Hi PitzerMike,
First of all.... sorry for you you had to endure such language. Fortunately this kind of behavior is extremely rare with level 40+ players. I think the sensible response is not to take it too seriously and try to ignore such a person. Eventually just play someone else. Any more energy you spend on it is a waste.
About the game... Basically I think you played very well. Your opponent did not.
Fishing Village/Moneylender would definitely be my opening as well. Quarry is not even considered and I really don't like Silver either. You will need the actions soon (Witch if you can, but courtyard is also very good) and money-wise fishing village isn't much worse then silver. Sure, I can construct some shuffles where silver gets me to $5 and silver doesn't (CCMEE - CCC?E - CC), but not too many and there even are some edge cases where it's the other way around (CC?EE - CCCCE - CM). More importantly: hitting $5 is quite likely already. I want the option to add a courtyard, and silver makes that awkward.
The next decision is on your turn 3, where you get a potion and I once again agree. But this one is trickier then the opening. Having the fishing village in play, you're very likely to get a witch next turn anyway. It should make you lose the curse split, but getting the universities started is easily important enough. If you would have gotten to $4 on a CCCCE hand, I think I'd go for courtyard though. Getting the witch cannot be postponed to turn 7/8.
Your opponent then makes a game-losing mistake by playing courtyard on turn 3. Courtyard can somewhat 'prevent' a clash of two terminals on turn 3, but only if the other terminal doesn't draw. It makes a) his witch miss the reshuffle, b) your curse miss the reshuffle, c) his t4 buy miss the reshuffle. He has nothing to compensate for this whatsoever. If he plays the witch on t3, he may very well get to $3 anyway (fishing village & moneylender) and even if he doesn't (pearl diver & stables) he's much better of then he is now. Now he has a reshuffle containing a fishing village and a courtyard only, and to make it worse he has to draw two cards dead (which is what happened to his courtyard).
I would not even have played the courtyard turn 3 if I didn't have witch in hand (!).
After this the game is basicly over, unless some bizarre luck / bad luck hits either one of you, and it doesn't.
But to comment on the possibilities after turn 9...
You definately do not need to turn to buying silvers. In fact they would still be bad. (bad as in rather have nothing then silver). You still want to decrease the deck-cycle, to maximize use of your universities. I would probably even add courtyards over fishing villages on less-then-$5 turns. Your cities will draw enough cards soon to hit gold anyway, and platinum soon after. Being the only player that can get >1 card/turn, you're in complete control of the game.