Time for another good old fashioned anti-PC rant

We’ve all heard the cringe-inducing jargon: white privilege, white skin privilege, woke (self-congratulatory term of the day), phallocracy (yes, a real PC term), differently abled, safe space, triggered, Latinx (obviously better than o/a), exceptional (retarded), and the granddaddy of all this awkwardness, “people of,” and  so on.

First: Who the hell came up with these terms? Second: Who the hell uses them? Third: Why? Fourth: What on earth purpose does this serve? Fifth: Who benefits?

1) Well, no one really knows. A decent guess is that well-off, guilt-ridden white PC academics in Ivy League or other $40,000-a-year-tuition universities, and possibly members of authoritarian marxist political parties, came up with this crap;

2) The just-mentioned white academics and holier-than-thou left political activists who don’t give a shit about alienating everyday people — activists (at least in word) who want to signal their virtue, people who have never lived in a ghetto or barrio and are separated by an income gap from those of us stuck here;

3) The surface reason is that they want to “educate” people about “privilege.” A secondary reason is that they don’t understand what four decades ago Audre Lourde called the “hierarchy of oppression,” and don’t give a shit about organizing the unorganized and building solidarity across racial and gender lines.

What better way to appeal to (white and especially male) people barely making the rent, without health insurance, and in fear of job loss than to tell them they’re “privileged,” and (unspoken) should be ashamed of it and themselves? Why on earth wouldn’t they rally to your cause? Why on earth talk to people about the actual hierarchy of oppression and their place in it, when you can use insulting, guilt-inducing terms to gloss over all the many and important gradations, paint the less oppressed as “privileged,” and pat yourselves on the back for how enlightened you are?

4) As mentioned above, the purpose of using such terms is virtue-signalling: letting the world know that you’re “woke.” Not remotely making the world a better place.

5) The only people this serves are right-wing theofascists, such as Trump, who want to paint a grotesque image of those opposed to them as holier-than-thou, out-of-touch elitists. Referring to poor and working class people who aren’t as oppressed as others as “privileged,” rather than “less oppressed,” is both grotesque and insulting. It’s hard to imagine a more effective divide-and-conquer strategy.

Referring accurately to all of the oppressed as oppressed leads to solidarity. On the other, referring to the less oppressed as “privileged” is not only inaccurate, it leads to warfare within the poor and working classes. Divide and conquer.

Condescending, reductionistic PC terminology plays into Trump’s and the other ruling-class theofascists’ hands.

How utterly disgusting.

Americans hate PC condescension

The British analytical group, More in Common (“founded in memory of [British MP] Jo Cox [murdered by a neo-Nazi]”), reports that the vast majority of Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture.

The study has design problems, such as considering no political positions to the left of “progressive activists,” and defining “PC culture” only in terms of language. (Obviously, it goes far beyond this.)

Still, the study has some value. Among other things, it reveals that a full 80% of Americans (including 75% of Afro-Americans and 88% of Native Americans) “dislike” PC language and consider it a problem. As well, the single group most likely to view PC jargon favorably — though only a third do so — is “progressive activists,” 8% of the total population, who are overwhelmingly white, earn over $100K per year, and are most likely to hold advanced degrees.

In other words, “the liberal elite,” those most likely to control “progressive” media outlets (such as, to fairly single them out, Alternet), and to indulge in the use of PC terminology.

And PC terminology is to all appearances not intended to unite the oppressed against the common ultra-rich enemy, but to give its users a warm feeling of self-congratulation on being enlightened, morally superior, above the rest of us. It’s in-group, self-identifying, and self-congratulatory jargon.

Think about it for a moment. How many people do you know who use terms like “woke,” “people of color,” “white privilege,” “privileged”? I’ve lived for nearly 30 years in a barrio where maybe 25% of the people are white, and I have never heard any of my Mexican or black neighbors, or my poor white neighbors, use these or similar terms. Never. Over damn near 30 years. Never.

“Progressive activists” are not speaking the language of the people. They may want to shame people into using their jargon, but they are not speaking the language of the people.

It’s time for the “progressive” left to stop patting themselves on the back. It’s time for them to stop using jargon that alienates people. (Try telling someone who’s making minimum wage, spending 50% of their income on rent, has no health insurance, and can’t come up with $500 cash to cover an emergency, that they’re “privileged” because of the color of their skin — see how far that gets you; see how far that goes in building coalitions to build solidarity, to improve life for all.)

