See this? It’s a jockstrap font. It reminds me of when my best friend and I got in trouble junior year for doodling condom designs in our government notebooks.

Can this be real?

From today’s Publisher’s Lunch:

As has been expected, Carol Ann Duffy was named the UK’s poet laureate, the first woman to hold the position in 341 years. Along with a small stipend, the honor comes with a “butt of sack” — 600 bottles of sherry to stoke the muse — which the Guardian says she asked for upfront after hearing the previous laureate Andrew Motion never received his due.

Thank goodness for British English, which gives us these treasures of language from time to time. A butt of sack is a wooden cask for storing wine and will hold about 126 gallons of such beverage. Shakespeare uses the term in The Tempest, wherein the shipwrecked Stephano explains his means of survival:

I escaped upon a butt of sack, which the sailors heaved overboard…(Act II, Scene II)

I think I may have a butt of sack of my own in out in the living room. It’s a wooden box with Portuguese wine branding, nailed shut, big enough for about 8 bottles. I keep my plants on it.

And that closes out today’s butt of sack post. Unless the 7-year-old boy in me wants to say “butt of sack” once more….why yes, he does. Butt of sack. I think it’s my new funniest word, supplanting “crapbag.”

You’ve got to admire the Japanese for their committment to keeping a clean undercarriage. Even public bathrooms and fast food restaurants have a shiny, automatic toilet equipped with a multi-function bidet. I tend to think of the bidet as a sort of nifty relic you’d find in a really old house, not a high-tech gadget you find in a high-tech country. Maybe your granny has one in her bathroom and keeps it covered with a crocheted potty cozy.
But this-
-this is a NASA potty.

knit himself a lip sweater

Satan in a Sunday hat

or I will CUT a bitch

Well, shit the bed!

Don’t give me that puckered-anus-face of yours.

a metric fuck ton

“…exercising during pregnancy (mothers who work out tend to have bigger babies who grow up smarter, possibly because of greater brain size).”

There are all kinds of trade-offs here. Bigger brain means bigger head means crotch-rippers. No exercise means fat mama means tiny, harmless head means stupid baby. So do you want intact ladybits or a smart baby?

I say get the pinhead out safely and then educate the hell out of it.

Schmutzie, one of my Heroes of the Blog Faith, has instituted Grace in Small Things, whereby grumpy, pessimistic people strive to be more than the sum of their snarky blog posts. While I do enjoy grouching about here and elsewhere, it is an excellent way to stfu and write about nice things in a way that avoids cloying bonhomie.

I often forget that my religious tendencies include frequent mention of grace, in addition to the fatalism with which I most identify. Plus, Assers has been on my case to do something Lenten. I’m unlikely to give up or acquire anything for 40 consecutive days, but I can try to take on a healthy practice or two for bits of the duration.

I give you Grace in Small Things, part I

1. “Look for Me As You Go By,” from Befriended by the Innocence Mission. Just dug up this album last week and forgot this beautiful song existed.

2. Jersey shore fudge. Ran down to Cape May yesterday to look at rentals and got summmmme.

3. Bento boxes. I’ve had one weekly for the last few weeks.

4. Thor. My high school bestie just gave birth to her first son, and like it or not, that’s the wee boy’s name. I hope he grows up brave and strong enough to wield a hammer of his own.

5. The Saxon Stories. Talking of Norsemen, I love British history, and Bernard Cornwell, and men with swords, and tore through this trilogy like an ax through a shield-Dane.

…CORNIFY it! Click the button below.

Here is what you can expect from me in the xmas gift department:

C’mon, who doesn’t love a felt vag?