You can swear by the cusses in this dirty old town

God knows it’s tough being a writer on a hit TV show, always searching for le mot juste -- the precise word that enhances a dramatic situation and moves the action along.

In the case of HBO’s “Deadwood,” that word would appear to be an unprintable one, a common synonym for copulation. Jeff Kay, webmaster of the witty and folksy West Virginia Surf Report, knows exactly how many occurrences of the word have been on the show. He’s been tracking them and dedicating a page on his website (thewvsr.com/deadwood.htm) to his running tally.

“I knew in advance that the show would contain a lot of salty language....When a TV critic said that no one would be able to count the obscenities I took it as a personal challenge,” Kay says.

He says that the numbers are updated on the site 10 minutes after each episode. The stats so far? Total (we’ll call them) “wombats” in series: 1,602; cumulative series wombats per minute: 1.46; total wombats in Season Two: 771; average wombats per episode: 96.4; cumulative Season Two wombats per minute: 2.10.

David Milch, the creator, executive producer and head writer of the show, is dismissive. “It doesn’t advance the conversation,” he says. “We spend time developing the lexicon of that time and trying to be true to the sense of reality of that world. This makes as much sense as counting up the definite articles in the dialogue.”

Kay insists he’s just doing it for fun; he loves the show. But his count has been grist for less friendly media watchdogs. Kay’s “Deadwood” page appeared on the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh referred to it on air, and conservative bloggers have responded with comments like: “HBO is becoming an open sewer unfit for anyone with a trace of morality and decency.”

Kay, unfazed, plans to continue.

“I expected traffic to slow down when the Drudge link was removed, but it hasn’t. It just keeps continuing. We’ve fashioned ourselves a nice little community of ridiculousness.”