Translator: Sebastian Betti Reviewer: Gastón Falanga
Good afternoon.
The shell of his mother.
(Applause)
Let’s analyze that phrase.
Public: Peeled! Bare! Bare!
Let’s analyze that phrase.
Not “good afternoon” or “bare” but “the shell of his mother”.
What does that insult mean?
What do we say to someone?
We send it to the place of origin, right?
Where he came or should have been born.
When I was a kid there were many kids
that when they said “the shell of his mother” they said:
“You do not get in with my old woman”.
Ridiculous, right? Pure Oedipus
The common place of the old woman as immaculate, without sex.
To me it always seemed ridiculous this about “with my old woman you did not get in”.
Even when I realized that my old woman was taking it.
An insult can become so absurd
that the shell can be from your mother,
but also from your grandmother, your aunt, your sister.
Another thing that caught my attention, the kids said:
“Your sister’s shell”,
“As a sister I do not have, with you I entertain.”
(Laughter)
There I realized that the sister, although it is not the old woman,
there is also a scary half thing there, mess with the sister.
I do not know, I do not have a sister.
And the truth is, I did not come here to entertain myself absolutely with anyone.
Anyway, the most revealing insult of my childhood
It was not something said but something I read.
There was, in the Pompeii neighborhood, my childhood neighborhood,
on Pirovano Street, an old car,
I think it was abandoned, very dirty,
I had written with a finger on the earth on the windshield:
“Wash me dirty.”
And on the hood, also with a finger:
“Puto the one who reads”.
Seeing those two legends in a car for me was revealing.
Imagine, a fool, 6 or 7 years,
I was just learning to read and I saw a car
I had all that to tell me.
Maybe I realized that there were two things there, different.
On one side was the “dirty wash”.
The “dirty wash” was, clearly, a message from the car.
It was the car that was telling the owner.
I was claiming something.
It was a car scrache to the owner.
The “whore who reads” was something different.
Because nobody said it, it was not the car that spoke there.
It gave the impression that it was a message from nobody.
Which implies that it can be a message from God.
(Laughter)
It was at that moment that an atheist like me,
raised by a Marxist mother and father,
He understood what a miracle is.
(Applause)
No one writes “fucking the one who reads,” I thought.
Because if someone writes it, they read it.
That is, you can not write without reading.
There were then two options:
or had it been God or had it been
someone who was shitting with laughter from me,
whoever reads that, of all humanity.
And since I did not become a believer, I opted for the second option,
for the mockery, for the irony.
And irony is one of the keys to insult.
With the insult appears ingenuity, mischief, creativity.
An insult is a sophisticated exercise of thought
put at the service of something choto.
(Laughter)
The excitement of the one who writes “Puto el que lee”
is to imagine what will happen to whoever reads it.
That is, excitement, imagination.
He’s a jerk!
(Laughter)
And therefore, an idealist.
When I read that phrase in that dirty car,
I not only had a revelation but also had a mandate.
I felt I had a mandate.
On the one hand, I had to write a book called “Puto el Read”
and on the other, I had to make a dictionary of insults
to immerse myself in all that shit.
And that’s how I wrote “Puto el reread.
Argentine dictionary of insults, insults and expletives “.
(Applause)
It is strange what happens with insults.
Because if we are what we eat,
we are also what we discard, the garbage we generate.
And if language is food, the insult is excrement.
And there comes a problem because if the insult is excrement
it means that we like coprophagy.
There are some confusions regarding insults.
Think of a text that includes the words
“Poronga”, “cajeta”, “garchar”, “ojete” and “cacona”.
(Laughter)
Someone will be able to say, even technically,
we see a movie that says that, “adult language.”
Do not! Do not! It is not adult language, it is children’s language.
My fascination when I read “fucking the one who reads”
In that dirty car it was a childhood fascination.
To insult is to go back to childhood,
is to re-activate those ingenuity mechanisms,
but also of emotion.
It is to rediscover the world with the intensity
with what we do when we are children.
Another thing that is said: the insult is irrational.
Do not! It is rationality.
Insult is part of the rational.
A childish rationality of the “whore who reads”,
Yes, but rationality.
Surely it is the last station, the frontier of rationality.
Because insult is violence.
Representation of violence.
It can be violent but it is representation.
Of the insult, beyond, it is passed to the pineapple.
And that is objective violence.
For that, we need to insult.
(Applause)
But of course, how do we do it when we know that
many insults are racist, macho, homophobic,
sexists, classists?
And many times the insults
they serve as a pretext or theoretical sustenance
or social acceptance for these aberrant crimes,
as they are femicide, easy trigger, repression,
forced disappearance of people.
(Applause)
How to fight this rampage?
A few years ago, in his wonderful presentation
in the Congress of the Spanish Language,
the colossal writer Roberto Fontanarrosa
He asked for a pardon for the bad words.
