When insults had class

Copied wholesale from an e-mail forward. I’m not sure that some of these quotes are correctly attributed, but I’m too lazy to do the research right now.

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When insults had class.

These insults are mostly from an era when cleverness with words was still valued, before a great portion of the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words!

The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison,” and he said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: “Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.”
“That depends, Sir,” said Disraeli, “on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”

“He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” – Winston Churchill

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.” – Winston Churchill

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with
great pleasure.” – Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” – William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” – Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I
know.” – Abraham Lincoln

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I
approved of it.” Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” – Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend…. if you have one.” – George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.”
– Winston Churchill, in response.

“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.” –
Stephen Bishop

“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb

“He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.”
– Samuel Johnson

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” – Paul Keating

“There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” Jack E.
Leonard

“He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.” – Robert Redford

“They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” – Thomas Brackett Reed

“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.” – Charles, Count Talleyrand

“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”
– Mark Twain

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” – Mae West

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening But this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx

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Super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis

No idea where this originally came from, but it’s worth sharing:

Here are the ten first place winners in the International Pun Contest:
1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, “I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.”

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says “Dam!”

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.
Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says “I’ve lost my electron.” The other says “Are you sure?” The first replies “Yes, I’m positive.”

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal:
transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse.

“But why?”, they asked, as they moved off.

“Because,” he said,” I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption.

One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named “Ahmal.” The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him “Juan. ” Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, “They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.”

8. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to “persuade” them to close.

Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he’d be back if they didn’t close up shop.

Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (Oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good) a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Please tip your waitress.

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I see ya won first prize!

By special request, lyrics to the greatest song about freeballin’ Scotsmen ever written:

Well a Scotsman clad in kilt left a bar on evening fair
And one could tell by how we walked that he drunk more than his share
He fumbled round until he could no longer keep his feet
Then he stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh
He stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street

About that time two young and lovely girls just happend by
And one says to the other with a twinkle in her eye
See yon sleeping Scotsman so strong and handsome built
I wonder if it’s true what they don’t wear beneath the kilt
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh
I wonder if it’s true what they don’t wear beneath the kilt

They crept up on that sleeping Scotsman quiet as could be
Lifted up his kilt about an inch so they could see
And there behold, for them to see, beneath his Scottish skirt
Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh
Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth

They marveled for a moment, then one said we must be gone
Let’s leave a present for our friend, before we move along
As a gift they left a blue silk ribbon, tied into a bow
Around the bonnie star, the Scots kilt did lift and show
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh
Around the bonnie star, the Scots kilt did lift and show

Now the Scotsman woke to nature’s call and stumbled towards a tree
Behind a bush, he lift his kilt and gawks at what he sees
And in a startled voice he says to what’s before his eyes.
O lad I don’t know where you been but I see you won first prize
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh
O lad I don’t know where you been but I see you won first prize[!]

 

A cappella with harmony available.

And don’t forget, real men wear kilts.

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"Unnecessary ‘quotation’ marks"

I find the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks to be a fund diversion (h/t Orin Kerr).

A somewhat moronic pastime for my friends and me during periods of drunkenness in college was to put unnecessary “finger quotes” around literal phrases (e.g. After your date, do you plan on having “sexual intercourse?”)

Yes, we were dorks. Still, it’s “nice” to see the tradition “continued.”

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On language

Here’s an interesting thought from Sasha Volokh:

There is no such thing as the English language. Every person speaks slightly differently, understands a slightly different set of words, uses words slightly differently. When we say that a set of people “speaks English,” this is a sloppy shorthand that means that when each of them speaks the way he normally speaks, the other people in the set can mostly understand what he’s saying, and the meaning he’s trying to convey is more or less the meaning they get. It’s just an empirical statement about the degree of overlap between each person’s “language.”

Language is really a contract of sorts, and some of its terms are much more clear than others. When I use the word “dog,” for instance, with another English speaker, it is mostly likely agreed that I am referring to a member of the species Canis lupus familiaris, a/k/a the domestic dog. However, “dog” could have other meanings as well, depending on the context, but it is unlikely that serious errors of understanding could occur between English speakers over the word “dog.”

The real problem occurs with so-called “abstract” words, i.e. faith, justice, liberty, etc. Where the “contract” of language breaks down altogether is in politics. “Liberal” and “conservative” mean different things to each person saying the words. I like to use the word “conserfascist” to describe those currently in power in certain branches of the government, because their actions run so counter to my conception of “conservatism,” yet as part of the Republican Party they get to claim conservatism’s mantle.

My favorite example is a quote, allegedly from Winston Churchill, that gets tossed about these days:

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

Churchill, if he ever said this, was probably referring to political parties of his day, so the quote’s usefulness in today’s context is quite questionable. These days, at least in the parlance of the White House and its media flacks, opposition to the Iraq occupation and misdaventures of the Bush Admin makes one a “liberal,” and unquestioning fealty to said Admin makes one a good “conservative.” Churchill would probably be scratching his head at this.

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Pardon me while I mock someone’s grammar

I’m not sure if this is a grammatical problem or a semantic one, but who really cares anyway? A post from yesterday about the President’s totally unsurprising veto had this passage:

Today’s Washington Post contains the headline, “April Toll is Highest of ’07 for U.S. Troops”. More than 100 Americans have been killed in the past month. This brings the death toll, the ultimate cost for this “War of Failed Leadership” closer to the 3500 mark then ever before.

Now here’s the question: the death toll is closer to the 3500 mark “than ever before” (I’ll skip over the spelling error and go for the jugular)–how could we have been closer to 3500 at some point before now? How does a death toll go back down after it goes up? I’ve studied quite a bit of history and followed the news most of my life, and I am quite confident that death tolls only go in one direction. I guess you could question the methodology by which the death toll is calculated (i.e. initial estimates overshot the mark), but I don’t think that’s it. Most likely, it was a poorly chosen cliche in a hastily written post, but it still messed with my head when I read it.

Also, how sad is it that I am turning to semantic (or grammatical) mockery to avoid thinking abouit what a complete clusterfuck this whole thing is?

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