Originally Posted by
johnb
If I hear Duke hate while sitting in a sports bar, I tend to quote Schopenhauer: "to feel envy is human, to savor schadenfreude is diabolic" and order another round.
If I hear it while visiting relatives in west Texas, I generally lean on their enormous grill, crack open a beer, and say, "Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem," which they recognize more easily as, "it is pleasant to watch from the land the great struggle of someone else in a sea rendered great by turbulent winds."
If people utter Duke snark while we're waiting in line at the movie theater, I point out that comedic sadism is a cornerstone of slapstick, but Chaplin died in 1977, and really, such a genre reached it's peach over 500 years ago with the commedia dell'arte, so perhaps we should move on.
If people revel in a Duke injury, I quote from Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand—his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low—
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him: he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
And when I hear a hostile Duke comment spoken by the faithful, I lean toward the offending mouth, perhaps too close, slide over to the adjacent ear and slowly whisper (while channeling my Pulp Fiction Samuel L. Jackson): "rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the Lord see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him." (Proverbs 24:17–18).
I find that such responses not only take the wind out of their sails, but they also lead me to having plenty of free time when I might otherwise be bothered by social invitations.