Okay, so last night, I stared at a double magnum of Château Lafite Rothschild 1874 that apparently costs $35,000. I was afraid to move lest I break anything and have to take out a loan.

OK, this:

Under President Bush, the F.C.C. has expanded its indecency rules, taking a much harder line on obscenities uttered on broadcast television and radio.

is what makes this especially funny:

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language.

...

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

Heh. Also, this maybe should go without saying, but Bush and Cheney can go fuck themselves.

[link]

I want to read this a LOT.

Me too.

For my last birthday, my sister got me a reprint of the first cookbook written and published in the US. (Original from 1790-something, reprint from 1960-something.) It includes a recipe for "calf's head prepared turtle-style."

She got it from some store in Greenwich Village or Chelsea (forgot exactly where) that specializes in old cookbooks. I keep meaning to ask her exactly where the store is, but I fear for my paycheck if I found it.

So. Unmotivated. If anyone is about, please to come by so we can slope off and eat Locopops.

an angry obscene version of "get lost"

In the annals of Avoiding The Swear Word Unnecessarily Obfuscates The Elocution, this is up there with that time somebody was paraphrased to the effect that the Yankees "inhale excessively" (i.e., they suck).

Get fucking lost!
Get fucked!
Fuck lost!

...see? "Go fuck yourself" is nothing like "get lost" in phrasing or syntactic complexity. It would be hard for me to guess "go fuck yourself" from "get lost." Hmm, now I am wondering what the right non-obfuscatory non-curse phrase would be.

an angry obscene version of "go commit the sin of Onan!"

No, that's not quite right. I presume that "screw" and similar not-quite-curse words are similarly disallowed.

Now I'm wondering if the original title of Chet Baker's "Let's Get Lost" was "Let's Go Fuck Ourselves."

It would be hard for me to guess "go fuck yourself" from "get lost."

If it helps, what Cheney said was "Fuck off."

Oh, right.

Upon googling, "Go fuck yourself" was what a protester yelled at Cheney. Maybe my brain was confusing/conflating the two.

I love old cookbooks. I have too many cookbooks, just as I have too many of almost any type of book. I have a small paperback cookbook from the 1890s that was my great grandmother's. It was a promotional item for a store in Waukesha, Wisc., and I keep thinking I should scan it or transcribe it.

IIRC, he didn't do either. He just brought them out to the dumpsters to emphasize how much food had been thrown away the night before because of their incompetence.

That's good to know. I guess I jumped too quickly. Maybe I'll check it out again.