BUTTOCKS & PANTIES!! STICKS & STONES!!

Forced to make an interminable bus ride to the very edge of the continent today. Not absolutely interminable, but over an hour each way. Having read the 75¢ fish-wrapper from first page to last (twice) on the way to the edge, in order to keep ourself distracted enough that we didn't murder any of the other bus-bound dregs of humanity, we grabbed the free weekly "alternative" dog-trainer, wherein we found this gem:

Harlequin, the oldest of the romance houses, won’t commit to gay romances on paper, but just last month it welcomed LGBT submissions to its digital-publishing line. From a house that doesn’t allow its writers to use the words "buttocks" or "panties" because it might offend Christian readers, this is nothing short of revolutionary.

Interesting note: In the print edition, the words BUTTOCKS & PANTIES are italicized. But the "to" that should be before "use" is omitted in print as well.

Anyway, we found it rather amusing, especially in light of this quote from "Going Rogue":

“In our teen years, if we stayed awake long enough, we’d sneak upstairs and watch Saturday Night Live. Having grown up in a house where ‘butt’ was a bad word and we had to say ‘bottom,’ we assumed we had to sneak. It wasn’t until years later that we learned our parents got a kick out of SNL’s political humor, too.”

There is no hope. Anywhere.