insults

Insults fly as “Tarquin” is accused of being too posh and I receive jibes about being overweight

The Boys were on top form last night in the steam room. I hadn’t been for a while, what with one thing and another, and in my absence they seemed to have imbibed a dose of some substance that makes you think you can sing or are funny.

There was a debate about favourite karaoke songs, with Maggie saying hers was These Boots are Made for Walking by Nancy Sinatra. Someone asked how that went, so she sang the chorus, helped by Richard, who stood up and did the moves, following up with a rendition of the bass line to Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower. It’s quite rare to hear music in the steam room – idle banter yes; half-witted laughter, yes; voices raised in heated political debate, yes; but live music, no. It was quite hot in the steam but everyone was reluctant to leave for fear of missing any of this unprecedented piece of performance art.

We wondered what would be the favourite karaoke song of one of the absent Boys, whom I shall call Tarquin. He’s generally agreed to be the poshest member at the club, which is saying something – we’re in leafy Surrey, after all, and four-wheel-drive vehicles aren’t in short supply in the car park. Rory said Tarquin was too posh to sing karaoke – after all, he’s been known to wear his ermine and coronet to the health club, before changing into his swimming trunks. Nick said he didn’t know about that, but that Tarquin did have Royal connections, namely a Prince Albert. This led to a rather coarse conversation about whether the Prince Albert was too loose and needed tightening, or whether it was actually a bit tight and Tarquin struggled to push it on of a morning.

Like his namesake, Rory Bremner, Rory is rather good at doing impersonations and made us laugh by doing impressions of two of the absent members getting into the spa pool. Even though he didn’t say a word – just imitated their posture, facial expressions and methods of noisily displacing water – we were able to guess straight away who he was impersonating.

Someone speculated as to what people might say about Rory and Nick when they are not there, to which Rory cogently replied: “That’s why we’re always here, so they don’t get a chance to talk about us”.

I wonder what they say about me behind my back. It’s been quite a good week for insults. I bumped into a former neighbour when I was out for a jog the other day – she was walking her dog. Passing the time of day I said I’d taken up jogging to try and lose a bit of weight and she looked me up and down and said: “Mm yes, you have put some weight on, haven’t you? Must be all that food you eat.” Based on the fact that she once saw me making a chicken casserole!

This came only days after my musical guru, the Modern Folk Poet, revealed he’d written a comic song about overweight women, inspired by me. He then made matters worse by bringing the subject up every five minutes.

“I haven’t offended you, have I, by suggesting you’re fat? It’s only a joke.”

“I mean, I didn’t mean to offend you, by implying you’re overweight.”

“I thought you’d see the funny side, being as you’re a bit porky at the moment.”

“It’s not that I think you’re really fat – maybe carrying just a few too many pounds. Bit of exercise, soon shed that bit of flab.”

“Women can look quite nice if they’re a bit curvy; who wants a skinny woman?”

He ran out of steam in the end, before I had to resort to a vicious kick and a “Shut the fuck up.” Anyway, I remembered that I am in a position to get my own back. I have a half-written comic song of my own which I can polish up and wheel out. Set to the tune of What a Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong, it’s a moderately offensive parody about men with beards, one of which objects the Modern Folk Poet possesses. As soon as I can learn to play C sharp major on the guitar, which the somewhat complex chord structure demands, I’ll be in a position to get my own back.

Pic credit: Michelle Meiklejohn, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=901

When mocking people’s spelling mistakes stops being funny

There are gangs of self-appointed spelling police who lurk about on Facebook looking for errors. Their aim, according to the link below, is to “publicly challenge and humiliate sloppy wordsmiths”.

The Best Obnoxious Responses To Misspellings On Facebook | Happy Place.

Happyplace.com collated loads of examples of Sloppy Spellers meeting Spelling Pedants online, and some are quite amusing.

On the other hand, some of the spelling police are effectively trolls, since they set out to bait and denigrate rather than to educate – and they appear to be targeting complete strangers in order to make their points.

But some of the exchanges contained in the link are really very funny.

+ One pedant remarked on a badly spelled post: “There are no correctly spelled words in your message… perhaps you have an involuntary movement disorder in your fingers.”

+ Another spelling troll took exception to being called a “dooshbag”, and kindly supplied the correct spelling so that he could be insulted more accurately.

+ “Margerhitas make everythuing betterr”, commented one poster, only to get the rapid response from a lurking troll: “Except spelling”.

+ Another troll wittily responded: “What a gneiss father” to a Facebook user who said her father had told her never to “take anything for granite”.

+ There was an amusing exchange when someone called Rachel announced that she was “board”. A troll wittily responded: “I’m chalk, we should get together”. Rachel sniffily replied: “BOARD. Like I don’t have anything to do. Not BORD, like a chalkbord.” Rachel went on to suggest that the troll should “learn to spellcheck”, perhaps inevitably prompting the response: “Oh god, I hope you don’t breed”.

+ And someone called Jesse proudly announced to the world “I past my test!!!”, only for a troll to comment: “I hope it wasn’t a spelling test.”

+ Sometimes the victims bite back: one wrote to his tormenter: “Got nothing better to do than troll pages looking for spelling errors… you probably haven’t been laid in 10 years.”

+ One feisty young woman, named Candace, responded: “Go dig a hole and fall in it” to a post correcting her spelling. The troll pedantically pointed out that if he had dug a hole he would already be in it and wouldn’t need to fall in. “Fine,” said Candace, “go dig a hole and die in it.”

The irrepressible troll replied that if he were about to die he would probably be unable to dig a hole. Candace, who one imagines had already lost interest in this exchange, responded tersely: “Shut up” and the dialogue concluded.

+ There can also be harsh words between those who know each other. One girl, called Nicole, took exception to her partner stating what an “amazeing girlfreind” she was – it wasn’t those spelling mistakes she objected to, but the fact that he spelled her name “Nichole”.

Much to chuckle about, in short, on this link. But I found myself rather dismayed about the way some trolls seek to make a point at the expense of people who appear to be genuinely distressed.

On reading a post saying: “My gurl gav me her pies – dunno wat 2 do next”, some wit suggested he should eat the pies, to which the poster responded: “U nasty ass.. I don’t need this shit..” explaining that he was referring to “bumps on ur dick”.

If the poster genuinely has an STD, the would-be wit of the spelling police is unhelpful and somehow a little cruel.

Other examples go further into the realms of unpleasantness. One Facebook user wrote that his girlfriend had left him, he’d fallen out with his best friend and his grandfather had died. “Its only getting worse,” he added mournfully, admitting “I need help”. A Spelling Troll popped up briefly to point out that he’d missed the apostrophe out of “It’s”. Other trolls also stepped forward to correct the spelling of two potentially suicidal posts, one from a boy who didn’t “wanna live anymo” and the other from a girl wishing “congradulations” to those who, she believed, wanted her to die.

We’ve all been tempted to correct others’ spelling: but there’s surely a line to be drawn; those who should know better, like companies, professional communicators and anyone who’s had a university education, are fair game as far as I’m concerned. But there’s something not quite nice about seeking out and criticising the personal communications of individuals who appear to be in distress, with the sole aim of scoring points.

Pic credit: Ambro, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1499