The PC left is a curse, navel-gazers intent on proving to themselves how virtuous they are in comparison to us unenlightened plebes, especially through use of their in-group jargon. They’re an ongoing disaster.

If the left is ever to make real progress in this country, to make concrete policies to benefit all, it won’t be through using bizarre jargon that plays into the hands of Trump’s “very fine people.” It’ll be through talking about economic policies that benefit all of us.

Quote of the Day 4-5-19 (George Orwell)

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”

— George Orwell, Why I Write

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(Thanks to T.C. Weber for this one, who’s doing the same damn thing.)

 

Writing Tip of the Day 7-5-18 (Francine Prose)

“[Chekhov] has put his finger on a problem that often affects writers and just as frequently stands in the way of clarity: the belief that every noun needs an adjective, that every sentence must be elaborate, that every turn of phrase must be lyrical, poetic, and above all original, and that it represents some sort of shameful failure of the imagination to use language in a way that can be readily understood by all.”

–Francine Prose, “It’s Harder Than It Looks to Write Clearly” on Lithub

 

One of the reasons I hate euphemisms

I just read a self-indulgent, useless piece by an editor at another small press regarding a recently deceased prominent sci-fi author (Ursula Le Guin). The editor had nothing interesting to say — whatever; it’s what I expected — but what really irritated me was her use of the term “passed away” in place of “dead” or “deceased.”

If you’re trying to convey useful information, euphemisms — even the most commonly understood — are a lousy, inefficient way to do it. Let’s take this euphemism: “passed away” is a  term with two words, a dipthong, and three syllables. The slightly more polite but still accurate “deceased” is a single word with two syllables. “Dead” consists of a single word and a single syllable.

Over the last three-and-a-half years, nearly of 20 my friends have died (all younger than me). They’re dead; they didn’t “pass”; they didn’t “pass away”; they didn’t “go to a better place.” They’re dead. And I miss them.

There’s no way to sugar coat it, and trying to do so is obnoxious, condescending — taking the reader as a delicate flower who can’t handle the truth.

As Lemme put it, my friends are “stone dead, forever.”

Using euphemisms wastes time and makes honest discourse more cumbersome.

Stop it. Please stop it.

How NOT to talk to people about politics (and how to do it effectively)

One of the main mocking points of the right is the language of the left, especially PC terms such as the mandatory “people of.”

Here’s a hint as to why using such language is a really dumb thing to do: It’s artificial. In real life — at least around here — No one talks like that.

My neighborhood is about 80% nonwhite, and over the last quarter century while talking with my Mexican, black, and poor white neighbors, I have never heard the words “people of color.”  Never. The black people refer to themselves as black people or African-Americans. The Mexicans refer to themselves as Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, very occasionally chicanos. Not “people of color” — that’s a term for guilty white folks and identity-politics types of any color, who care more about using the correct PC terms than about reaching the people around them (more accurately, reaching the people in poor and working class neighborhoods).

After that disastrous usage and similar off-putting PC terms, things get even worse — totally divorced from reality, totally divorced from daily life.

Let’s take a prime example: “Smash US Imperialism.” What the hell does that mean? “Smash”? Does it have any concrete meaning? No. It’s just metaphorical.

What about “U.S. Imperialism”? That might have some meaning (varying) in hardcore leftist circles, though one suspects it’s close to a ritual incantation. Most of my neighbors would have at best a foggy idea of what that term means.

The point is that “Smash U.S. Imperialism” is just empty political sloganeering. It has nothing to do with daily life.

After such empty rhetoric, incredibly enough, things get even worse.

Condescending identity-politics types will happily lecture people about how they’re woman-haters for refusing to vote for authoritarian warmonger and corporate lapdog Hillary Clinton, and how having a woman in charge will be a huge step forward. (Yep, having Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi at the top of the heap in the UK and India changed everything, didn’t it?)

Even more obnoxiously, holier-than-thou identity politics types will lecture people about how they’re racists just because they’re white. Some of the more dishonest, disrespectful PC types even have the nerve to ask other white people “Are you a racist” in order to manipulate them into being lectured about how all white people are racists.

This type of patronizing PC b.s. does far more harm than good. It unnecessarily alienates people and plays into the stereotype that everyone on the left side of the political spectrum is a condescending jerk.

So, what to do?