Okay, I’m going back to that idea,
Today I come here to propose that we think about a program
of damage reduction of insults.
Damage reduction, that is, give technical information
for responsible use.
As it happens with drugs.
But for that we must be aware that,
if we are going to replace an insulting term,
it has to be for another so forceful
like the one we replace.
And nothing of the pelotudez of political correction berreta.
A serious and courageous program
of damage reduction of insults
should take into account
that we’re not going to destroy machismo until we find
a word to define cunnilingus,
to oral sex to women,
as it is “pete” to define the fellatio.
(Applause)
Currently there are reasons to think
that an insulting paradigm shift is possible.
Above all, when we see
that there are insulted groups that take charge of the insult,
they use it and in that way they neutralize it.
Think of the terms “fucking”
– with the fucking Peronists at the head –
the term “whore”
– with the feminist whores in the lead –
or “black villero”
and the villero pride of the cumbia villera.
(Applause)
Something that had already started with the soccer teams.
Think: bosteros, chickens, lepers, rogues, crows,
quemeros, tatengues, blacks, etcetera.
They are all terms that were born as insults
and from which the fans of those clubs took charge.
But there are also reasons to think otherwise,
that an insulting paradigm shift is not possible.
Because the insult became so massive that it can become innocuous.
Social networks eliminated fear and calculation
that had the insult in person.
One had to be careful when insulting in the face.
Social networks created the virtual insult.
Then you can say anything from anonymity.
And the virtual insult is to insult
what virtual sex is to sex.
It is not the same to say to someone “the shell of your mother”
from a fake Twitter identity, what to tell
“The mother’s shell” in the face,
as I am telling you at this time.
(Applause)
Insults make up the cloaca of the language.
And the sewers, even if they can not be seen,
they are necessary, they are essential.
Insult is a fundamental expression of the language.
That’s why it’s absolutely necessary to dive into that cloaca
if you want to understand, in principle, the language,
but also the depth of the human soul.
They say that what defines a society best
is how pariahs are treated.
What more to look at the streets,
the buildings, bridges, hospitals, etc.,
we must go and see how people live in prisons and asylums.
Taking this idea, we can think that to understand how we speak,
more than reading poems, novels,
listen to songs, watch movies,
We have to see how we insult.
We are what we insult.
Let’s assume that we are capable of creating and believing in God,
but we are also capable of shitting ourselves in God.
Let’s assume that the only thing that matters to us in this life
is to remain children.
Let’s take charge.
The shell of his mother.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Good afternoon.
The shell of his mother.
(Applause)
Let’s analyze that phrase.
Public: Peeled! Bare! Bare!
Let’s analyze that phrase.
Not “good afternoon” or “bare” but “the shell of his mother”.
What does that insult mean?
What do we say to someone?
We send it to the place of origin, right?
Where he came or should have been born.
When I was a kid there were many kids
that when they said “the shell of his mother” they said:
“You do not get in with my old woman”.
Ridiculous, right? Pure Oedipus
The common place of the old woman as immaculate, without sex.
To me it always seemed ridiculous this about “with my old woman you did not get in”.
Even when I realized that my old woman was taking it.
An insult can become so absurd
that the shell can be from your mother,
but also from your grandmother, your aunt, your sister.
Another thing that caught my attention, the kids said:
“Your sister’s shell”,
“As a sister I do not have, with you I entertain.”
(Laughter)
There I realized that the sister, although it is not the old woman,
there is also a scary half thing there, mess with the sister.
I do not know, I do not have a sister.
And the truth is, I did not come here to entertain myself absolutely with anyone.
Anyway, the most revealing insult of my childhood
It was not something said but something I read.
There was, in the Pompeii neighborhood, my childhood neighborhood,
on Pirovano Street, an old car,
I think it was abandoned, very dirty,
I had written with a finger on the earth on the windshield:
“Wash me dirty.”
And on the hood, also with a finger:
“Puto the one who reads”.
Seeing those two legends in a car for me was revealing.
Imagine, a fool, 6 or 7 years,
I was just learning to read and I saw a car
I had all that to tell me.
Maybe I realized that there were two things there, different.
On one side was the “dirty wash”.
The “dirty wash” was, clearly, a message from the car.
It was the car that was telling the owner.
I was claiming something.
It was a car scrache to the owner.
The “whore who reads” was something different.
Because nobody said it, it was not the car that spoke there.
It gave the impression that it was a message from nobody.
Which implies that it can be a message from God.
(Laughter)
It was at that moment that an atheist like me,
raised by a Marxist mother and father,
He understood what a miracle is.
(Applause)
No one writes “fucking the one who reads,” I thought.
Because if someone writes it, they read it.
That is, you can not write without reading.
There were then two options:
or had it been God or had it been
someone who was shitting with laughter from me,
whoever reads that, of all humanity.
And since I did not become a believer, I opted for the second option,
for the mockery, for the irony.
