Shameless

That’s me.  Shameless.  But I am strongly compelled to illustrate the relevance of a rat’s ass to the importance of creative license.  Far be it for me to make a cake of myself, but with the havey-cavey business of getting published, wouldn’t it be better, indeed, to raise a breeze over the creative use of the hind quarters of a rodent? 

Sorry, I lost myself in 1814 London for a minute.  I have been researching Regency lexicon.  And even though “I don’t give a rat’s ass” isn’t on the list of those recorded for the links of history, I found some others that surely indicate a tendancy toward such expressions. 

For example.  There are more ways to describe drunkeness than I ever thought possible.  Was he just a bit drunk?  He was a trifle disguised.  Was the elbow-crooker moderately drunk?  He was foxed, or in his cups.  Maybe he’s been drinking all day.  That would make the slowtop ape-drunk.  

Let’s follow the drunkard as he wanders about London in 1814, shall we?

Now the bosky, jug-bitten, dicked-in the nob dudgeon was in the suds.  Although he was fair gutfounded and wishing for more ale to fill his pudding-house, he seemed all too ready to sport his canvas and ring a fine peal over someone.  If he wasn’t careful, he would land a facer and stumble into a mill. 

He found himself surrounded by Haymarket ware and decided to kick-up a lark with the light skirts.  Maybe some time with a bit o’ muslin was just was he needed to shake off his friday-face.  Society never would have known he was so shakingly loose in the haft as to be so tap-hackled and looking for trollops.  After all, he wasn’t a peep of day boy like his younger brother. 

 Just as he spotted a tempting armful, he started to feel like he had eaten a bit too much Hull cheese.  Feeling as queer as Dick’s fatband, he lunged for the gutter and cast up his accounts.  What a bacon-brained, properly shot in the neck rake he was.  More hair than wit, he gave up the gig and went looking for a hackney to take him home.  And he didn’t give a tinkers damn if his wife was waiting for him.

See what I mean?  A rat’s ass would have fit right in. 

Consider this a petition for creative license on behalf of writers everywhere.  Especially Amylynn.