The Free Zone Board

[QuasimodoJones]

WEAC:Neuro, Sarcasm & Satire

Sarcasm, like in your comments, is not mean to be humorous, but just nasty. As I said, I have no interest in having conversations with people who cannot do so without resorting to sarcasm when the truth evades them.

Uh, hmm...sorry, WEAC, but ...um...even The Neurally Challenged One makes a valid point -- sometimes.

{Oh, dear God! Won't someone please remember the children and pass me the economy-sized Ipecac?!}

Neuro's problem is that he's just so maladroit at it. For a real past-master of the genre, you have to consult The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. Unfortunately, I can't recall the title of the short story, but it went something like this: A "Marshal Dillon" type lawman tracks down and captures a well-known vicious outlaw who cold-bloodedly shot down a bank clerk, a man with a wife and several young children. After the trial and death sentence, the 'do-gooders' (you know, those goddam liberals?) come out of the woodwork and start campaigning to keep the killer from the gallows, especially once he 'gets saved', and the Churchwomen show up outside the prison to sing hymns of comfort.

Eventually, he's hung anyway, and greatly mourned over as a "redeemed soul gone to his reward in Heaven". Then, somebody remembers -- the victim's family is destitute. Twain's final sentence: "So they took up a collection --- and built a memorial church with it."

Now that's sarcasm with true panache.

For an extremely well-written review of a recent edition, check here:

http://www.epinions.com/content_27382812292

A few more pithy observations before I go:

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

"Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it." Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894

"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

But the two that often come to mind when I've read something of Neuro's:


"Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid."
Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."