my Paint-By-Number painting over to Rosie's.  My mother had gone goo-goo over my painting, even though I had tried to explain to her that the painting was a Paint-By-Number painting, for crying out loud, and that it wasn't original art.  But it made no difference to her.  It was beautiful.  It was art.  And her boy painted it.
            Rosie ran a tourist room business in her home next door (Frank’s Tourist Rooms) and one of her regular guests was a former commercial artist.  He had given up his art work because he couldn't make a living at it and he was working, instead, as a salesman.  And so, I had come as an intruder upon this man who, after a day of plying the salesman's role, wanted nothing more than to relax and to steep himself in the numbness of whiskey.  He had to dress himself when Rosie came knocking at his door and had to pretend to be interested in the "artwork" thrust under his nose.  He wasn't and I could see it at once.
            He tried to be kind, as adults filled with whiskey are wont to do, by saying that I had "stayed within the lines real nice" when I painted the oils on the numbered spaces.  He asked if I had mixed the colors myself - and he didn't mean merely to stir the paint in the plastic containers.  Rather, he wondered if I had squeezed the colors of paint onto the pallette and blended them together to get exactly the proper hue.  Of course I hadn't.  This was a Paint-By-Number painting and it had all the rigorous artistic content of a person who paints her own toenails: if you were able to get more paint on your tootsies than on the linoleum you were doing well.  But it was not art.
            I understood that and the artist/salesman understood that.  But the women, my mom and Rosie, insisted that he "encourage" me in my artistic pursuits.  And he lied to me in those soft and beguiling words by telling me that my scrawled and blotched Paint-By-Number painting was "very, very nice."  Yet, I understood that they made him do it.  I understood that he really didn't feel that way at all about my "art."  And I understood that, if I were wise, I should rise quickly above the silliness of blobbing paint into someone else's checkered polygons.  Instead, I should play marbles and break things like any normal eight year old and leave the world of art to those endowed by God with those very special talents.
            I guess I was lucky.  Some are taken in by that line and they spend the rest of their lives dabbling in an art that never transcends the complexity and rigors of Paint-By-Number technique.  Some are so wrapped in the smooth cocoon of falsehood that their wings never dry in the warm daylight of truth.  Always, they will flit from bud to bud, searching for the sweet nectar of praise.  And only in later life will they come to see the fundamental way in which they were so cruelly misled.  But I saw at once, with the crystal-clear prescience of an eight-year old, that I could never be what my mom and Rosie thought of me.  I was lucky.
            Often, we are not given to see the stout fence that surrounds and pinces our options in life.  We have been told the glib lie again and again that we can be anything we wish to be and that nothing stands between us and the farthest stars.  But then, if that were so, how can the broken rubble wall of restraint arise so abruptly from the smooth and undulating plain?  How is it that the protruding hedge mars the uncontested vista?  And why is it that the nimble runner sprains his ankle on the smallest, almost invisible cracks in the concrete sidewalk?  Could it be, perhaps, that God has been pleased to give each one of us a very special gift and one or two carefully selected paths to channel our energies into and not to broadcast them into the remotest corners of the universe like some profligate dandelion?  For when we "scatter," we surely wander in the labyrinth in search of the exit and often we walk into one blind alley after another and into many closed doors.

            Many times, when adults are dealing with youngsters, they are often too kind to tell the plain truth out of some staid sense of decorum and politeness.  They withhold vital information from those who are struggling to find themselves in the world, and they do that because they do not wish to hurt the feelings of those youngsters.  But, because they do not tell the truth, they inadvertently allow the youngster to box himself into a cul-de-sac.
            The cruelest, most dishonest thing a person can do to a youngster is to lie to him by putting the pretty label on something that is blatantly ugly.

C2001-1 Speaking Indistinctly

            Sometimes, when I watch television with the captioning feature turned on, I see a message that says, “Speaking Indistinctly,” as if Indistinctly were a separate language.  In the USA, Indistinctly appears to be a cognate of the Indo-European family of languages because words and phrases frequently appear from a tangled nest of incomprehension that are nearly identical with standard English words and phrases.  They are just harder to understand.  And those words always emanate from the mouths of particularly lazy speakers, like the slushy, half-slurred words of a common lush.
            I suspect that such lazy habits are born sitting in front of computer screens or television sets in a childhood or adolescence devoid of any real conversation and dialog.  The inanimate nature of those electronic devices does not allow for inquiry when incomprehension occurs.  Instead, the passive nature of those devices encourages a tolerance for indistinct and unintelligible speech.  Later, when actual conversations take place between individuals, those bad computer and television habits make it unnecessary to understand exactly what the other person is saying.  One need merely wait until the noise stops coming from the other person and it is time for one to speak oneself: sequential monologues, unrelated to each other, occurring more-or-less contemporaneously.
            It is, in my mind, another failure of the U.S. educational establishment that they cannot turn out graduates who can write and speak as if they had been the beneficiaries of a genuine education.  Many cannot spell or write coherent sentences.  Many cannot stand up in front of a group of people and speak well or even be understood by others.
            But slowly, ever so slowly, I am beginning to understand why this is so.  Our local newspaper  today showed youngsters in the local high school fashioning a wedding dress entirely from toilet paper.  I’m sure many hours of classroom time were expended in this fruitless pursuit, where none was required to spell accurately, or compose coherent sentences, or even to speak with enough clarity that others could understand them at all: your education dollars at work.