Dirty!

I'm not a profane person by birth. I swear. But I can't help the knowledge of profanity and dirty information that is thrust upon me. I blame the internets.

Because of this fact, I can't help but burst out laughing when I visit the webpage to a very popular performing arts organization here in the District of Columbia. On part of the page, you see the image on the right here.

There's the always smiling YoYo Ma, cradling his $475 billion cello in his hands. Next to him stands a woman of Indian heritage in what I'm sure is a perfectly acceptable and interesting dance pose.

So why burst out laughing? YoYo Ma isn't funny - even though at one point he did stand up comedy to pay for cello lessons in Brooklyn, a fact you may not be aware of because I just made it up.

It's that pose. I'd seen it before.

LORD ALMIGHTY! It's "The Shocker"!

For those of you that don't use the internets for pure filth, the shocker is a hand gesture that is representative of an ... interesting sexual act. Most people don't know what it means.

Hanover High School administrators didn't either, until it showed up in umpteen photos in the yearbook, and one brave faculty member (who no doubt loves his internets) let everyone in on the big secret:

It is a gesture meant to indicate a sexual act, wherein the first and second fingers enter a vagina, while the errant pinky plunges into the anus; hence the "shock". The gesture, the province of minds quite filthy in nature, has taken on other, more explicit names: "Two in the pink and one in the stink", "two in the coot and one in the boot", "going to town with one in the brown".

Yes, quite rude, quite crude... but a minimal impact, considering its relative obscurity and difficult explanation. You can imagine Cokefair's eyes tearing up with anger as he flipped through the photographs; smiling faces, blushing with youth and vitality, innocently holding up a signal representing digital sodomy and sexual manipulation. The despair in the room, the struggle to decide what to do, must have been palpable.

And here's our favorite performer staring out from the homepage - and, I might add, the cover of their four-color mailed brochure - advocating rump fingering in her own unknowing way. First I thought it was a very sneaky way of using sex to sell the performing arts, but now my money's on the designers and marketing folks there being some of the many still in the dark.

They'll be using that picture in advertisements all year; how long I should wait before I call someone over there and spill the beans? I'm thinking February.