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Jonathan Coulton, a Day in the Life
The New York Times is running a look behind the scenes with singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton, creator the somewhat popular "Thing a week" songs on his blog. Coulton describes a bit of how he got started and what daily life is like maintaining relations with his fans. "Along the way, he discovered a fact that many small-scale recording artists are coming to terms with these days: his fans do not want merely to buy his music. They want to be his friend. And that means they want to interact with him all day long online. They pore over his blog entries, commenting with sympathy and support every time he recounts the difficulty of writing a song. They send e-mail messages, dozens a day, ranging from simple mash notes of the "you rock!" variety to starkly emotional letters, including one by a man who described singing one of Coulton's love songs to his 6-month-old infant during her heart surgery. Coulton responds to every letter, though as the e-mail volume has grown to as many as 100 messages a day, his replies have grown more and more terse, to the point where he's now feeling guilty about being rude."
A mother insult is a reference to a person's mother through the use of phrases such as "your mom", "yer mum", or "yo mama", frequently used to insult the target by way of his or her mother. Used as an insult, "your mom..." preys on the fact that people commonly love and revere their mothers, making the insult particularly and globally offensive.[1] "Your mom" can be combined with most types of insults, although suggestions of promiscuity, obesity, or lack of intelligence are particularly common.[2] Compared to other types of insults, "your mom" insults are especially likely to incite violence.[3][1] Slang variants such as "yo momma" or "yer ma" are sometimes used, depending on the local dialect. Insults involving "Your mom" are commonly used when playing the dozens. Additionally, this phrase is frequently used in playful banter between friends. Although this may appear to be a recent phenomenon, one can trace its roots far back in history. Indeed, William Shakespeare appears to utilize such a device in Act I Scene 1 of Timon of Athens:
Painter: "Y'are a dog."
Apemantus: "Thy mother's of my generation. What's she, if I be a dog?"
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Life of Timon of Athens
Although the phrase has a long history of including a description portion (such as the old, mostly harmless insult "your mama wears Army shoes"), the phrase "yo mama" by itself, without any qualifiers, has become commonly used as an all-purpose insult or an expression of defiance.
Use as a retort
"Your mom" is also sometimes used as a sarcastically immature retort to either a mild criticism or even an innocuous statement. The effect of this is usually to mock the person. It is occasionally used as a sexual innuendo as in the following example:
Q: What are you doing?
A: Your mom!
In popular culture
"Your mom" jokes became common in North American pop culture in the early nineties. The Pharcyde's 1992 track "Ya Mama" echoed it, [4] as did the film Napoleon Dynamite, in which one of the supporting characters utters the phrase "your mom goes to college." Mexican film Y Tu Mama Tambien's title is an equivalent usage in Spanish ("and your momma too"). There is also a television show Yo Momma featuring contestants "playing the dozens". The Australian hiphop outfit Butterfingers released a song called "Yo Mama" that made number 17 on the 2004 Triple J Hottest 100.[5]