For listing some of the more obscure and unusual insults.
I want to stab that man in his eyeball with a shrimp fork.
he has the charisma of a fetid dingo kidne
Paxton deserves to be destroyed like a slug dropped in a bowl of salt.
My wife has a copy of Jewish Curses For All Occasions. One of my favorites she paraphrased as:
May all the worldās greatest doctors know of your case.
My momās oldest friendship was with a delightful woman who once told an asshole,
āMay you go bald from the sides up.ā
upon hearing something utterly idiotic from someone totally committed, entrenched even, in their own stupidity, my mum would comment - in her perfect Memphis debutant voice:
āyou jusā wanna shake 'em til their teeth rattle a little bit. bless their little heartā.
Go to the golf course and work on your putts.
May Trumpās coffin be the size of a hatbox.
I was onstage with Gothic Without Death.
It was an 80s industrial band. My pal Archaela read her poetry, while Mike Dead made his guitar make impossible noises. Several other friends banged on a large number of various metal objects: large (a door from a pickup truck), medium (bar/restaurant CO2 tanks), and small (pie tins); creating heavy duty, beautiful rhythms. Archaela liked my poetry - and me - enough to ask me to join.
It was the second time we played The Falcon Lounge, and I amusedly noticed the sound man had remembered Iām smol. My mic stand was ridiculously short, so short I drew Archaelaās attention to it. She chuckled. Then I walked up to it, and it hit me right between my bOObs. We LOLād.
Some asshole at the back of the packed house yelled,
āShow us your tits!ā
I did not flinch. I did not react at all.
Every guy there yelled their enthusiasm for this demand. I expressionlessly adjusted my stand, then tapped the mic while tilting it to the preferred angle.
It was live.
I was livid.
I stepped closer to the mic and looked over the crowd. All suddenly fell completely silent.
Still expressionless, in a clear, baritone almost-whisper, I intoned,
āShow us your dick. ā¦If you canā¦find it.ā
The joint erupted in cheers and wild applause - with at least three times the volume as before.
Still expressionless, I turned and picked up my notebook, and we began playing.
Every piece we performed was loudly cheered. The end of the set was met with the same sort of noise theyād made when Iād ahem dressed down the idiot.
We never got so much applause at a gig.
No one, other than my bandmates and the band for whom we opened, spoke to me all night. Audience members avoided my gaze, quit talking, and made more than enough room for me to pass.
As one does, whenever a nuclear furnace approaches.
Wow, what a beautiful comeback!
Sounds like basic primate behavior when a superior/stronger member of a group has established their supremacy. Alpha, you!
Thanks! It just came out of me, too. I didnāt plan what Iād say, nor how Iād say it.
Hereās a bit of raw meat from writer and former WaPo/NYT literary critic Michiko Kakutani. Her takedowns were witty, hilarious, enormously entertaining, and ofttimes deadly ferocious. I show one quote below, from her critique of Jonathan Frazenās personal memoir, The Discomfort Zone: āā¦an odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackassā
While Iām here: For a sampling of her style (before reading it, one must consider using a NYC upper West Side accent, as Michiko intended) consider her critique of Mario Puzoās Omerta
That review was fabulous !!!
{I was quite disappointed in The Godfather, when I read it. Iād decided to read it b/c love the 1st two films so muchā¦esp the hard to find chronological combination of them. I was surprised by what a huge letdown it proved to be. Stiff, stilted, didnāt fire my imagination, and I found I felt nothing for any character. I remember very little of the book, only what a sad slog it was.}
Puzo said (wrote?) that the film was much better than his book. (I read The Godfather once, thought it was okay, but not worth a second read.) He and Coppola went back and forth on the script (not always in total agreement) but his later opinion seemed to signal the success of their collaboration.
Iāve read Omerta threee times over the past 15 years or so, for me a lesson on how much weight I should place on any reviewerās opinions. Lots of interesting characters in it including twin assassins who were given way more to do and say than the āabbreviatedā twin assassins in The Godfather III film ten years earlier. Pick up a cheap used paperback version. Great reading when on travel and things slow down.
This thread reminds me of this bit by Mo Amer on how Arabic has better swearing than Englishā¦
NSFW in English and Arabicā¦