Here we are at week 12 for the Alphabetic Randomness of SRH. This week, the letter D comes to us from a foam ball lobbed toward my work computer’s keyboard. The ball actually typed “dewr” and reformatted my hard drive, but that is beside the point. The letter D is the 4 the letter of our English alphabet and today’s blog post.
D: Big D, Little d, David Donald Doo dreamed a dozen doughnuts and a duck-dog too.
Since I have already waxed eloquent on my love of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, I think it would be irrelevantly redundant to have D be about “Doughnuts,” (Personally, I prefer the spelling of “Donuts” but that is not what this post is about.) so it was necessary for me to come up with another D-word for this post. D is a pretty large section of the dictionary, so I did not look through the D section and decide on a word that way. I thought and thought and thought about what D-word would be significant to me. Then it hit me in all my arrogant wonder. The word I shall hold near and dear to my heart that starts with “D” shall be “Dullard.” Oh, where would we be without dullards? Oh, where would we be without rhetorical questions?
Anyway… some background. Whilst we were forced to dwell in what can only be described as Alabama, Capt. McArmypants (then he was merely NoRank McOppositionally Defiant) and I would play The Dullard Game tm. It was a simple game with simple rules that we and we alone knew. The game was born from our sense of intellectual superiority that can only be attested to our unchecked arrogance. We were asses, what can I say? (The past tense of the “to be” verb is only being employed because these games took place in the past, I don’t want anyone thinking that I am precluding myself from currently being an ass.)
The mediocre captain (he ain’t “The Good Captain” by any means. Definitely mediocre at best) and I determined, and rightly so, that the term “Dullard” has the correct level of derogatoriness to it. Dumbass, idiot, moron, dumbfuck, cretin, dimwit, and most other derogatory terms for the less than intellectual just seemed to miss. We paused on the word “twit” but eventually decided it was too British for us to genuinely use it being decidedly non-British and all. The Dullards in Alabama were fairly easy to pick out and sadly all too prevalent. Eventually we took this game on the road, but we had a difficult time determining who was a dullard in England, Scotland, or Germany. The cultural contextual clues were so different. The typical American signs just were not present, but this is not the meat of this post itself.
What I am using the term Dullard to illustrate is that many times the most derogatory term that one can use is not necessarily vulgar or inherently racist. Calling someone a dumbass, a dumbshit, or a dumbfuck is crass and the person receiving your dispersions on their intelligence disregards this due to its commonness. Now, the word “dullard?” Oh, that word infuriates it intended target. It is haughty, it is pretentious, and it is inherently comparative. Calling someone a Dumbshit does not preclude you from being a dumbshit yourself. Calling someone a dullard insinuates a certain level of superiority. One cannot call out others for being a dullard, if one is a dullard.
If you take anything useful from this post, I will be monumentally surprised. Wait, let me start that again. If you take anything from this post, please let it be my underlying point: If you can find the correct word, you can debase someone without resorting to cursing or racial epithets.* Thank you and good night.
To recap:
D is also for Darth Vader
Reference pic can be found here
I love the Wacom Tablet that Wifey got me for Christmas!
I have started drawing more
I am really happy with how this one turned out
It has severely cut into my World of Warcraft time
I don’t mind so much though
I am not sure I like my new phone ring tone
I should have thought about the D word longer, shouldn’t I?
I could have made some crap up about dirigible
Who doesn’t want to read about airships?
Instead I write a post that makes me seem like a pompous ass
Who’s the real dullard now, SRH?
Who’s the real dullard now?
This post boiled down to “Fear my massive vocabulary!”
Or rather “Quake at SRH’s gargantuan lexicon!”
Sweet Jebus! I am a vainglorious ass!
Have a great weekend everyone
*I know there is at least one other who agrees with me.
D: Big D, Little d, David Donald Doo dreamed a dozen doughnuts and a duck-dog too.
Since I have already waxed eloquent on my love of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, I think it would be irrelevantly redundant to have D be about “Doughnuts,” (Personally, I prefer the spelling of “Donuts” but that is not what this post is about.) so it was necessary for me to come up with another D-word for this post. D is a pretty large section of the dictionary, so I did not look through the D section and decide on a word that way. I thought and thought and thought about what D-word would be significant to me. Then it hit me in all my arrogant wonder. The word I shall hold near and dear to my heart that starts with “D” shall be “Dullard.” Oh, where would we be without dullards? Oh, where would we be without rhetorical questions?
Anyway… some background. Whilst we were forced to dwell in what can only be described as Alabama, Capt. McArmypants (then he was merely NoRank McOppositionally Defiant) and I would play The Dullard Game tm. It was a simple game with simple rules that we and we alone knew. The game was born from our sense of intellectual superiority that can only be attested to our unchecked arrogance. We were asses, what can I say? (The past tense of the “to be” verb is only being employed because these games took place in the past, I don’t want anyone thinking that I am precluding myself from currently being an ass.)
The mediocre captain (he ain’t “The Good Captain” by any means. Definitely mediocre at best) and I determined, and rightly so, that the term “Dullard” has the correct level of derogatoriness to it. Dumbass, idiot, moron, dumbfuck, cretin, dimwit, and most other derogatory terms for the less than intellectual just seemed to miss. We paused on the word “twit” but eventually decided it was too British for us to genuinely use it being decidedly non-British and all. The Dullards in Alabama were fairly easy to pick out and sadly all too prevalent. Eventually we took this game on the road, but we had a difficult time determining who was a dullard in England, Scotland, or Germany. The cultural contextual clues were so different. The typical American signs just were not present, but this is not the meat of this post itself.
What I am using the term Dullard to illustrate is that many times the most derogatory term that one can use is not necessarily vulgar or inherently racist. Calling someone a dumbass, a dumbshit, or a dumbfuck is crass and the person receiving your dispersions on their intelligence disregards this due to its commonness. Now, the word “dullard?” Oh, that word infuriates it intended target. It is haughty, it is pretentious, and it is inherently comparative. Calling someone a Dumbshit does not preclude you from being a dumbshit yourself. Calling someone a dullard insinuates a certain level of superiority. One cannot call out others for being a dullard, if one is a dullard.
If you take anything useful from this post, I will be monumentally surprised. Wait, let me start that again. If you take anything from this post, please let it be my underlying point: If you can find the correct word, you can debase someone without resorting to cursing or racial epithets.* Thank you and good night.
To recap:
D is also for Darth Vader
Reference pic can be found here
I love the Wacom Tablet that Wifey got me for Christmas!
I have started drawing more
I am really happy with how this one turned out
It has severely cut into my World of Warcraft time
I don’t mind so much though
I am not sure I like my new phone ring tone
I should have thought about the D word longer, shouldn’t I?
I could have made some crap up about dirigible
Who doesn’t want to read about airships?
Instead I write a post that makes me seem like a pompous ass
Who’s the real dullard now, SRH?
Who’s the real dullard now?
This post boiled down to “Fear my massive vocabulary!”
Or rather “Quake at SRH’s gargantuan lexicon!”
Sweet Jebus! I am a vainglorious ass!
Have a great weekend everyone
*I know there is at least one other who agrees with me.