Recently in the Maledicta Category

Kendra tells me that a piece of graffiti found on a wall in Pompeii translates to “Everybody writes on walls except me.”

Which led me to search for other ancient graffiti. It looks like a lot of Pompeii's graffiti was pornographic and/or scatological; a fascinating look at ancient life. See also more Pompeii graffiti and even more Pompeii graffiti.

My other favorite, besides the one Kendra quoted, is this:

O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin.

Also of possible interest: graffiti at Maes Howe, a chambered tomb in Scotland. “These runes were carved by the man most skilled in runes in the western ocean. . . .”

I turned on the radio during Talk of the Nation's Science Friday yesterday, in the middle of a segment about natural gas in water.

At one point (starting at 13:52 in the segment), the guest (Josh Fox, director of a documentary on the topic) said, fairly emphatically:

Chemicals in the fracking process are not supposed to be found in wells. [...] I happen to trust the citizens on the ground, who are saying, “Look, our water wasn't flammable before; they came and did a frack job; all of a sudden our water is flammable.”

And I thought, Wow, I had no idea that the term “frak” from Battlestar Galactica had gained such widespread acceptance. I heard it on Gilmore Girls once, but I don't think I've heard anyone else outside of sf circles say it; but here's a guy on the radio using it completely casually as a swear word, sounding like he says it all the time.

So I started to write this entry about it, but I had to go find the recording to get the quote right. And that was how I found out that the episode title was “New Film Investigates ‘Fracking’ For Natural Gas.”

Which made clear that I was misinterpreting something.

One quick web search later, I learned that hydraulic fracturing is a method of acquiring oil and natural gas, and that it's also known as “fracking.”

Which means that Fox wasn't swearing at all.

So instead of this being an entry about the use of a science fiction swear word in mainstream society, it's an entry about a word I hadn't previously known, and about the misinterpretations that can occur when you know a homophone for the word someone is actually saying.

Cursebird provides "a real-time feed of people swearing on Twitter."

It even shows a seven-day overview bar graph of the relative frequency of various common swear words.

Recently happened across the Wikipedia article on Spanish profanity. The little I've read of it so far seems to be useful and interesting.

See also the articles on Portuguese profanity, Quebec French profanity, and Latin profanity among others.

Just saw this headine:

Supreme Court Rules that Government Can Fine for 'Fleeting Expletives'

--Washington Post, April 28, 2009

Wouldn't "The Fleeting Expletives" be a good band name?

Just encountered a comment in an article on Britain's Got Talent that refers to "a dancer who was show[ing] her thrupennie bits to the world."

Thruppence, or the threepenny bit, was, of course, a British coin worth three pence.

And "thrupenny bits" turns out to be Cockney rhyming slang for "tits."