Robert Gentel’s Blog

Or rather, his wife did. It’s small (hand-held) and stuff.

Congrats!

My uncle Roger passed away today, he was not in good health after years of abusing his body but I wasn’t expecting it. RIP Roger….

Back in 1999 I drew a self-portrait of myself with a bullet in my head. It was during a morbid phase I went through after watching someone I knew get shot and spending time as a homeless teen. My art was often deliberately graphic and I got a small sense of satisfaction with the impact it had on others, an admittedly cheap trick.

Here is the drawing I refer to:

On a website called Hi5.com, a social networking site I signed up for and then rarely used I posted the drawing along with some of the other art from my teenage years and thought little else of it.

Little did I know that an intellectually challenged individual would get his panties so very much in a twist that he’d go out of his way to start messaging me insults.

On December 10th, the retard in question, a certain “Paulo Kull” (see his Hi5 profile here) from Brazil, whom I may or may not have known years ago saw this picture and decided to message me for some reason (not being of the gay persuasion I’m not sure if it was just a clumsy effort at flirting but I suspect it was just legitimate retardation). He ignored the date on the drawing (’99) and the description I posted (”A tad morbid for my current taste…”) and proceeded to try his level best to deliver a punishing insult.

He starts with:

“Hey man! you do need to see a psychiatry. I can tell you are not happy. Why do you go ahead and stick a bullet on your head?”

I don’t visit the site often, but wanted to see something my brother had posted and logged in days later and read his message. Now after the laughter at his retardation, both with English and life in general, settled down I decided to have fun with this unintentionally hilarious attempt at online intimidation. I’d given up on flame wars on the internet years ago but for retardation of such Biblical proportions I had to make an exception. I decided to be nice enough to give him a chance to insult me in Portuguese, which I though would be a more level playing field (hey, a battle of wits with an unarmed man is no fun).

So I sent him this message:

“You make no sense. I speak pretty much any of the other languages you may know so you might want to try one with which you have greater fluency.”

He must have been sitting patiently by his computer waiting because he replied immediately:

“Dumb ass Japa seja la o que voce for! Voce acha que eu iria perder meu tempo com um looser com voce. Eu queria e poder te cobrir de porrada ate quebrar seus dentes depois fazer voce engolir um por um. Eu odeio gente como voce! Gostou? To falando minha lingua, mas eu gostaria mesmo e de falar porrada com voce.
that wasn’t a smart answer.”

Now here’s a rough translation for those who don’t speak Portuguese. It’s as good as I can do since his Portuguese is as ass-backwards as his English: “Dumb ass Jap, or whatever you are! You think I would lose my time with a looser like you?” (Editor’s note: Actually, it’s quite obvious that he does in fact do so). “I would like and can cover you in punches until break your teeth after make you swallow them one by one. I hate people like you! Like that? I am speaking my language, but I’d really like to speak punches with you. That wasn’t a smart answer.”

At this point it’s unclear if he’s referring to his answer or mine, since even with punctuation cleanup of “[his] language” he comes across as retarded in his native tongue as he does in English.

Now I’m not sure if it’s my own arrogance here, or just perverse pleasure at making fun of someone who tries to insult total strangers and falls decidedly short but I decide to toy with him a bit more:

“>> Voce acha que eu iria perder meu tempo
>> com um looser com voce.

Apparently, yes. At first I thought you were gay but now I see you are just retarded.

>> Eu queria e poder te cobrir de porrada
>> ate quebrar seus dentes depois fazer
>> voce engolir um por um.

Aww, how cute. You sound like a petulant 4-year old.

>> Eu odeio gente como voce!

Smart people? Or people who are just not retarded?

>> Gostou?

Very much, you are an entertaining idiot.

>> To falando minha lingua, mas eu gostaria
>> mesmo e de falar porrada com voce.
>> that wasn’t a smart answer.

Of course your answers aren’t smart. You sound like a complete retard. Let me explain: your threats are as baseless as they are funny.

You have no ability whatsoever to make good on your empty threats. What you DO have, is the ability to continue to entertain me with your mental handicap.

Given the Christmas season I feel generous and will grant you some pearls of wisdom:

Picking “internet fights” is stupid. Getting all worked up about them is even more stupid.

Incidentally, we used to live together in Brazil but I don’t remember where. Do you?”

He didn’t take the advice I gave him, of not getting so damned worked up over an internet argument but that comes as no surprise since he was dumb enough to go out of his way to start it in the first place. Nor did he take the opportunity I gave him to save face when I asked him where I knew him from (I’m pretty sure I know him from Brazil but apparently he was just randomly insulting people on the internet when he happened across me). Thus came his next angry rant:

“I never lived with a looser like you! Just look into yourself. These weird pictures.Scumbag!I bet you wouldn’t say such things if you were face to face with me, would you brave man? Who is gay round here? I can make you look just you want in your pics. Weirdo! But again, I say you are definitely not happy. I think you need to meet your creator.
Give yourself a Christmas gift and the rest of the world. People like you for me are like rats, filthy rats.”

