"In America, you  are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms."

Likely rooted in the  "quiet revolution" of the 1960s (remember that?  it wasn't just political)

religious words (and truncated variations) became swear words too strong to use in public.

So French-speaking Canada swears with words like

tabernacle,

host

baptism

and yes,

sacred blue

Quote from:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120401286.html

see also the wikipedia article about Quebec profanity.

Sacred Blue

That's what Sacre Bleu (the title of the book I wrote about yesterday) means.

The term refers to a certain (very expensive) colour of blue that was only to be used in art for the Virgin Mary's cloak, thus "sacred" blue.

The Virgin of the Annunciation by Fra Angelico, 1432
fresco, Friary of San Marco, Florence, Italy

"Very early in my research, great bits of history had to go by the wayside so I'd have room to make stuff up."

from Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore

This book took a while to read because I kept stopping to look things up.  I learned a lot about the French Impressionist Painters.

So, Is it Chocolate Then, or Not?

Yeah, I know it's a Swedish word, but it's still funny

Spelling Mistakes in Public Places

The number one location to observe spelling mistakes is your local supermarket.
The second location, sadly,  is your local school.
In their defense, they produce massive amounts of written material, and something is bound to slip through, but spell check should have caught this one.

Spelling Mistakes in Public Places

Supermarkets are the biggest winners in the bad spelling competition out there.
And not just homonym mistakes like this one
we also get carrets and marshmellows and glorious cake spelling errors


http://www.buzzfeed.com/hunterschwarz/why-its-hard-being-a-grammar-nazi

Life is a Series of Accidents

"I was a victim of a series of accidents...as are we all."

"look forward to behaving aristocratically without any outward proof of aristocracy.  Look forward to having nothing but the dignity and intelligence that God gave you--look forward to taking those materials and nothing else and making something exquisite with them."

from The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

when I read this in high school my mom freaked out because of the 3 women on the front cover.  When I finished the book I understood they were statues in the story....*7%@ marketers.