Every so often I’ve posted on Language Log about “ludic locales”, places (especially in print) where language play of all sorts is displayed: puns, metaphors, rhymes, assonance, playful allusion to formulaic expressions (idioms, clichés, quotations, titles). Among these places are: advertising, feature stories (especially science writing), headlines in certain magazines, names of porn flicks. Yesterday I came across an extraordinary playful allusion in a description of a porn flick (clipped some time ago from some porn magazine).
First, the set-up, packed with expressions that you’d hardly ever hear from ordinary people, but mark the passage as porn writing:
… soon his meaty wand is waving and jerking wildly, with some portentous slime oozing from his swollen piss slit.
(I don’t think I’d ever seen “portentous slime” before. The slime in question is presumably pre-cum, and it’s portentous in the sense that it’s literally a portent, of ejaculation, not in the sense that it’s “done in a pompously or overly solemn manner so as to impress”, as NOAD2 puts it.)
And then comes the money shot:
Ah! What sperm from yonder penis spurts?
The allusion to Romeo and Juliet is astonishing in this context (though I admire the pairing of “sperm” and “spurts”, not to mention the preservation of the meter of “What light from yonder window breaks?”).
February 10, 2009 at 11:32 pm |
If you want a ludic locale, your local hair salon may be at the cutting edge. I’ve just seen a map posted here of many hair salons in Germany using the same few groanworthy puns; which links to Flickr: The Hairdressers with Supposedly Funny Pun Names Pool
February 11, 2009 at 4:05 pm |
To mollymooly: yes, hair salon names are a rich source of examples. I put together a collection some years ago, but I can’t at the moment find it. Nice to see this site.
February 16, 2009 at 2:49 am |
If you’re going to make a list of ludic locales, I don’t think you can leave out country songs (if I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?)