What's in a word?
Bear with me ... this'll take a few seconds. (Therewith I lose 95% of the LJ generation.)

"Rapier-like wit" ... immediately clear, yes?
"He's quite a swordsman" ... nope. It means he gets laid a lot.

"I'm losing my temper" ... getting angry, right?
Wrong. The product of systematic mis-education.

Blades and tools are heat-treated to give them particular and peculiar characteristics ... they are tempered.
Some things bend without snapping, some things stay sharp forever, some take on very fine cutting edges, like that.
When any of these lose their temper they become useful as door-stops or boat anchors. (Small boats, fine.)

I'm losing my temper.
Decades of being a true soldier and I become homeless and decrepit as my cohort continues to profit wildly by perverting and polluting and exploiting everything they can set their minds to.

"Dream Chasers" ... a TV competition ... it involves shit like riding a bull-machine.

I belong to the "fire-keepers" tribe.
I've been doing that.
I could train dream chasers. I mean real dream chasers.
A bit of caligraphy practice. A bit of dancing. A bit of drumming. A bit of singing. Lighting a fire. All as meditative practices.

But "dream chasers" get on TV to ride bull-machines.

How do you feel about being part of a doomed society?

*blank stares ... the occasional shrug*

"Feckless yuppies and their more than feckless kidz" ...
... that's actually a euphemistic under-statement.