Nerding Day: Garfield's Insults, Put-Downs & Slams

I've always been shocked by the audacity of Garfield. What has Garfield accomplished? He lives in another man's home, steals his lasagna, and he doesn't have a single life skill that I recall, living only to sass others. Garfield survives on his wit, so of course he's the perfect mascot for Garfield's Insults, Put-Downs & Slams, a guidebook for children on how to hurt each other's feelings. If your friends don't openly weep at these hilarious slams, Jim Davis will personally kick them in the dick or your money back.

This list of random one-liners is the first thing you see when you open the book. It's what Garfield considers the best he has to offer. It's supposed to sell you on spending eight American dollars for a cartoon cat to teach you how to be an asshole:

You're supposed to pick up this book, see, "Why don't you hop in your geekmobile and cruise for dweebettes?" and think, never in a million years could I come up with that brilliant put-down. I must give Garfield my money. That's the intended effect, and I know for someone out there, it worked! Buying this book is admitting that Garfield is smarter than you, and I'm saying that as someone who bought this book.

Forget the first page; let's go back to the cover. Right off the bat, if you look at the hilarious insult they're using to sell the book, you know what you're in for. "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT, SQUID FACE?" A classic burn for your good friend who has tentacles? Typically, that's someone you don't want to piss off, but this book goes there. Garfield knows no boundaries. Fucking squirt your way back to R'lyeh, Cthylla.

Who looks like a squid? I can't picture a squidish person, but if I ever run into one, boy do I have a humdinger in my back pocket for them. Their squidy ass is going to be devastated by Garfield. In chapter one, Garfield explains to you that "squid face" is pretty much the pinnacle of his insult philosophy. There's an entire science behind it:

Following this declaration that you can take any body part and slap a funny word in front of it to make a hilarious insult, we get a two-column list to help us try it out ourselves. According to the Garfield philosophy of insults, any of these two words combined makes a perfect put down, not that you would get it, you zipper brain. You drool ears. Walk away from here with your platypus ankles and take your bubble gums with you while you're at it, munchkin spleen. God, how do you even filter any blood at all with that tiny little spleen? Zit mug! You unrepentant zit mug!

I never in my life thought I would write this sentence, but I think Garfield can do better. The Jim Davis quality control team really took the day off when this thing was being written. Insults work best when they're weirdly specific, so a whole book of generic one-liners with no target makes zero sense, and the idea that anyone would somehow memorize these so that they could pull them out at just the right time and really get someone is unfathomable even for a 10-year-old corndog brain.

Maybe I'm making too many assumptions when I say this Garfield book is for children. It seems like a Scholastic Book Fair impulse buy at best, but there's some stuff that isn't super kid-friendly in it, like the top ten procedures Garfield would perform if he were a plastic surgeon.

I had to google what dermabrasion was. No child is ever going to laugh at a joke with the punchline "dermabrasion." If they do, run, that's not a child; it's a forty-year-old Russian woman with dwarfism and a munchkin spleen posing as a child. Also, bold of this children's joke book to bring Olive Oyl's titties into the conversation. I was enjoying my 12,199th day of not thinking about Olive Oyl's titties at all, and this lame joke book just ruined it! Since this book is official Garfield merchandise, Garfield's opinion on Olive Oyl's breasts is Garfield canon. He likes them big, now we know. Thanks, Jim "Munchkin Titties" Davis.

There's also a whole section on dating, blowing off your date, or insulting someone else for not having enough dates. This, I guess, proves this is a book meant more for mean adults who want advice from Garfield, than children.

Do you think anyone who needed to buy this book has ever utilized the blowing off losers section? "I can't date you yet. I still have standards" is clearly a lie. If you seriously bought this book, you do not have standards. In the place where your standards once were, it's just more Garfield.

That being said, I guess I can't imagine what section of this book would be enormously helpful to anyone, except maybe the section that has individual insults for every profession. I mean, obviously, Garfield couldn't cover every career known to man. This was published in 1994, so YouTube whisperer and Twitch fart streamer are left off, but if you ever run into a shoe salesman or vice-president and want to piss them off, needlessly and fruitlessly, Garfield's got your back.

I feel awful for shoe salesmen. It's not an amazing job, but the assertion that "no normal person" would do it is a little much. There's no punchline to that insult at all... no wit or misdirection. It just says do you know someone who sells shoes for a living? Yeah, well, accuse them of being a pervert. It'll be hilarious and totally original! Oh, and if they have a face, call it a corndog one.

A few pages later, Garfield roasts podiatrists with no mention of them having a foot fetish. He just says, "Too bad you couldn't be a real doctor." Weirdly, it's the only specialist mentioned, and proctologists exist! Garfield has no jokes about butt doctors! They're not worthy of insults, but podiatrists get a shout out, and shoe salesmen all have foot fetishes. Seems like someone is real focused on feet, Garfield.

Some "professions" in the career jeers section are not jobs at all, like debutantes, cowboys, and dogs. Dog is not a job. Dogs can have jobs, but no dog is getting paid to exist. Maybe there are still some people being paid to be cowboys, but I'm sure we call them cow professionals, or CEO of tall animals now. It's a weirdly deep cut for this book, like insulting someone for being a knight or a pirate.

I'm not sure how much knowledge Garfield has of modern jobs, not just because he's a fat lazy cat with no work ethic, but because he's terrified of technology. Garfield thinks anyone who owns a computer should kill themselves. The "Nerd is the Word" section is four solid pages of confused put-downs for anyone who has owned a computer, including, "Go kiss a computer Technoweenie! Yo, chiphead! Compute this!" With no further word on what exactly this is. Are you supposed to punch someone there? Is Garfield condoning physical assault? And most confusingly of all, "Hey, Gorkmeister! Eat my data." Are we about to fight or fuck, Garfield?

What does Gorkmesiter mean? No one is going to be insulted if you call them Gorkmeister. They're going to assume you're a lost German exchange student looking for directions to the lunchroom.

I guess you lard pelvises probably get the point. Garfield's Insults, Put-Downs, & Slams is a book for sheep-dip kneed salami noggins. I'll leave you Gorkmesiters with a final Garfield parting insult. “Take your face to outer space. NERD!” -Garfield 1994

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