If you want to talk with people and actually move them, talk to them about their daily lives. Talk with them about how lacking healthcare means they might die, how their kids might die; talk to them about the shitty schools in the neighborhood; talk to them about the insane cost of higher education; talk to them about how the 1% pay lower taxes than they do, and how they’ll never get ahead as long as that continues.

Talk about daily life, what we’re all going through, and we might even get to hardcore Trump worshippers. When we point out how government and corporate policies play out in daily life, how they affect all of our families, we might get through to people.

Let’s point out why, in concrete terms, our shared pain exists, and we might get somewhere.

Using abstract, PC language and slogans almost guarantees that we won’t.

Talking about daily life is the best, and arguably the only, way to reach people.

 

 

 

A Blast from the Past: More on Common Writing Errors

(For the last few months we’ve been running the best posts from years past, posts that will be new to most of our subscribers. This one is from 2013. We’ll be posting more blasts from the past for the next several months, and will intersperse them with new material.)

* * *

by Chaz Bufe, publisher See Sharp Press

I recently read a short story by a well-known science fiction author, and found myself grinding my teeth as I plowed through it. Why? It was well plotted and the characters were well drawn, but it contained several common writing errors — errors that the editor should have caught, and that the writer should never have made. (She’s a major figure in the sci-fi genre, and the story collection was published by a major publishing house.)

The first error was misspelling of the past tense of the verb “lead”: it’s “led,” not “lead.”

The second was my current pet peeve, incorrect use of the infinitive: “and” is not part of the infinitive; “to” is. For example, “I’m going to try and get a job.” Wrong. “I’m going to try to get a job.” Right.

The third was misuse of both semicolons and colons.

Semicolons have only two uses: 1) to separate two closely related phrases that could stand as independent sentences; 2) to separate items in lists, especially within text. They can be used as separators in bulleted or numbered lists, but that’s optional.

Colons have a few more uses: 1) at the end of salutations in letters or e-mails; 2) to introduce lengthy quoted material; 3) at the end of a complete sentence when the following phrase, clause, or word illustrates or explains the preceding part of the sentence; 4) to introduce a list.

Everyone, at least occasionally, makes writing mistakes. But when abundant such errors indicate the following: 1) the author is simply a poor writer and doesn’t even suspect s/he’s making common errors; 2) the author takes little or no pride in his or her craft, is too lazy to learn proper usage, and doesn’t think it matters; or 3) the author is aware of his or her writing errors, knows they’re problems, and wishes to slough them off on lesser mortals (i.e., editors).

These are all excellent reasons for not wanting to work with an author.

Related articles

• Query Letters and Manuscripts: Why We Reject 99% of Submissions (seesharppress.wordpress.com)

Once again: Interesting and marginally useful Internet crap

Here’s the latest installment in our ever-popular Internet Crap series, which mixes links to sick and absurd but amusing crap with links to useful crap. Enjoy!

• Skeptic Magazine has a great piece on a new successful hoax of a postmodernist academic journal. The piece begins:
  

  The androcentric scientific and meta-scientific evidence that the penis is the male reproductive organ is considered overwhelming and largely uncontroversial.

  “. . .We used this preposterous sentence to open a ‘paper’ consisting of 3,000 words of utter nonsense posing as academic scholarship. Then a peer-reviewed academic journal in the social sciences accepted and published it.”

• Walking disease vector Milo Yiannopoulos’s publicists claimed, to Publishers Weekly, that his new self-published book Dangerous sold 100,000 copies during its first week. It turns out, according to industry reporting firm Nielsen BookScan, that it was only about 18,000. (To avoid misunderstanding, please understand that when we refer to Yiannopoulos as a “walking disease vector,” we’re referring to emotional, not physical, illness.)

• Raw Story reports that “Conservative Christian reality TV star Toby Willis gets 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to child rape.” What channel was carrying the Willis program? You guessed it! TLC.  Raw Story further reports that “Willis’ rape case is the third sex scandal that plagued TLC. In 2014, the network first canceled ‘Here Comes Honey Boo Boo’ after Mama June rekindled a romance with a convicted sex offender. In 2015, it axed ’19 Kids and Counting’ following Josh Duggar’s molestation scandal.”
• Well, this is a first. The Saudi government is usually in the news for persecuting atheists, committing judicial mass murder, forbidding women to drive (among other worse affronts), and committing war crimes in Yemen, but it’s come up with a new, amusing, and amazing offense it can use to hammer its citizens: excessive butt kissing.
• If you’ve been listening to right-wing misrepresentation of Black Lives Matter,  please give a close listen to Dr. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a found of Black Lives Matter, who presents a very insightful analysis of current political conditions in the United States, and how we can improve them.
• Finally, the headline here (almost) says it all: “Juggalo March on Washington: Insane Clown Posse fans to demand end to ‘gang’ designation.”

