the last of the pre-wrist-pain letterings

[cimorene]

There was a period when I was a child and my parents had forbidden me from saying curse words, so I had to be creative with my insults, and "sharp as a marble" was an off-the-cuff insult I came up with once that, contrary to intention, brought everyone much joy because both of my parents laughed so hard. My dad subsequently adopted it as one of his catch phrases.






It may be old hat to people from other places or with more conversational exposure to Brits of various classes, but the use of 'jolly' to mean 'quite' or 'rather' is still novel and delightful to me, at least sometimes.

One of my long-term bugbears, as an interior design enthusiast and a letterforms enthusiast, is tacky and twee words and sayings as decor such as "Home [Sweet Home]", "Welcome", "Love", "Eat", and all the various inspirational and motivational quotes that seem to have found their way over from 19th century cross-stitching and 90s corporate 'art'. I go back and forth about what the ideal parody forms of these would be, but few of them are more profound and profoundly conversation-ending than The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe, which I think was my dad's suggestion originally.

Tired Goth is a look one can often observe in the wee hours and in places like convenience stores in Finland, a country with a very high concentration of metalheads, actual goths, and just people who, for whatever bizarre cultural reason, feel that no other color is as safely sober/grown up/universal as black.

I think 'breakfast reprobate' was just a misheard phrase, but it was too delightful to forget.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

What fun!

[vass]

I go back and forth about what the ideal parody forms of these would be, but few of them are more profound and profoundly conversation-ending than The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe, which I think was my dad's suggestion originally.

It's a good one. If you need a shorter version, "Entropy"?

I remember reading a blog post about someone somewhere buying "Laugh" (cf "Live", "Love") in those wood carving letters you stick to walls, and spraying it pink sparkly then snapping off the "La" so it just said (in loopy italic font) "ugh".

[cimorene]

I like entropy as well, but it's a parody of a slightly different subgenre with the single word message vs the short noun phrase!

[cimorene]

Jolly jolly, as Stephen Fry (probably wouldn't) could say.

[cimorene]

There was a viral post where someone's mom said "Die, Cry, Hate" in an attempt to parody Live Laugh Love but her audience didn't immediately realize that's what she was doing and were a bit taken aback. I remember thinking that would make a nice tshirt design, in an appropriately metalhead font (which isn't in my current lettering repertoire however...).

[cesy]

Sharp as a marble is lovely