Dickhead

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:35 AM -0400 9/23/03, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
>In passing, can I just ask that in situations like this we spell
>out the words in question? We're all adults here, and I think we
>can all handle seeing "motherfucker" spelled in full. But if I
>need to search the archives, I don't want to have to try to
>concoct every typographically euphemized variant of an offensive
>word.


Not to speak for others, but at one point even I was driven to spell
perfectly good words like "motherfucker" with an asterisk.  It was
during an interval when I had to borrow a computer whose installed
version of Eudora (5.something, I think) insisted on asking me every
time I typed what it considered an off-color word whether I wanted my
keyboard washed out with soap.  In the end, I just put in the
asterisks (or used deliberate misspellings that I elaborated in my
ads-l postings--of course I don't send such messages to anyone
else!).  Now I'm back to my good old first-amendment-respecting
Eudora 4.3.2.  Some of the "motherf*ckin" offenders (or
non-offenders) on the list may just be afflicted with one of the
Ashcroftian versions of Eudora.

Larry