In this season of warmth and good will, it is just like me to want to share with you some insults. The Web can help you calculate mortgage payments, translate foreign texts and currencies into something you can understand and even give you detailed driving directions that don't involve the phrase "where the Gimbels/Isaly's/steel mill used to be."
But did you know the Web also can help you find the words to tell someone off?
I have mixed feelings about computer-generated invective. It's a sad commentary on our modern society that people can't take the time to craft their own, highly personalized abuse. In the past, it was an art form a skilled practitioner could take pride in. Oscar Wilde zinged many but took a few hits, too:
Wilde: Do you mind if I smoke?
Sarah Bernhardt: I don't care if you burn.
And Winston Churchill was no doormat:
Lady Astor: If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee.
Churchill: If you were my wife, I'd drink it.
Sometimes the best cut is short, if not sweet -- as when Ethel Merman said of Cole Porter: "He sang like a hinge."
On the other hand, sometimes a symphony of scorn is called for. H. L. Mencken, one of the most masterfully insulting people ever to poison a pen, critiqued Warren G. Harding's writing thus:
"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. ..."
Sadly, most of us are not so creative. So much modern dressing-down is heavily reliant on profanity. It's not even customized to the target or the circumstances. Pitiful.
At least the online offerings can help return a measure of imagination to our put-downs.
The official Monty Python Web site (www.pythonline.com) offers an "Online Abusive Message Center," which allows you to tailor your message with a wide range of choices, including some fine classic bits of Python abuse from skits and movies.
You may address your victim as a "puerile cretin" or perhaps a "bog-faced heap of parrot droppings," then go on to advise him, "You have the brains of a clam" or "I blow my nose at you, you empty-headed animal food-trough wiper!"
Further, you can make a suggestion such as "Go and boil your bum," then wrap up with "May the bird of paradise fly up your [tail end]" and sign yourself "Your soon-to-be-ex-wife" or simply "Concerned."
It ain't Mencken, but it's colorful.
An enterprising fellow named Mark has followed up his customizable online apology form letter for men with a customizable hate letter for women.
Mark's (rhymes with Witch) Letter Generator (www.karmafarm.com/letter.html) was created "in the hopes that women will provide us with a consistent barrage of criticism. As men can deal with anything consistent. ..."
The range of options is not as large as the Python form's, but it's still fun. Using it, I composed a sample diatribe that reads, in part:
"Dear Mr. Heartburn, ...
"In a nutshell, your friends are all worms and losers, like you! ... I'll never leave you. I'll just stay and torture you until the money runs out."
It's just too bad that William Shakespeare's language is no longer widely understood, because he was a master of creative abuse.
There are several Web sites that cobble together Shakespearean epithets out of adjectives and nouns culled from his works. The Shakespearean Insulter (www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/index.html?) puts together new phrases, pulls some intact from the Bard's plays and features a charmingly masochistic "Insult me again" button. (Sample: "Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!" from "Richard III.")
Meanwhile, the Elizabethan Curse Generator (www.flwyd.dhs.org/curse/) asks you in advance how many times you want to be denounced, and then lays it on you ("Thou reeky ill-nurtured harpy!"). Enjoy it yourself or share it with a literate friend or foe.
Next time someone cuts you off, try calling him a "Loggerheaded tickle-brained codpiece!" At least if your kids pick that up, their teachers will be impressed.
Samantha Bennett can be reached by e-mail at sbennett@post-gazette.com
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