If a dirtball, a sleazeball, a greaseball, a screwball, and a goofball play dodgeball with fireballs on a basketball court during baseball season, whose nuts will catch on fire first?

I can say two things in Swedish: “googoo gaga” and “shitboot.”

Rohypnol is known as the “date rape drug.” I’m no pharmacist, but I wonder if any other crimes have their own drug. If I walked into Walgreen’s or the right neighborhood, could I find the “steal-a-candy-bar drug,” the “insider-trading drug,” the “flamethrower-massacre drug,” the “toss-your-baby-in-the-trash drug” or the “mace-your-teacher drug”? Not that I’m planning any crimes, but I’d probably be tempted by the “drop-a-boulder-on-your-relatives drug,” as long as it was minty.

While trying to say “carpal tunnel syndrome,” my mother said something like “carnal tunnelvision syndrome,” which sounds a bit like nymphomania and just goes to show that if verbal ineptitude were the only prerequisite for the presidency, I’d be the First Son right now.

Unfortunate names I noticed in the graveyard:

Wurst

Failing

Hickey

Butts

Butman

Bingeman

Dickman

Sniffin

Here’s an intriguing offer I once heard in Cambridge from a panhandler with a brick: “For one dollar, you can hit me with this brick.”

I once saw a sign that said, “The brightest bacon for freedom.” Then I looked again and realized it said, “The brightest beacon for freedom.” This mistake inspired some unhealthy breakfast choices, along with these beacon-free book titles that can’t be found at Amazon.com: The Distant Bacon, Bacon of Hope: A Guide to Internal Truth, Bacon Street Girls: Worst Enemies/Best Friends, The Bacon at Alexandria, and The Ascended Masters Light the Way: Bacons of Ascension.

Would a pimp in the Popemobile or the pope in a pimpmobile feel more at home?

While discussing a friend’s wife — and by discussing I mean “venomously condemning” — I briefly tried to be diplomatic about my feelings, but what I ended up saying was that I’d like to “put her in a sack.” I hastily added that I’d like the sack to be on a nice, safe airplane headed to a clean, peaceful country, but that little disclaimer didn’t do much to disguise the implications. Once you’ve advocated for the put-her-in-a-sack method of conflict resolution, there just isn’t much room for interpretation.

How many John Donne poems rhyme “corpus collosum” with “ruptured scrotum”?

I thought there couldn’t be a worse euphemism for genocide than “ethnic cleansing,” but I’ve been proven horribly wrong by the term “humanitarian situation.”

In The Passion of the Christ, they beat the crap out of Jesus, and they beat the shit out of Jesus, and they beat the snot out of Jesus, and they beat the fuck out of Jesus, and they beat the stuffing out of Jesus, and they beat the ugly out of Jesus, and they beat the living daylights out of Jesus, and they beat the holy hell out of Jesus, but did they beat the bejeezus out of Jesus?

The words of the week:

10) Robo-lobster

9) Yutz

8) Giddy

7) Squeegee

6) Ape-poopy

5) Mama-yama

4) Absoschmuckinglutely

3) Biblical

2) Jackassitude

1) Spokes-fembot

The evilest sentence in the language: “Good luck to you in your future endeavors.”

Wordluster Mark Peters wants to hear your thoughts, jokes, and questions about language, including favorite words, memorable goofs, trenchant observations, and other word-ish material. Email him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. By Mark Peters

Best typo I’ve seen in awhile: “at your desecration” instead of “at your discretion.” Kind of a perfect mix of polite and satanic.

There’s no more reliable source for absurdity than headlines, where we can always find useful information, such as “Barry Manilow hits wall, breaks nose,” “U.S. firm clones pets,” and “First Lady frowns on daughter sticking out tongue.” Still, a new standard was set with the recent headlines about how Saddam Hussein is spending his time in prison. These have included: “Saddam turns to poetry,” “Imprisoned Saddam writes poems and tends a garden,” “Saddam enjoys poems, muffins,” “Saddam snacking and writing poetry about Bush,” and “Saddam spends time gardening, eating muffins.” While we’re waiting for Saddam’s “Ode to Bush” to appear, I guess we can find some consolation in the fact that, though weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida have not been plausibly linked to the tyrant, poetry, gardening, and muffins have.