John Metcalfe
John Metcalfe was CityLab’s Bay Area bureau chief, covering climate change and the science of cities.
Skilled mapmakers can help us plan better or understand complicated geographic stories. Or they can just make us giggle like schoolkids touching a poo with a stick, as Andy Woodruff and Tim Wallace have done with their fearlessly crass “Much Sass State.”
The duo spent years generating anagrams for towns and cities in Massachusetts and sorting through their favorites, and now have plotted them in entirety throughout the state. Woodruff, who made those fascinating maps of what really lies across the ocean, says he’s “not sure” what compelled them to stoop to this hilariously infantile level. “I guess it was just an amusing idea,” he says, adding, “I’ve never immaturely giggled so much while making a map.”
Place names range from the outright dirty—Bong Orgy Huts, Flailed Nip, Pooh Mutants, Busty Usher, Tit Sauce, Ass Wean, Dong Rebirth—to the extremely suggestive, like Teen Plow Flopper, Womanish Nut Tong, Thongs Out, Marrow Bunghole, Omega Nut, Dingle Reef, Lab Tooter, and Fousty Rubdown. There’s also a fair sprinkling of surreal, stream-of-consciousness entries, such as Rat Cud, E-Moron, Behold! Fork Intro, Violent Wolf Mill, Hobo Guts Hour, Moral Bro Hug, and Hm… Elf Scrod. (Note that for the sake of quality anagrams, they sometimes added “city of,” “town of,” and “state of.”)
The map in its fabulous fullness is available here; below is a section of the state bordering the Anal Cat Notice… er, Atlantic Ocean.