Word: insultable
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...task, then, was to free language from its weight of inherited content, in the hope of freeing life itself. Chance, ambiguity, insult, nonsense, anything would serve, if it promised to break the crust. Above all, there was irony: the indifference of Duchamp, -the attacks on the social jugular perpetrated by German Dadaists like George Grosz and John Heartfield, and Picabia's drawings, which make mock of the cult of the machine. When this battery of anarchic techniques moved to Paris in the '20s, colliding with a long but temporarily dormant tradition of romanticism, surrealism was the result...
Emperor Bokassa's $20 million coronation [Dec. 19] was an insult to the black man's pride. This extravaganza staged in the poor country of Central Africa is not to be criticized for its lavishness. It lifts the hearts and eyes of millions of depressed people. It gives them something to dream about and stories for their great-grandchildren...
...first issue of Maledicta ("bad words" in Latin) is now in the hands of 1,480 subscribers who pay $10 per year. It contains scholarly dissertations on such subjects as Yiddish insults, scurrilous Elizabethan and Jacobean sexual metaphors, and Latent Accusative Tendencies in the Skopje Dialect. Other articles include a bracing harangue by Aman himself, directed at academics who do not appreciate his life's work ("biodegradable nitwits" and "cacademoids," a neologism formed from "academic" and the baby-talk word for feces, "caca"). The coat of arms of his International Maledicta Society is a 3,000-year-old obscene...
Aman thinks cussing is socially important-It releases pent-up emotions and reveals crucial information about culture and psychology. Among other things, he is studying the language of German prostitutes and Peruvian criminals, American college slang, Mojave insult gestures and the terminology of Chinese eunuchs. In an Olympics of world cursing, he believes that Yiddish would rank high, and Hungarian would win the blasphemy prize hands down. Also notable are Turkish rhymed insults, deadly serious Eskimo singing duels and a sneaky insult in Hindi that translates literally as "brother-in-law" but actually means "I slept with your sister...
...fiery daughter Sara (Kathryn Walker) has a wealthy young Yankee in tow, and when it comes out that the boy's father wants no truck with the peat-bog Melodys, Con rides swaggeringly forth to avenge such an insult by issuing a dueling challenge. Terribly beaten by the police, Con stumbles home in a state of catatonic silence, all the posturing and pride of him. This time he goes forth only to kill the last emblem of his dream, his blooded mare, his Byronic self...