Sigh, so many idiots and so little time. It never ceases to amaze me when fools like him with the illusion of being bad-asses let you know how you’d not dare speak that way to them in person, this from the tough-guy hardass who goes around insulting people…. online! LOL!

I didn’t get his message for a week or so, since I don’t really use that site much but when I saw the email indicating that the big badass had sent me more funnies I had to see what he came up with. As you already know, it was much of the same, and while it’s pretty funny to see someone decide to set apart some personal time to make a fool out of themselves it gets old fast. But hell, maybe I can goad him into getting even angrier and somehow even more stupid so I replied:

“>> I never lived with a looser like you! Just look into yourself.

“Look into yourself?” That would be quite a physical challenge, probably similar to the challenge you face when trying to construct a coherent insult.

>> These weird pictures.Scumbag!

Hey, don’t like ‘em, don’t look at ‘em. Do you always pitch a silly baby fit over drawings that scare you?

>> I bet you wouldn’t say such things if you were face to face with me, would you brave man?

Of course I would. Your insults are retarded and I would tell you as much in any setting.

>> Who is gay round here?

I don’t know. I can’t help you find a boyfriend.

>> I can make you look just you want in your pics.

Whatever you mean by that, what you CAN’T do is quite obvious: create an insult that makes any sense.

>> Weirdo! But again, I say you are definitely not happy.

I had no idea. I thought the raucous laughter at making fun of you indicated happiness.

>> I think you need to meet your creator.

I’ve met both of them.

>> Give yourself a Christmas gift and the rest of the world.

Ok, I will. I will consider my mocking of your attempts to insult me as a Christmas gift. Furthermore I will be publishing these very funny exchanges on the internet (you will be able to find them all posted shortly on http://blog.robertgentel.com) so that I can also share this gift with the rest of the world.

>> People like you for me are like rats, filthy rats.

People “like me for you” are sources of English instruction. “

Now unless he gets significantly more funny I will probably leave it at that. But if he persists I’ll keep sharing these jems with others here. Hey, I’d feel selfish to horde the retards all to myself.

Enjoy the retard, it’s Christmas and you all deserve it.

A recent bout of curiosity disabused me of my ignorance of there being both a wedding and engagement ring. I hate rings (and wearing any jewelry) and I thought it was just one effin’ ring I would have to come to terms with and yeah I never thought about it being odd to ask for the engagement ring back to re-present at the wedding owing largely to the fact that as a male member of the species I rarely thought about weddings at all. I thought it was all just one ring for the whole marriage thing.

From what I can tell, all women have known all about this since they were teenagers. I got the full run-down from my soon-to-be fiancé (is there a term for that?) together with an amused roll of the eyes. Now I am just wondering if it would be a transgression of some tacit female protocol to request a really big aquarium for myself instead of one of my rings. Hell, I may as well ask…

Didn’t go over too well says the significantly less amused roll of the eyes.

I met Alvin playing poker, back when I was doing it for a living. I was playing late at night in the Horseshoe Casino in San Jose, Costa Rica and he came in to play. He isn’t the kind of guy you’d forget. He looked like a Samurai and he played very aggressively. He’d raise every un-raised pot and was good enough at post-flop play to almost break even most nights. Ultimately, it wasn’t profitable play and he knew it. But it was fun. And that was the point. He played for fun and made any table interesting. We loved his action and the action he’d generate and he was a pleasant and fun guy to hang out with around the poker scene.

We weren’t close friends but we’d sometimes go out to eat or hang out before, after or in between the poker sessions. I haven’t been much of a partier since moving in with my girlfriend and he always said we should hang out more and since I knew he was pretty bored in town with only gambling as entertainment in most of his free hours I always promised that we’d go party some time.

He lived close to me and a few times I gave him a ride to his house after the games. I can’t say I had the honor to call him a good friend but I liked the guy. He had a child-like earnestness about him. Everything you said he’d think about very hard and say what he thought, whether he thought you were right or wrong yet he was never argumentative. He just seemed to think very hard on everything.

Anyway, last weekend I heard some foreigner was murdered in Escazu, where I used to live and my friends jokingly asked if it was me or one of my friends. It was a pretty shocking crime, as 3 people were found stabbed by kitchen knives.

For some reason when I heard the description of the scene I thought of Alvin as roughly fitting the description. You don’t really expect such fleeting fears to be true but I spoke to a mutual friend and he asked me if I’d heard about Alvin. “It was him?” I asked. When I found out my girlfriend looked up the news online and warned me that it was pretty graphic. And it was, the photos of him aren’t easy to forget.

The newspapers didn’t know anything but didn’t hesitate to speculate that it was a fight over the woman who was also found stabbed and dead. But later the newspapers reported that Alvin had seemed to indicate that the man and woman with Alvin had intended to rob him in broken Spanish as he was dying. Whatever the case is, I’ll likely never know why Alvin died and it seems so very weird.

It’s been bothering me more than I thought. I’ve been less patient and a bit more stressed. I guess I won’t be able to keep my promise to Alvin to go party with him sometime, but he’d understand. He was a good guy.