Grawlix

During some idle moment — I don’t remember when or where specifically, though it was in the past month somewhere in Seattle — I felt I needed some cyberspace for showing off my explorations in making stuff, and where better than on Bleepware? But what should I call it? “Blog” was blah, and “Blahg” was taken. (Also: Not going to spend sixty bucks on it.)

I had previously thought “workshop”, but I liked “atelier” more — more sonorous, more in keeping with my conceit1 — but probably too fucking pretentious.

Fuck, I thought. Surely there’s something better? How did I come up with Bleepware in the first place? I’m keen on awesome sh—

So what is the word for that punctuation profanity that would litter comics and text of yore? Through a series of a Bing searches, I stumbled upon this note and read the wikipedia entry on Mort Walker’s The Lexicon of Comicana:

grawlixes: typographical symbols standing for profanities, appearing in dialogue balloons in place of actual dialogue

Fuckin’ A, man. Although what’s on the cover

isn’t consistent with the book contents itself:

!?