Curses!

The good folk at Mental Floss have assembled some interesting ancient Latin curses that writer Kristina Killgrove suggests we should find ways to adapt today. A couple sound like they would be fun to say -- it might be worth learning them in Latin so you could add confusion to the ill will that you wished upon your opponent.

One of them, on the other hand, sounds pretty modern. Number four, "be struck dumb," is the kind of thing people might easily say today. In many ways, though, it is the cruelest one of all, because of the false hope it engenders. I can think of few things meaner than to have the hope that nearly everyone in politics and media becomes silent and watch it be dashed so completely.