Inter se pugnantia


Inter se pugnantia (in’-ter-say-pug-nan’-ti-a): Using direct address to reprove someone before an audience, pointing out the contradictions in that person’s character, often between what a person does and says.


I’ve assembled your friends Dolly and Doris to witness my “intervention they too may counsel you later. We’ve duct-taped you to kitchen table, and gagged you, to be sure you listen and to assure the intervention works.

And what exactly is an intervention? It’s when a loved one (AKA me) intervenes in the course of your life, calls you out and gets you to admit you have a problem affecting and harming the people around you who care about you. Your friends are here to watch me call you out, since they’re afraid to do so on their own.

Basically, Marge, your nonstop anger accompanied by your swearing, is driving your friends away—everything in your life mother fu*ks, shit heads, or dipshits, or c*cksukcers, or assholes, or numnuts’s, or jerk offs, or blows’s, or shitstains, or shit eats, or dick weeds, or fart faces, or scumbags, or buttholes, or bug fu*ks, or shit-for-brains, or hum jobs, or carpet munchers, or shove it up your asses, and hundreds more. You know them all. You use them all.

Our greatest concern is for you job working as a secretary/ receptionist for Reverend Bland, The other day I heard you address a parishioner: “What the fu*k do you want asshole?.” That won’t do at all. Or, during services last Sunday, during collection, you admonished the congregation to “put some fu*kin’ paper money in the basket instead of nickel-dining Reverend fuckin’ Bland into the co*ksuckin’ poor house, while I lose my God dam job.”

That’s not all. Your parent-teacher meetings haven’t gone well. When the guidance counselor, Mr. Norknock, told you he had some “concerns” about Little Timmy, you flipped out and called him “A do nothing dipshit shit for brains who would better off as a fu*king greeter at goddamn Wal-Mart than shoveling shit here at Chester Fu*king Arthur Middle School.”

I removed the gag. Marge said “Get outta my fu*king face you gaggle of co*k-sucking Mother fu*kers.”

That was it, our friendship ended then and ther. Marge had crossed the line.

POSTSCRIPT

Surprisingly, Marge did not lose her job. Even more of a surprise: Marge got a master of divinity degree. She continued her swearing by quoting miscreants’ talk in her sermons, and condemning it as the Satanic talk of sinners. She was able to keep swearing, constrained only by the obscene words she put in the mouths of evildoers. Her Sunday sermons were known far and wide for their honesty, bluntness, and avoidance of euphemism.

Her obscenity-laced Sunday sermons vituperating sinners exorcised her weekday speech as a sort of steam valve.

Ironically, her penchant for swearing was satisfied as she did the work of the Lord. When she said “Holy shit,” she meant it with all her mother fu*kin’ heart.

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