For now, that’s all folks.

A Blast from the Past: Bad Writing Trends

(We recently began running the best posts from years past, posts that will be new to most of our subscribers. We’re currently featuring blasts from the past from 2013, and will be for the next few months; we’ll intersperse them with new material.)

Bad Writing Trends

Bad writing trends come and go in written English. (We’re not talking about, like, you know, spoken English.) Over the last few decades, one of the most prominent has been the use of apostrophes to form plurals, as in, “Idiot’s form the plural by inserting an apostrophe before an ‘s.'” Fortunately, this manner of forming plurals is now regarded almost universally as semi-literate, and it seems to be fading away.

Another really bad trend is use of wordy, pretentious “of” constructions in place of adjectives (mostly those ending in “ed”), as in “horse of disease” rather than “diseased horse.” Fortunately, this type of construction also seems to be fading away. If the contrary was true, we’d likely find ourselves reading sentences such as, “The girl of size in the dress of stripes bought a balloon of color.” Fortunately, such constructions are becoming increasingly rare, and the adjectival “of” form survives today primarily in the mandatory PC usage, “people of color.”

As noted in a previous post, “and” is increasingly used in place of “to” in the infinitive, as in the barbaric, “I’m going to try and write literate-sounding sentences.” This usage seems to be on the upswing, but it’s so ugly that one suspects (well, fervently hopes) it will disappear in short order. Just remember, “and” is not part of the infinitive.

(As a side note, I was dismayed a couple of nights ago, while rereading Heart of Darkness, to see that even Joseph Conrad used “and” as part of the infinitive — in 1899! [The horror! The horror!] There’s only one instance of this in the book, but still . . . . . So, while I detest this mangled form of the infinitive and wish it would go away, I’m not holding my breath.)

Another really bad and ascending trend is the overuse of hyphens, what one might term “hyphen glut” (or should that be “hyphen-glut”?). Hyphens are creeping into places where they simply should not be, where they’re simply unnecessary. The primary example is “well-known.” In this usage, “well” is an adverb, a word that modifies an immediately following adjective. Hence, the hyphen is unnecessary; it’s ugly clutter. It’s even common nowadays to see hyphens inserted between adverbs ending in “ly” and following adjectives, as in “friendly-sounding.” This is even worse than inserting hyphens after other adverbs. The “ly” ending is figuratively leaping into the air, waving pom poms, and screaming, “Look at me! Look at me! I’m part of an adverb!”

Just remember, do not use hyphens between adverbs and adjectives; rather, use them in adjectival phrases that precede the noun being modified, as in, “Bubba downed five shots of tequila in his end-of-the-day ritual.” And omit the hyphens if the phrase comes after the noun, as in, “Bubba’s ritual consisted of downing five shots of tequila at the end of the day,” (which after an hour of writing about verbal atrocities sounds like a pretty good idea — cheers).

Related articles

• Adverb or Adjective?
• New Year’s resolution: Master the hyphen

• Help Prevent Hyphen Abuse (ericjohnbaker.wordpress.com)

A Blast from the Past: Why we reject 99% of queries and manuscripts

(We recently began running the best posts from years past, posts that will be new to most of our subscribers. We’re currently featuring blasts from the past from 2013, and will be for the next few months; we’ll intersperse them with new material.)

Why we rejection 99% of queries and manuscripts

by Chaz Bufe

As primary editor for See Sharp Press, I’ve seen thousands of queries and manuscripts over the years. I reject probably 99% of them. I derive no joy from doing this, but I have to do it. There are reasons.

The first is that probably half of the authors who approach us don’t bother to read our submission guidelines. Some send manuscripts rather than query letters. Others send queries about books that are outside of our  niches, often way outside, in areas we specifically state we do not publish. Still others are obviously making simultaneous submissions, something to which we loudly say no in our guidelines.

That takes care of most submissions. But what of the rest?

