The Subtle Art of Throwing Insults or What was it I said that makes you think I give a s--t?!

You only comprehend things which you perceive. And as you persist in regarding your ideas of time and space as absolute although they are only relative, and thence form a judgment on truths which are quite beyond your sphere, and which are imperceptible to your terrestial organism and faculties, I should not do a true service, my friend, in giving you fuller details of my ultra-terrestial observations…

-        Camille Flammarion, Lumen, 1873

 

Now that’s what I call a great put down of another’s insufficient and inadequate intelligence and perceived self-importance! I would love to be able to spout off disparaging remarks like that --- where the sting is hidden amidst such gracious and elegant phrasings. They wouldn’t know what hit them, leaving them dopey dazed and definitely confused. It’s the best kind of attack, if I do say so myself.

 

It’s not that I enjoy reducing people in their esteem or rank on a daily or regular basis. I don’t. I only enjoy it when the target is one who has truly annoyed me with a glaring lack of wit and common sense. Happily enough, I don’t get to practice the art of great put downs all that often. (I try not to associate with people who are easy targets for put downs like these. No fun at all. And it may just turn me into a homicidal maniac in a microwaveable instant.)

 

Call me an intellectual snob, but I can’t apologize for having very little patience with people who don’t bother to use their God-given brains even for the littlest of things. Ignorance is never an excuse. Never. And if one attempts to use it, it falls flat and pathetically short. I find it even worse when ignorance is coupled with a healthy dose of self-conceit. It then becomes intolerable.

 

I’m not saying I’m the world’s most intelligent person. I’m not. Hardly that. I just know how to use what I do have and try to improve myself at every moment. It’s the least I could do --- to spare those who are more intelligent than I am from mortification at having to endure my dull and trite conversation. Oh, and to make the world a happier place for all, of course… You know, world peace and all those Miss Universe platitudes…

 

I’m just waiting for a chance to pull out one of those glorious and powerful put down lines that I’ve been collecting and storing in my arsenal of great and witty put down lines.

 

I do have stupid moments, but they only happen because I was either befuddled or not thinking clearly. Well, okay, sometimes I find myself not thinking at all. Stupid me. It’s when I let my id have full reign and allowed to come out and play that I get into trouble. However, let me just state for the record that my stupid moments aren’t completely stupid in the garden variety lights-are-on-but-nobody’s-home kind of way. I do have a whole lot of common sense, which allows me to extricate myself from situations that have me possibly sinking further into the quicksand of idiocy or from digging for myself a deeper and darker hole all the way through to the other side of the earth.

 

I was not, am not, and will never be a *expletive deleted* golgafrincham.