"weapons-grade" -- another figurative use, plus "heart"

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:11 AM -0600 1/18/02, Erin McKean wrote:
>The Chicago Tribune had as a headline in the Tempo section on
>Wednesday the phrase "weapons-grade charisma" (in a story about Elvis
>impersonators).
>
>I've also finally seen in print (as opposed to Internet postings) the
>use of the word "heart" (or sometimes <heart>) to stand for the heart
>symbol (as in "I heart NY"). The use was in a Jane mag advertorial
>and was something like "I heart these jeans!"
>
>I've also seen "<butt>" used in place of "heart," I think to signify
>desire (often facetious) rather than love. "I <butt> Russell Crowe"
>would be a typical use.
>
Maybe it's just me, but another possible interpretation of the <butt>
relation (especially with Russell Crowe as object) is that it's the
antonym (rather than southerly intensifier) of <heart>.  Of course,
in a graphic representation, this could be alternately and
unambiguously indicated by the appearance of a heart with a slash
through it, but that's kind of hard to represent non-graphically.

larry