Continuing in the junk email mode, have you been getting these spams that pretend to know you so you’ll click on them? They all start with some variation of “hi” and then follow with a name, like “Hi! It’s Mike.”
That leaves you wondering, which “Mike” is it? Or, “who is Mike?” So you bite, click and see the lovely advertisement that tries to sell you a watch, a stock, a bigger sexual instrument or a drug.
Well, you know how much I enjoy these communications of good intent. And this one especially got me to thinking. Here these folks are, who I do not know, pretending to be someone I do know, in order to get my attention. The first thing that comes to mind is a term: “brown-nose.”
Brown-nose as a verb means ‘to curry favor (from) in an ingratiating way; toady (to)’. The noun is brown-nose or brown-noser ‘a toady; obsequious sycophant’.
The inspiration for this term is the idea that an obsequious sycophant would be willing to kiss the hindquarters of the person being toadied to. The brown is a reference to the excrement with which the nose of the flatterer would be covered.
Brown-nose noun and verb are both first attested in America in a military context in the late 1930s. However, parallel expressions are found centuries earlier. The common kiss (someone’s) ass ‘curry favor with someone in a degrading manner’ is recorded in the mid-eighteenth century–in Smollett, no less–and ass-kisser is also found in the eighteenth century.
Despite the scatological inspiration of the term brown-nose, it is not considered to be very vulgar or offensive. Some people, unaware or unsure of its origin, don’t consider it offensive at all, but at worst I would say that it is only mildly offensive. It is definitely slang, though, so may not be appropriate in many circumstances.
Doing a google search on “brown-nose” brings up some interesting content. But one site you might find interesting is: http://corporatebrownnose.com/
Anyway, back to the spam. As I was fuming over the dastardly emails, the thought occured to me that I might be doing some of the same type of thing with God.
Am I trying to get one over on him? “Hey God! It’s Joe…”
Does he know who I am? Am I just trying to fool him and act like he and I are on really good, personal terms when he doesn’t have a clue who I am (“Joe? Joe who? I don’t know a ‘Joe.'”)? Does it make him mad when he “reads” my message? Does he see through the BS and know I’m just brown-nosing him? Does he just delete my “message” without hearing me?
If it “gets my goat” when I get hundreds of these emails, what must it do to the Father?