A surprising number of authors don’t know how to write queries. Some are so short (one sentence) that they give us virtually nothing to go on. Others omit essential information, such as word count, working title, or even the manuscript’s topic. Still other queries are so badly written (misspellings, mispunctuation, passive voice, boasting) that there would be no point in looking at the authors’ manuscripts. Similarly, some queries come from the clearly demented. And still other queries are insanely detailed, some running to several thousand words set in tiny, html-formatted type.

Rejected manuscripts are another matter. The ones that I find the hardest to reject are well written, have something to say, and probably wouldn’t sell enough copies to justify the hard work and expense of publication. Such submissions account for perhaps 5% of the total. In such cases, I try to recommend other publishers that might be interested, and I’ll sometimes make suggestions about both content and the initial query. I hate saying “no” to such submissions, but if I want See Sharp Press to stay in business, I have little choice.

That still leaves all too many rejected manuscripts. The primary problem with almost all of them — in addition, in most cases, to their being commercially unviable — is that they’re poorly written.

By far the most common fault is use of passive voice. Passive voice pervades present-day American English to such an extent that many, probably most, would-be published authors are blissfully unaware of it and use it incessantly. Almost certainly, many don’t even know what it is. (As writing instructor Rebecca Johnson notes, “If you can insert ‘by zombies’ after the verb, you have passive voice.”)

What’s so bad about passive voice? Passive voice is vague. It allows writers to describe actions without ascribing responsibility for those actions–hence its popularity in “Pentagonese”/”corporatese.” Take, for instance, the sentence, “Fifteen hundred civilians were killed in Fallujah today,” versus “The U.S. military killed fifteen hundred civilians in Fallujah today.” Both of these sentences could truthfully describe a mass killing, but which provides more information?

Even where there is no desire to deceive, the vagueness of passive voice still leaves readers in the dark as to responsibility. For instance, the sentence, “John was beaten with a baseball bat,” invites the question, “by whom?” When you answer the question in passive voice, you end up with a lifeless sentence that is wordier than its active voice counterpart: “John was beaten with a baseball bat by Bill,” versus “Bill beat John with a baseball bat.” Nine words versus seven. And the first (passive voice) sentence makes the reader wait until its end to reveal the subject, which, along with its wordiness, robs it of vitality.

Other common problems include poor organization, incorrect use of punctuation (especially semicolons), limited use of punctuation (periods and commas only), and lack of variation in sentence structure. (Spelling problems are mostly a thing of the past, thanks to spell checkers.)

Science fiction submissions often have additional problems. The most common is that writers don’t bother to “get the science right.” It’s one thing to base a story on plausible projection of current scientific speculation; it’s quite another to blithely ignore Newtonian physics (which quite accurately describes day-to-day physical events).

In science fiction, there are always at least one or two  “gimmes”: faster-than-light travel, immortality, artificial intelligence, etc. It’s perfectly fine — in fact necessary — to use such scientific projections. But don’t rob your story of plausibility by ignoring known science or through inconsistency. Science fiction isn’t fantasy — and even in fantasy, consistency is vital.

Another very common problem with science fiction manuscripts is careless writing. Science fiction, when properly done, is harder to write than any other kind of fiction: mysteries, westerns, “literary”  or historical fiction, romance novels, etc. The reason is that sci-fi authors have to create an alternative, internally consistent world with which their readers are not familiar. Writers of other types of fiction have the huge advantage of writing against familiar backdrops; they don’t have to create them. In all too many of the science fiction submissions I read, authors seem unaware of this, and many authors don’t even strive for internal consistency. Unawareness does, in fact, probably account for most such problems; the other most likely reason is sheer laziness.

To increase your chances of selling a manuscript (to See Sharp Press or any other publisher), you’d do well to do the following: 1) Read the submission guidelines; 2) Follow them; 3) Write a query of 200 to 300 words in which you address the submissions editor by name (find it), provide the working title, describe your book, describe the potential audience, mention your previous published works (if any), tell the publisher why your book is a good fit for them, and mention any similar titles the publisher has already issued.

In your writing: 1) Produce a detailed outline before you start to write; 2) Use active voice; 3) In science fiction submissions, get the science right and strive for consistency; and 4) Edit your work several times and, if you can, have other writers go through it, too. All of this is crucial. Editors generally consider poorly written work an indication that the writer is incompetent, lazy, and/or so egotistical that he thinks it’s beneath him to clean up his own mess.

If you follow the advice in the previous two paragraphs, you’ll vastly increase your chances of finding a publisher for your book.

