February 21, 2019
A few days ago, this full-page magazine display made the rounds of Facebook:
(#1) Deriding the “Libtard Agenda” while imitating the Johnson Smith Co.’s ads for novelty items in the back pages of comic books and other publications aimed at children
The first copies I saw didn’t identify the creator or the publication the page came from, and there was some question whether it was (as George V. Reilly, invoking Poe’s Law, put it) “a right-wing parody of progressive views, or a left-wing parody of right-wing opinions of progressive views”. Parody, certainly, but from what viewpoint?
So in its form it’s a parody of a genre of advertising hucksterism. And then in its specific content it’s a parody of a style of political talk (either mocking what’s framed as a preoccuption with kale, gun control, facts, and the like, or mocking those who engage in such mockery(.
Much has now become clear. To start with, the copy of the page in #1 identifies the creator as Mary Trainor, and that provides enough context to eventually sort things out.
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Posted in Clipping, Compounds, Gender and sexuality, Language and poitics, Language in advertising, Language play, Libfixes, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Parody, Penguins, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
February 20, 2019
(This posting will go lots of places, some of which — a Greek military re-enactors’ group in Melbourne — you’ll find astonishing, but there’s no denying that, as the title suggests, it’s penis-dense. Without actually depicting them — those images are in my posting this morning on AZBlogX, “Gay Heart Throbs” — but still. However, without penises strewn along the road every few feet, there’s no getting to the fun stuff (like allusions to Miss Anne Elk and to Sonnets from the Portuguese). So use your judgment.)
Phallophilia I: self-regard. A recent Daily Jocks ad (for Kasper Military shorts from the Helsinki Athletica company) showing a hunky model gazing fixedly down at his bulging crotch, with a title and a caption supplied by me:
(#1) On contemplating his penis
Could I just say here for one moment that
I have a new theory about the penis?
Yes, well you may well ask, what is my theory.
And well you may. Yes my word you may well
Ask what it is, this theory of mine.
Well, this theory that I have — which is mine —
This theory which belongs to me is as follows.
Ahem. Ahem. This is how it goes.
Ahem. The next thing that I am about to say
Is my theory. Ahem. Ready?
My theory is along the following lines.
All penises are round at one end,
Tubular in the middle, and then
Anchored in hair at the far end.
That is the theory that I have
And which is mine, and
What it is too.
— excerpts from an interview with noted penis scholar Gay H. Throbs, DPhS. (Doctor of Phallological Science)
On the nose, GHT!
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Posted in Captions, Gay porn, Gaze, Gender and sexuality, Language in advertising, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Names, Parody, Phallicity, Poetry, Pseudonyms, Resources, Signs and symbols, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
February 19, 2019
That, at least, is where it started, with this bit of playfulness on Facebook:
(#1)
One among a great many available versions of Wading for Godot (like this one, hardly any have an identifiable origin, but just get passed around on the web, along with jokes, funny pictures, and the like: the folk culture of the net). I’m particularly taken with #1, as a well-made image and as a close reworking of lines from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot:
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Posted in Formulaic language, Language and medicine, Language and religion, Language and the body, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Parodies, Phonetics, Phonology, Puns, Snowclones | 1 Comment »
February 18, 2019
As furors break out here and there over same-sex kisses in the media (especially in ads) and also in real life (in public places) — disgusting! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! get that out of my sight! — I move to celebrate them. Especially men kissing men, an act that enrages a fair number of people, apparently because they have been conditioned to view it as the functional equivalent of two sweaty naked men fucking. I view it as the functional equivalent of a man and woman kissing: an act of romantic connection with a spicy tang of sexual attraction (but no more)
And so I come to two recent British films viewed on Netflix: The Pass (Russell Tovey and Arinzé Kene as footballers) and God’s Own Country (Josh O’Connor and Alec Secăreanu as Yorkshire sheep farmers). Both are fraught love stories set in intensely masculine working-class social worlds. With wonderful performances. And man-on-man kissing, both touching and moving.
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Posted in Actors, Gender and sexuality, Language and race, Language of sex, Movies and tv, Race and ethnicity | 1 Comment »
February 18, 2019
Two from the 2/18&25/19 New Yorker — a Seth Fleishman (wordless) and a Lars Kenseth (a captioned meta-cartoon) — plus a vintage Gary Larson (considered both without caption and with).
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Posted in Comic conventions, Formulaic language, Linguistics in the comics, Panda postings, Puns, Understanding comics | 2 Comments »
February 17, 2019
Yesterday’s Wayno & Piraro Bizarro:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
A play on desserts (on the menu) vs. the deserts of just deserts. Plus a small cascade of idioms on oral humiliations. With a nod to the nasty rough edges of the verb eat (and, while we’re on the subject, suck). (Eventually, this will lead to some very plain-language talk — not for kids or the sexually modest — about some social and sexual practices among gay men. I’ll warn you when the topic is imminent.)
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Posted in Ambiguity, Figurative language, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Idioms, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Parody, Puns | Leave a Comment »
February 16, 2019
A bit of personal and intellectual history, having to do with the fact that there was a period of years when on the Friday before Presidents Day my husband-equivalent Jacques Transue and I would drive from Palo Alto to Berkeley for the annual meeting of the BLS, the Berkeley Linguistics Society, then held in Dwinelle Hall at UCB over the three-day weekend. (It has since moved its dates to less crowded times during winter quarter.)
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Posted in Academic life, Death notices, Linguistic theory, Morphology, My life, Phonology, Psycholinguistics, Syntax | 1 Comment »
February 16, 2019
My paper from Berkeley Linguistics Society 15.303-20 (1989), which somehow escaped scanning for my Stanford website. So here it is…
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Posted in Linguistic theory, Syntax | Leave a Comment »
February 15, 2019
So a Coach ad today exhorts us:
(#1) “Be more Michael B. Jordan. Start with the look.”
Oh, honey, I wish I could, but there’s just no chance. Put aside the race thing, I’m never going to be an icon of masculinity, with that face, that body, and that manner.
And I couldn’t pull off the
Colorblock Shearling Jacket in Burnt Sienna
that Coach is selling (for a cool, or possibly very hot, $2200). MBJ can easily rise above its magnificent fagginess — the purple block is a nice finishing touch — and there are gay men who could flaunt that fagginess defiantly, but I’m not up to either of these presentations.
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Posted in Clothing, Fashion, Homosexuality, Masculinity, Movies and tv | Leave a Comment »
February 15, 2019
A regular topic on this blog and AZBlogX, combining a semi-professional interest in facial expression with one in the creation and presentation of personas (using gay porn as an arena of study). And there’s holiday — Valentine’s Day — interest as well. Despite the topic, this posting is nowhere near as raunchy as you might have imagined — no street language — but there’s no denying that there’s a whole lot here about men’s bodies and mansex, so it’s probably not for kids or the sexually modest.
This posting is a version of a posting today on AZBlog X (“Sweetly Blissful VDay Muscle Daddy”), with naughty bits cropped from the images; they’re central to the gay porn, but not particularly relevant to my interests here.
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Posted in Facial expressions, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and the body | Leave a Comment »
