From the Economist‘s 8/17/19 issue, in the Science & Technology section, under “Animal behaviour”: “Leopard seals share their suppers: Bad news if you are a penguin” on-line; “P-P-Pick up a penguin: Antarctic predators share their supper” in print (with a headline bow to McVitie’s biscuits):
Sharing your penguin
October 15, 2019Space Candy
October 14, 2019(Highly sexualized men’s underwear, leading to blunt talk of men’s bodies and mansex. Lots of other content, but this is enough to put it out of bounds for kids and the sexually modest.)
Today’s Daily Jocks ad, for a new line of underwear for the PUMP! company — the image is meant to be outrageous, fey, macho, and funny, all at once — with their ad copy:
(#1) The all new Space Candy Collection from PUMP! has launched. A new take on PUMP’s classic shape, available in Space Candy Pink & Purple. [available as a boxer (boxer brief), (low-rise) brief, and jock]
An image crammed with content — incuding those little candy-themed patches on the front (on the hip or pouch) and the back (on one cheek) of the garments.
Unaccompanied
October 13, 2019This touching Sara Lautman pun cartoon from the 10/14 New Yorker:
(#1) “You know, sooner or later we’re going to have to let her go out unaccompanied.”
It all depends on what you mean by unaccompanied.
Butch fagginess, take 3
October 12, 2019(Underwear models performing displays of their bodies as sexual objects and, through their attire, stance, and facial expression, projecting personas. So: definitely carnal, but not down and dirty — mostly reflections on styles of masculiity and styles of male homosexuality — but not to everyone’s taste.)
The Daily Jocks ad from the 9th is another in a series of DJX Varsity mesh offers featuring a forbiddingly / seductively hyper-masculine character I’ll call the MeshMaster, from the tough-top persona the character projects. But this time the MeshMaster has accessorized with a bit of high-gay fashion, a neon pink harness under his black mesh crop top:
(#1) Macho on the outside; on the inside, behind the black mesh curtain, flamboyance — which he secretly treasures (his right hand, inside, pointing to the harness, is the visual center of the composition)
Yet another chapter in what I’ve called butch fagginess, sending mixed messages: simultaneously high-macho and flagrantly gay.
The verb of the American moment
October 12, 2019The verb is depose — actually two homophonous verbs, with very different senses (though they share a history). Currently in the US news in one sense because of Helmet Grabpussy’s shrieks that movements towards impeaching him are attempts at a coup, attempts to overthrow him, depose him from office; and in another sense because House committees have been summoning witnesses to give sworn testimony, to be deposed formally.
The existential question
October 11, 2019In today’s Zippy strip, Zerbina and Zippy contemplate their existence — ever an issue for self-aware cartoon characters:
(#1)
How do we know we exist? And if this perilous sort of existence, created in the mind and (literally) at the hands of an artist, fails to be validated by those in the outer, non-cartoon, world, are we nothing but a dream (sweetheart)?
Perhaps a concern for all of us, but especially pointed for cartoon characters. Who will speak for them, especially now that Mad Magazine is gone?
Der Migros-Sprecher Gabriel Zwicky
October 9, 2019In the Swiss German-language daily Blick, a 10/6 story by Marc Iseli, “Neues Gastro-Konzept kommt nach Zürich: Migros bringt den Metzger zum Anfassen” (‘A new gastronomic concept comes to Zürich: Migros makes the butcher accessible’), about a new program — some combination of Retail, Gastronomie und Event — that is somehow supposed to bring the consumer closer to the producers of food (the butcher, the baker, the fisherman, the farmer), at least in the giant supermarket by the main railway station in Zürich:
(#1) From the butcher’s hands to yours, in the new “Meet Food” (yes, with a name borrowed from English) program (note: I didn’t choose this photo; Blick did; I will, however, inventory it in my files under “Phallicity: The Wurst”, where it deserves some sort of vividness trophy)
The story is about this still not fully defined program, but its primary interest for me is that it comes from der Migros-Sprecher (‘the Migros spokesperson’) Gabriel Zwicky, who gets his name in the news quite a lot, Migros being a very big thing in Switzerland. Zwickys, we are everywhere.
Two old cartoon friends
October 9, 2019… in recent mail: border-collie-bereft medicos (from Scott Hilburn on 8/12/14) and Egyptian spelling contests (from Rhymes With Orange today), bringing the return of two familiar cartoon themes:
(#1) The POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) from Doctors Without Borders + border collies
(#2) A spelling bee done with hieroglyphs
A rich internal life
October 8, 2019(The beginning of this posting is about the complexities of conscious experience — attentional foci and internal lives — but midway through it veers into sexual matters, eventually into a raw account of steamy mansex, entirely unsuitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
The Zits strip from 10/5, about Sara and Jeremy’s fugitive thoughts:
(#1) Sara’s conscious attention is on her homework, but anxieties about her academic life and about current events intrude; meanwhile, Jeremy is consciously focused on listening to Sara’s lament, but finds thoughts of food intervening
What’s involved is a division between two parts of the stream of consciousness: an attentional focus, the central concern in what you are doing at the moment; and any number of peripheral concerns, matters that crowd your consciousness without being chosen for attention, these peripheral concerns together constituting what I’ll call your internal life at the moment.
Suit and tie
October 7, 2019The One Big Happy for September 8th, which came by in my comics feed recently:
(#1)
Miss Avis gives Ruthie career advice, and once again, Ruthie is up against the sense of a word — here, suit, roughly ‘costume in a masquerade’ — that she’s most familiar with, as against another sense — in the conventional collocation suit and tie, roughly ‘business apparel for men’ — that’s the most frequent one in the larger culture. A bunny suit for play, especially at Halloween, is a familiar part of her everyday world; she’s certainly seen men in suits and ties, but they’re from a different world, one that she merely sometimes observes from the outside, in much the same way that she views suits of armor.
Of course, becoming acculturated in the conventional adult world around her means learning that the default sense of suit has to do with business wear, especally for men, and that the costume-play sense is restricted to certain special social contexts.