Good luck.

Related articles

• Quick Query Advice

• Five style issues to watch for in your story (inventingrealityeditingservice.typepad.com)
• Query Letter Math. (notfrombenevolence.wordpress.com)
• More on Rejected Submissions (seesharppress.wordpress.com)
• Writing with Active Voice and Passive Voice (english.answers.com)
• Ask the Writing Teacher: Fifty Shades of Rejection (themillions.com)

Joke of the Day 1-27-17

“Don’t you just hate rhetorical questions?”

–no idea where this came from, so let’s credit it to Anonymous

“Obscenities”

No, I’m not going to belabor the obvious. I’m not going to talk about the difference between language and lashing, between pious preaching and priestly pedophilia.

As those of you who haven’t unsubscribed might have noticed, I dropped an “F-bomb” for effect at the end of the next-to-last post.

Why? Precisely because it had an effect.

It’s still an effective means of shocking people, sometimes for the sheer sake of shock (as in that post), and sometimes for the sake of accurate portrayal of everyday language.

A few days ago I was talking with a friend who’s done construction work for decades. He recently worked on the new Mormon temple up in the foothills.

It is, of course, a monstrosity. A raised middle finger to the environment and the people of Tucson. As are all Mormon temples. (And yes, the ugliness is deliberate: they build temples according to pre-ordained plan.)

To add insult to injury, they demanded that all of the construction workers building their temple have no visible tattoos and refrain from cursing while on the job. (No, I’m not kidding.)

I asked him, “Do they have any fucking idea of what construction workers are like?”

Apparently not. (used to be one myself)

Decades ago, for an environmental organization, I canvassed the neighborhood downhill from the recently constructed Mormon temple in the Oakland foothills.  The Mormons had capped a number of springs on their property, and the water, as one would expect, found a way out, destroying several houses in the process.

The Mormons, of course, refused to admit that their tax-exempt temple was in any way responsible for the destruction of the tax-paying properties below them.

Now that’s obscene.

(Sorry, couldn’t resist pointing out the obvious.)

 

Crude Joke of the Day 12-9-16

(Sorry, but I do not know where this came from. Thanks to my pal Leo for passing this one along.)

Joke of the Day 11-10-16

At this point, I think we can all use this. Enjoy.

–from Seattle Propane’s Wallingfordsign

Definition of “Pinche”

Years ago, I was sitting around drinking beer with my pal Abe, and we were pondering the question “What’s the most pinche thing you can think of?” as a way of coming up with the lyrics for a latin rock tune I’d written. It turned out that the most pinche thing either of us could think of was having to go to work at the crack of dawn horribly hungover. Hence, Pinche Blues. And by extension The Pinche Blues Band.

It’s a great word, and works well for the band: Mexicans think the band name is hilarious, and white folks, unless they speak Spanish, are invariably mystified by it, and will often ask what it means.

The definition I’ve used for years is this: Pinche, adj. 1) Mean, low down, dirty; 2) “Fucking” in the nonsexual sense, as in “no fucking good.” (“Pinche,” however, is milder than “fucking.”)

But here’s the best definition I’ve ever seen of the term; it’s from the Urban Dictionary. The only thing I’d note is that I hear “pinche” quite often here in Tucson, and I’ve never heard it used in sense “A,” only in senses “B” and “C”:

pinche

Spanish-language expression meaning:
a) Kitchen boy. The guys who clean up the Chef’s mess and scrub the frying pans and carry stuff around. In this context it’s still used in Spain.
b) In Mexico, it’s an all-purpose insult enhancer, which would be roughly equivalent to the use of *fucking* in English. If Jay (Silent Bob’s hetero life mate) spoke Spanish, he would say *pinche* A LOT.
Pinche is strongly associated with cursing in Mexican Spanish and the very moment you use it gives you away as a Mexican national. So you pinches gringos take that into account if you’re trying to pass for an Argentine or whatever.
c) In Mexico, it’s also used as an adjective to describe something as insignificant, lousy, miserable or worthless.

a) Se solicitan 2 pinches de cocina medio turno. (2 kitchen boys are needed for half shifts)
b) Pinche gringo culero ve a chingar a tu reputisima madre! (Fucking gringo asshole go fuck your loosecunt cocksucking mother!)
c) Tu pinche hermana está bien pinche, wey. (Your fucking sister is so fucking ugly, dude!)

by Hugh G Rection April 07, 2005