And irony is one of the keys to insult.
With the insult appears ingenuity, mischief, creativity.
An insult is a sophisticated exercise of thought
put at the service of something choto.
(Laughter)
The excitement of the one who writes “Puto el que lee”
is to imagine what will happen to whoever reads it.
That is, excitement, imagination.
He’s a jerk!
(Laughter)
And therefore, an idealist.
When I read that phrase in that dirty car,
I not only had a revelation but also had a mandate.
I felt I had a mandate.
On the one hand, I had to write a book called “Puto el Read”
and on the other, I had to make a dictionary of insults
to immerse myself in all that shit.
And that’s how I wrote “Puto el reread.
Argentine dictionary of insults, insults and expletives “.
(Applause)
It is strange what happens with insults.
Because if we are what we eat,
we are also what we discard, the garbage we generate.
And if language is food, the insult is excrement.
And there comes a problem because if the insult is excrement
it means that we like coprophagy.
There are some confusions regarding insults.
Think of a text that includes the words
“Poronga”, “cajeta”, “garchar”, “ojete” and “cacona”.
(Laughter)
Someone will be able to say, even technically,
we see a movie that says that, “adult language.”
Do not! Do not! It is not adult language, it is children’s language.
My fascination when I read “fucking the one who reads”
In that dirty car it was a childhood fascination.
To insult is to go back to childhood,
is to re-activate those ingenuity mechanisms,
but also of emotion.
It is to rediscover the world with the intensity
with what we do when we are children.
Another thing that is said: the insult is irrational.
Do not! It is rationality.
Insult is part of the rational.
A childish rationality of the “whore who reads”,
Yes, but rationality.
Surely it is the last station, the frontier of rationality.
Because insult is violence.
Representation of violence.
It can be violent but it is representation.
Of the insult, beyond, it is passed to the pineapple.
And that is objective violence.
For that, we need to insult.
(Applause)
But of course, how do we do it when we know that
many insults are racist, macho, homophobic,
sexists, classists?
And many times the insults
they serve as a pretext or theoretical sustenance
or social acceptance for these aberrant crimes,
as they are femicide, easy trigger, repression,
forced disappearance of people.
(Applause)
How to fight this rampage?
A few years ago, in his wonderful presentation
in the Congress of the Spanish Language,
the colossal writer Roberto Fontanarrosa
He asked for a pardon for the bad words.
Okay, I’m going back to that idea,
Today I come here to propose that we think about a program
of damage reduction of insults.
Damage reduction, that is, give technical information
for responsible use.
As it happens with drugs.
But for that we must be aware that,
if we are going to replace an insulting term,
it has to be for another so forceful
like the one we replace.
And nothing of the pelotudez of political correction berreta.
A serious and courageous program
of damage reduction of insults
should take into account
that we’re not going to destroy machismo until we find
a word to define cunnilingus,
to oral sex to women,
as it is “pete” to define the fellatio.
(Applause)
Currently there are reasons to think
that an insulting paradigm shift is possible.
Above all, when we see
that there are insulted groups that take charge of the insult,
they use it and in that way they neutralize it.
Think of the terms “fucking”
– with the fucking Peronists at the head –
the term “whore”
– with the feminist whores in the lead –
or “black villero”
and the villero pride of the cumbia villera.
(Applause)
Something that had already started with the soccer teams.
Think: bosteros, chickens, lepers, rogues, crows,
quemeros, tatengues, blacks, etcetera.
They are all terms that were born as insults
and from which the fans of those clubs took charge.
But there are also reasons to think otherwise,
that an insulting paradigm shift is not possible.
Because the insult became so massive that it can become innocuous.
Social networks eliminated fear and calculation
that had the insult in person.
One had to be careful when insulting in the face.
Social networks created the virtual insult.
Then you can say anything from anonymity.
And the virtual insult is to insult
what virtual sex is to sex.
It is not the same to say to someone “the shell of your mother”
from a fake Twitter identity, what to tell
“The mother’s shell” in the face,
as I am telling you at this time.
(Applause)
Insults make up the cloaca of the language.
And the sewers, even if they can not be seen,
they are necessary, they are essential.
Insult is a fundamental expression of the language.
That’s why it’s absolutely necessary to dive into that cloaca
if you want to understand, in principle, the language,
but also the depth of the human soul.
They say that what defines a society best
is how pariahs are treated.
What more to look at the streets,
the buildings, bridges, hospitals, etc.,
we must go and see how people live in prisons and asylums.
Taking this idea, we can think that to understand how we speak,
more than reading poems, novels,
listen to songs, watch movies,
We have to see how we insult.
We are what we insult.
Let’s assume that we are capable of creating and believing in God,
but we are also capable of shitting ourselves in God.
Let’s assume that the only thing that matters to us in this life
is to remain children.
Let’s take charge.
The shell of his mother.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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