Butting Heads

I have just uploaded to Kindle Direct the latest doggerel (about butts and heads) that I've been posting on Facebook in recent months. It will be available later today on Amazon for $2.99. What a deal! Here's the Foreword to that deathless volume:

Foreword

Fundament: noun

1.the buttocks.

2. the anus.

3. a base or basic principle; underlying part; foundation.

So says dictionary.com—just in case you’ve never realized that fundamental has a whole different meaning from the one you always thought it did (i.e., basic or foundational). Actually, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that fundamental (unlike fundament) almost always refers to underlying principles and the like. It’s only in the OED’s seventh definition that we find this:

 7. jocularly. Of or pertaining to the fundament or “seat,” posterior.

So, it’s only in a jocular way that fundamental has anything to do with … you know? … butts.

Jocular—characterized by joking, says the American Heritage Dictionary. Like doggerel.

A few months ago I got the idea to write a doggerel series about all the euphemisms and other expressions we use for our … fundaments. (I kept the thing PG, maybe a tiny bit PG-13, because my mother is still alive at 95, and although she is no longer on the Internet, I just knew that she would find out I had written—published!—some naughty words. It just ain’t worth it. Believe me.)

Anyway, I posted an installment each day on Facebook, and when I finished the series (without, of course, exhausting the subject; only my readers were exhausted), I thought about other slang synonyms we use for the human head. There are quite a few, though not nearly so many as for fundament. (Which is interesting in itself, isn’t it? Are there more asses than brains in the world?) So I launched another doggerel series about words for our heads. Until, once again, Reader Weariness arrived, armed and ready, so I quickly capitulated (if you didn’t take Latin, look up capitulate for a little sly surprise about its origins).

As I think about it now, I could have proceeded with a series about expressions that combine the two: butthead, assface, and the like. But there aren’t a lot of PG ones, you know? And my mom …?

Anyway, the title of this collection—Butting Heads. Clever, eh? (Butt. Heads. Get it? My mother would be proud ... wouldn’t she?) By the way, I cut out one piece that failed to rise to my abyssal standards.

I’ve included some other verse I wrote now and then and also posted on Facebook. So there’s quite a little collection here that displays all sorts of things, most of them worrisome.

PS—Please don’t tell my mom.

Daniel Dyer

May 12, 2015