“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt,” she told him.
“I can’t help it. I use my rapier wit to hide my inner pain.”
The fight response is the limbic brain’s final tactic for survival through aggression. When a person confronting danger cannot avoid detection by freezing and cannot save himself by distancing or escaping (flight), the only alternative left is to fight. In our evolution as a species, we—along with other mammals—developed the strategy of turning fear into rage in order to fight off attackers (Panksepp, 1998, 208). In the modern world, however, acting on our rage may not be practical or even legal, so the limbic brain has developed other strategies beyond the more primitive physical fight response.
One form of modern aggression is an argument. Although the original meaning of the term argument relates simply to a debate or discussion, the word is increasingly used to describe a verbal altercation. An overheated argument is essentially “fighting” by nonphysical means. The use of insults, ad hominem phrases, counterallegations, denigration of professional stature, goading, and sarcasm are all, in their own ways, the modern equivalents of fighting, because they are all forms of aggression. If you think about it, civil lawsuits can even be construed as a modern and socially sanctioned type of fight or aggression in which litigants aggressively argue two opposing viewpoints.
Julian was clever enough to recognize how to cause his Christian adversaries the greatest possible aggravation—he issued an order for the recall of all Christian bishops and other clergy who had been exiled from their places of residence on charges of heresy or schism, including Arians, Donatists and even the famous Bishop Athanasius.
The pagan emperor insisted that he was entitled to a far greater measure of gratitude from the Christians than his late cousin, the Christian emperor. “For under him, most of them were sent into exile, prosecuted and imprisoned, and many of them were butchered, whereas under me, the opposite has occurred,” Julian writes with characteristic sarcasm.
“Is your translator chip working?” the gorgeous redhead asks.
“Listen lady, how the fuck would I know if my translator chip was working or not?”
“Well, can you understand him?” She gestures to our purple captor. “And it's not lady, my name is Jessy.”
“Jessy, darling,” I respond with sarcasm dripping from my every word, “if my translator chip was working I wouldn’t be trying my best to kick this fucker in the balls, now would I?”
"People say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit."
"But it's the highest form of intelligence."
Oscar WildeKitabı okudu
“Crush” is too weak a word to describe how I feel. It doesn’t do you justice, but maybe it
works for me. I am the one who is crushed. I’m crushed that we have only ever regarded each
other as enemies. I’m crushed when the day ends and I haven’t said anything to you that isn’t
cloaked in five layers of sarcasm. I’m crushed, concluding this year without having known
that you like melancholy music or eat cream cheese straight from the tub in the middle of
the night or play with your bangs when you’re nervous, as though you’re worried they look
bad. (They never do.)
“Well, he can’t be all that elitist if he accepted me,” I said. He didn’t catch my sarcasm.
Sayfa 33Kitabı okuyor
“I wanted Tate—panting and helpless—as I buried myself inside of her. No jokes, no sarcasm, no words. Just me in her eyes.”
“There he goes with that sarcasm again. He’s a fucking pro.”
The monkey is an organized sarcasm upon the human race.
I glance back over at Nox to see something wondrous and magical.
He smiles at me.
An actual smile stretches over his lips without a hint of sarcasm or derision. He just enjoys the hell out of me calling my other Bonded out on his hypocritical actions.
“Crush” is too weak a word to describe how I feel. It doesn’t do you justice, but maybe it works for me. I am the one who is crushed. I’m crushed that we have only ever regarded each other as enemies. I’m crushed when the day ends and I haven’t said anything to you that isn’t cloaked in five layers of sarcasm. I’m crushed, concluding this year without having known that you like melancholy music or eat cream cheese straight from the tub in the middle of the night or play with your bangs when you’re nervous, as though you’re worried they look bad. (They never do.)”
Sayfa 319Kitabı okudu