Take something like @#$%&?!!!, the string of symbols conventionally used in comic strips to denote unprintable (not to mention unutterable) obscenities. There's a word for that, you know -- more than one, in fact. In 2006, for example, Language Log contributor Benjamin Zimmer coined the word obscenicon. Me, I don't like it; it's a little too... Cybertronic. But there's prior art. Back in 1964, Mort Walker came up with some words of his own, words we're liable to be stuck with, if word finally gets around: grawlixes, jarns, and quimps, half-serious coinages for a tongue-in-cheek cartoonists' glossary in his book The Lexicon of Comicana.

Half-satisfying, too. Grawlix sounds like the name of an alternative operating system, or something you give to your dog so he won't eat your shoes. Jarn was a member of the Sugarcubes, and quimp is vaguely evocative of the dated jargon of mid-century sci-fi kitsch, like tribble or equality. They just don't work, and so I propose, with equal parts pride and humility: fucktuation.

Lawrence Lessig, of all people, provides an example while responding to outrage over the FISA Amendments Act of 2008:

The hysteria that has broken out among we on the left in response to Obama's voting for the FISA compromise was totally predictable... [P]lease, fellow liberals, or leftists, or progressives, get off your high horse(s)... [T]o start this chant of "principled rejection" of Obama because he is not as pure as we is, in a word, idiotic (read: Naderesque).

Lessig is so intent on shutting down criticism of Obama that he willfully obscures the seriousness of the issue and turns it into a matter of liberal/left infighting. But the audacity of progressives seeking a progressive government is a strawman. What matters is that the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 is a bad law that further empowers a criminal executive branch. This is a law that dilutes the already limited judicial oversight provided by the FISA courts, effectively providing sanction for the Bush administration to continue its heretofore illegal domestic surveillance; telco immunity and Obama's notional move to the center are secondary issues.

Meanwhile, the law's being framed by its supporters as a necessary compromise between the two parties, and, as you know, compromise is one of the watchwords in Obama's new, mature politics. But the only compromise in this case is that the Bush administration gets everything that it wants when it hardly has the clout to make demands, and the Democratic party gets to avoid the usual charges of weakness that it lacks the will to refute -- and that is precisely the old politics which we all hope to overcome.

1. Later, of course, he made a movie. ↩

Our proposed statute would provide that the president must consult with Congress before ordering a “significant armed conflict”… To guarantee that the president consults with a cross section of Congress, the act would create a joint Congressional committee made up of the leaders of the House and the Senate as well as the chairmen and ranking members of key committees… Congress would have obligations, too. Unless it declared war or otherwise expressly authorized a conflict, it would have to vote within 30 days on a resolution of approval. If the resolution of approval was defeated in either House, any member of Congress could propose a resolution of disapproval.

Checks and balances — the answer to our problems had been right in front of us all along! We at the U.S. field office of SNF Labs were immediately sold on the idea, but we realized that the problem with this proposal was that it was too late; we were already five years into the disastrous war in Iraq. So we crawled into our homemade time machine — which, ever since Chris learned to play pool, had been lying unused in a nondescript public storage facility out in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas — and set the dial to early 2003. To get this bill passed into law, we went to work using the only means we knew: Internet petitions and electronic form letters to our representatives. This, of course, was a tremendous success, and the War Powers Consultation Act of 2003 has been the law of the land since, oh, February or March 2003.

I can only assume that we’ve returned to an unrecognizably different 2008. You’re welcome!

1. Of course, I mean “today”. ↩

I made a new gizmo for SNF called 15 Ways. I hope you like it.

You'll have to use a Mozilla-based browser like Firefox for everything to work. This is unfortunate but necessary, because it's heavy on the Javascript, and I'm not Google. Big thanks to pusgums for testing and helpful suggestions.

america is on fire. america needs an ice cold one, america needs a slice of watermelon, america needs a skinny-dip in the pond with a few of its friends. life is too short to be lonely, america!

we are young despite the years
we are concerned
we are hope despite the times

all of the sudden, these days
happy throngs, take this joy
wherever,wherever you go.

In the case of STD-ster, though, the perverse satisfaction of watching the author's face emote its way from Mild Disgust to Dawning Realization and finally on to Abject Terror is a worthwhile payoff, evoking as it does a nostalgia for the sexual dread of the 1980s, something unknown to today's youth, who are on the one hand Christ-addled Promise Keepers and on the other hand unsentimental, mercenary blow job partygoers. Dig further into this web page, like an archaeologist of bygone hang-ups, and note too the STD-ster's curious garment, its resemblance to turn-of-the-century swimwear suggesting an outmoded and at this point moot sexual propriety, and finally, take care not to miss the implied fear of miscegenation by proxy.

This wasn't nearly a thousand words, but I hope you get my drift anyway.

"Working at his desk in the Oval Office, President Bush reviews the State of the Union address line-by-line and word-by-word."