Epithets - Fixed Formulas

A quick rundown on epithets can be found here:

http://grammar.about.com/od/e/g/epitheterm.htm

and here:

http://www.answers.com/topic/epithet

A preview of an extremely interesting book can be found here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=5QIv39cbUMYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Epithets

The above read is about Epithets and contains a glossary of many common Epithets as well as a breakdown of the usages and histories of the art form.

A few from the book:

Alligator
Mr.
Ms.
Steward
Hayseed
Honest
Steppie
Stranger
Sucker
Highwayman
Harbuckle
Hard-ass

Though, just a preview, it gives a partial idea of how Epithets have been used as well as some of the ones that we seem to use on a daily basis. Never thought of "Mom" or "Dad" as epithets. Next time I'm at the dinner table I plan on asking my mother (Hey! another one!) if I can call her an epithet and see what she says...

Quick thought

CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENT (of the above image)

I had a bit of a revelation while reading Ong while preparing for the Exam. I think this about covers it.

STOP THE VIOLINS!

Many have said this but I'm going to try and put my own little spin on it.

Jazz.

The shrill whine of a trumpet. Excited crowd's glasses clinking. The scrambling sticks of a drummer and the warmth of a straight no chaser on improvised tones.

The only way to experience jazz is live. For awhile, that was the only way to learn it.

Then came the "Real Books" where someone transcribed the standard Jazz tunes of the time into notes, meter, and letters and other stuff that makes up written music.

Though this did wonders for the High School band scene I'm not sure it has extended the genre in the same way it was originally conceived. Originally people sat in front of their phonorecordplayermcjiggerthingys and transcribed with their brain and instruments.

Hearing the progression and the tones in their native environment, the player had to understand the relationship of the notes to the meter and to each other. This forced the pedagogy to form an intimate knowing of their instrument and to become more sensitive to not just the pitch or placement of notes but the more ephemeral side of things like texture. This whole exercise came from the traditions set forth by the ragtime and blues guys who laid the foundations for Jass.

Of course, this is also a big part of any "folk" music. Fiddlers learn from fiddling and yodelers yodel (I don't know why I wrote that).

Though the publication of Jazz has led to greater accessability, it's foundation is found in something that can't be written down. In fact, writing down this next thing kind of makes it not that thing.

Improvisation.

Listen to this

now, listen to this

Different.

If you go to page 275 of the "Real" brand Jazzfake book you will find a transcription of "Night in Tunesia". Solidified and codified in the great annal of the written word. However, the staff and line on that page are guidelines. One may play it exactly as written or completely fuck the thing. The heart of it is in the improvisation. The personal changes that make it distinctly the artist's.

That is what makes Jazz so damn cool. Once you have the language down (notes and stuffs) and a small vocabulary of standards in your head, very little beats the thrill of hearing a particularly clever rendition of a familiar song. The only thing better is hearing a new song played particularly cleverlike.

Just like Homer though, a Jazz guy has his little mnemonic tricks. Scales, modes, learned progressions, licks all allow the player to get to that thing they want to play just that much more easily. Sometimes they lead to some really cool jams and sometimes you create something completly out, spontaneous.

There are exceptions but they are few.

Miles Davis played completely sponaneously and created some of the best straight Jazz albums in music history (Walkin, Workin, Relaxin, Cookin, and Steamin'). He rarely ever rehearsed instead opting to allow the process, the "orality" of the thing carry his groove.

Jazz is a dialogue. You just gotta learn the language.

Missing the Point

Johnny flytes like a girl.

Flyting is the delivering of an insult.

Flyting is verbal sparring.

The content of flyting ranges from the improbably offensive to the playfully harmless. It is an incredibly fun and rewarding thing to do and, except for the most prude or sensitive sects, it is a universally understood form of dialogue between friends.

It is mostly harmless.

For instance, if I call someone:

A scum sucking bastard

I will insult them to the same degree as a cat.

This is a good thing. Especially if you want to call someone an ill name for that brief hit of cathartic negativity. You know, for when people do something benignly stupid. Like dropping a jar of cookies or sleeping with your second cousin twice removed (everyone has that cousin).

Pretty much every "cuss" word was built for flyting.
Seriously, call your friend a motherfucker or a dipshit or an asshole and you will either get a shrug or a semi-humorous "what was that for?"

This is all well and good, except, this has bled into the public existence. Call a stranger a motherfucker, and they will shrug or walk away or simply call you a motherfucker. Then you have to keep heaping it on until they hit you.

Because this is the point of going out into public: to yell obscenities at people until they hit you. Actually, this is a bit of a misstep. The goal is to have a decent excuse to hit them. If they hit you then you can hit them and then you win. At life. You hit them alot and then win at life. This is how it goes.

Anyway.

The point is that you have to keep saying things. I mean seriously, you waste all that effort to call a complete stranger a knobgobbler or a fucknut or a shitcock that when it comes to fisticuffs you're too damn tired to beat them down.

So tiring.

Too direct.

So, in the tradition of Strunk and White, I have drafted a working prototype of vernacular that can be used easily and efficiently in the company of alien personas in order to fight them.

The only thing that you have to do is ditch that crude sense of masculinity or whatnot in order to think like an overly passive-aggressive old lady. You have to target specific things. Things that would not otherwise be insulted. Insecurities.

For instance.

Say I run into Goldie Haun and wish to court her with my boot. Traditionally, I would call her a "bitch" or a "twat" or some other inelegant term until she uppercutted me. This, as was stated earlier, takes a certain kind of effort that I don't care to expend. Emotional effort. Anger. Instead I target specific things in her history and then exploit them to my intellectual advantage. Bluntly.

So I think about what I know about her. I recall her career. And I begin.

"Goldie"
"Yes?"
"You're career has not gone well."
"what?"
"You don't look as nice as you once did."
"Pardon?"
"Kurt Russel didn't think much of your acting."
"That's very rude! I don't even know you!"
"Sometimes, if I run into a picture of you, I don't recognize you because you were famous before my time and this has made me less appreciative of your body of work. However, this is kind of weird because I think very highly of Lauren Bacall. She became radiant and mature in age, you became a scruffy, tired schnouser. "
"Sir, if you keep this up I will hit you."
"You have a baboon face."

Then she will hit me. Minus the emotional or verbal expendature involved in yelling at people.

Learn about people, observe them as you always do. Just pay extra attention to the little things And then use these little things to drive a furious wedge between their self esteem and ego until any conception of place or context for their existence is lost and they are forced to resort to violent, animalistic forms of interaction.

Then you beat them. With your hands. Because this is what humans should do. Yell at eachother and fight.

Here are some good openers:

"You parents probably didn't like you."

"You have clumsy looking calves"

"Your brother died and now your life is better."

"Sometimes your friends forget to call you."

"People generally don't like you."

"You have a very bland face."

"Your parents wish you were a girl."

"You obviously work out but you have have terrible acne."

"Children dislike you."

"Are you a girl?"

"I had trouble telling you were a girl."

"You wear nice clothes to hide the fact that you can't find a suitable identity and so you turn to the default identity that will make it easy to get a job yet make no statement about who you are."

"That's an ugly shirt."

"You have timid looking hands."

"Sometimes your friends state inadiquacies about your personality, and though they act like they don't really care, they are aware of them and this will probably cause your relationships to eventually implode into a horrific blend of internal strife and sorrow."

"You're not overweight yet but I can tell that in five years you will probably have some heft about you."

"I don't like your shoes."

Any complaints should be forwarded to this address...