On Pots, Punctuation

{Compound Modifiers and Other Adventures in Instagram}













Best hate-comment on Instagram so far, regarding a picture I took of my high-fire pots:

UGLY ASS POTS

Whither the hyphen, pray tell? Objectionable taste aside (we can't expect everyone to love high-fire stoneware glazes now can we), this really brings up a helpful question about punctuation. Specifically, compound modifiers. It's the old man-eating shark (macabre!) vs. man eating shark (call those crazy bastards at the Sea Shepherd!) conundrum.

Let us consider: were these ugly-ass pots that offended the aesthetics of this citizen, or ugly ass-pots?

Option A: Ugly-ass (or anything-ass: dumb-ass, beautiful-ass, etc.), is one of my favorite modifiers. I like to employ it in critique in grad school sometimes, as in, relational-ass aesthetics. And who didn't at some point think the Dylan song went Lay, lady, lay, lay across my BIG-ASS bed? In this case our friend is making a subjective judgement: these pots are damn ugly.

Option B: Ass-pots, well, I've never heard of them, but an ass-pot sounds like a crude epithet for the john. Gonna go hit the ass-pot before the meeting. In this case our friend is comparing the ceramic pots to, well, a potty, which I'll take as a compliment that my throwing skillz are so wicked my crude stoneware looks like flawless vitreous porcelain.

Sigh. I guess we'll never know.

Have a wonderful-ass week. Or, if you're feeling frisky, a wonderful ass-week. Pictures above all from my Instagram feed, which seems to have sprouted legs and r-u-n-n-o-f-t thanks to some insane roundabout internet luck/curse. If you have a smartphone you can say hi @LilyStockman and if not, you can catch the malarkey here (hint: to see ugly ass pots and other comments, click on "list" and then click on the wee Instagram logo at the bottom right of each pic).