A Legend in
his Own Mind
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A Legend in
his Own Mind |
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Carlo's Table
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Curses, foiled again! Cursing is a fine art, one perfected by sailors and Yosemite Sam, and taken to a new low by truckers on the CB. Where is the FCC CB enforcement SWAT team when we need them? I abandoned my brief venture into CB over three decades ago when some well wishing thief decided to supplement his income at the expense of my ownership of a CB radio. It was just as well, I never got the antenna adjusted properly and my well thought out handle of SWEDE came across the airwaves as SWEETY or SWEEB or something else that Jeff Foxworthy could have made a full length movie about. I shifted to THE VIKING and had a few good conversations until my counterparts figured out I only had 4 wheels, and not 18. Your status on CB was directly proportional to the number of wheels on your vehicle, the tonnage of steel or beef you were hauling and the latest peek-see down on female anatomy from that high-up vantage point.
My Cursing Idol! If you had a Smoky to report you could be a celebrity for a few miles. I used the CB for all of a week. Even then those CB'ers swore up a storm. Swearing in a pool hall is not a rare commodity. I cannot imagine very many sports involving one or more balls that does not periodically elicit an occasional burst of @#$%&* or even a murmured @#$ when a ball takes on a mind and purpose of its own. More accurately, when it takes a course of action different than that envisioned in our pre-shot wish list of superlative results. In English: "The cue ball didn’t do what I hoped it would do." In Poolish: "Whitey had a mind of its own." And so the inner workings of the human psyche result in blue-words emoted with a glorious vengeance. Yosemite Sam was the master of all time, hands down.
Yosemite Sam is a walking runt of a Napoleon complex with half his body's weight in his moustache and more pissenvinegar, pound for pound, than a wolverine or a bobcat on caffeine. But Yosemite’s employment contract stated that his colorful language was to be suitable for young ears and, as such, Sam became the master of the non-cursing-curse. One of my favorites was (approximately, for no one could truly understand the words) was when Bugs had done him in and frustration exploded in Yosemite with a high-decibel gruff-voiced “Dirty Rotten Rack-a-frack!" or a face-turning-blue "Beezy Wobble Pegaloomer!” Even a 5-year-old can figure out that baaaaaad words were to be substituted but only if you were an adult. Other forms of cursing involve using common words or erudite selections from the language in a clever combination effectively forming a shot to the head. “Please retire to a distant location of privacy and self-inflict an act normally intended to begin reproduction of your species.” Nuf said. Inasmuch as cursing will never be absent from the sport, I hereby propose that the pool playing populous begins to change from the Crude, Blued and Tattooed form of cursing to the more eloquent form of the sport of cursing. Cursing is not only limited to verbal onslaught and diatribe. Yelling and screaming do not necessarily improve the impact of the curse. Some of the best curses are muttered or even whispered. The TV show, Frasier, embodies some of the finest cursing available without resorting to single syllable forms. Cursing may in fact not require verbal expletives to be effective. Hand gestures are well known, at least one of them equated with IQ count. Having grown up in Chicago, a definite Italian stronghold during my youth and neighborhood, I believe that there are a few thousand or so Italian hand gestures that are so strong as to commence warfare or at least get a poke in the nose. I think I accidentally did a few hundred of them, myself. Arab cultures have also refined the curse to such a high degree of sophistication so that a hand gesture, even when clothed against desert sand and temperature can be properly interpreted at 200 yards in a sand storm. That way, cursing adversaries can exchange gestures at one another from a safe distance while compatriots can listen-in on the insults being tossed back and forth. High-powered rifles with scopes has somewhat curtailed this form of insult. The addition of females to the billiard room environment has resulted in a new breed of cursing. Most of the women in pool halls have not dramatically changed their cursing habits. There are a few, however, who feel the normally testosterone driven need to curse at rock concert levels. They mutter, speak and even yell the classic “F” word with wild abandon. The lamer of the male sect in attendance, somehow equating the speaking of the word with the female's possible willingness to actually perform the act, join in the “F” chant of F-This and F-That. I call it a chant, for it no longer is directed at the actions of the pool balls and must be redefined from cursing at a pool ball’s misbehavior to a “chant” in hopes of performing the act. My personal opinion is that the more you say the “F” chant the less likelihood that you will participate in said act within the foreseeable future. YOU ARE DOOMED TO DO WITHOUT! So ladies and gentlemen (sic) shelve the “F” word and you might finally get some. Besides, then you won’t disturb my game as you vocally declare your indiscriminate availability for exchanging body fluids. A favorite of mine, when I feel forced to commit a curse, yet do not wish to vocalize said curse, is to address the offending ball with a rapid forced smile (actually a non-smile, more of a smirk) and a rapid hand flash of a fist with a partially extended middle knuckle. It is not extended to the full IQ-of-1 position, but just a slight raise of the knuckle showing the intended sign. Think of it as "The Bird barely peeking from its nest." Only the most naïve is not aware of my intentions but those players who do not curse and even those that take offense at cursing do not seem to be offended. I have even caught a smile of understanding from one of our curse-less brethren. Blink and you missed it. So here I am, playing in this tournament, and have run out every time at the table. (That does not happen often, so I remember those times it does.) As happens in tournaments, especially near the end, so does the opponent. So we are waiting patiently for the other guy to mess up and waiting to see just what gifts or bombs that the break delivers. Double hill, I break, and everything breaks out and has at least one pocket where it can go, but a couple of them are touchy. Better get on line and stay there. Get out of line and tragedy awaits. In pool, Tragedy is everywhere! 3 balls down, and I’m still on line. A touch off line on the 4th. Worse on the 5th, but I go two previously unplanned rails and get close enough. Now I have to make and slide the cue ball down the long rail for the kill. It grazes a ball, and settles into the rail groove headed towards the side pocket, and I worry not. As it approaches the side pocket it is slowing rapidly because of the side rail friction, yet held to the side by the depth of the trough. “Oh, CaCa,” I whisper, visualizing it coming to a halt at the side and point-hooking me (the new politically correct phrase, or titty-hooking me for you louts.) Uhh-Uhh. Worse happened. It takes the off-ramp and parks in the lower level. My opponent arises. However, I am not yet through with my discussion with the unfriendly cue ball. I peer down in the side hole, flash a grin-less-grin and a half-knuckle finger gesture down at the criminal cue ball. I swear (the honorable form, you know, hand on the Bible) that the cue ball returned the gesture! I pointed at myself as if the cue ball had said “You, too, buddy!” and I was questioning it if I were party to whom it was intended. In that I have the cue ball trapped in the side pocket, with no back door for escape, I proceed to take the butt end, rubber bumper down, and proceed to bash it’s little head in while it was trapped in the side pocket. It has wronged me dearly and I wish to cause it pain and suffering at my hands and my hands alone! Grrrrrrrrrr. Now it doesn’t hurt my feelings when railbirds laugh at my antics, and Ouila’, I had a laughing audience. To the railbirds: “That’ll teach it to cross me!” and they respond with extra chuckles. My opponent, antsy to get to the ball, is now unhappy with my 10 seconds of antics, even though a Ball-In-Hand awaits him. Something in his brain tells him that he can probably get something extra out of this and firmly states something like "You can’t jab at a cue ball in a pocket and that it is a foul." Huh? The railbirds are erupting with laughter as I ask “are you sure?” He says yes, and I reached into the pocket and handed him the cue ball admitting that, yes, indeed I had fouled. He ran 4 balls, got in a jam, played safe and left me a key-hole. I trickled and rattled it in, with it wobbling for a few seconds. I approached for a handshake and he turned away with an eye-contact avoiding curse proclaiming his desire and willingness to perform upon my person an unwelcome reproductive act or maybe he meant for me to perform it myself. Well. Not his EXACT words, anyway and if my "F" theory is correct, he isn’t going to get any for a long, long time. Tee Hee. Carlo PS: Possibly my favorite curse, after translation for TV, comes from Bruce Willis in "Die Hard" where the TV version says: "Yippee Ki Yeah - Kemo Sabe!" PPS: Go here if you need to Triple-XXX swear in 150 different languages, but don't blame me if your Mother makes you eat a bar of soap! http://www.insultmonger.com/swearing/
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