Archive for March, 2011

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Annals of danglerology

March 23, 2011

Volume 59, No. 1 (March 2011) of the journal Names (the journal of the American Name Society) arrived on Monday, and I immediately noticed Frank Nuessel’s article “A note on the names of mathematical problems and puzzles” — noticed it because I was trained as a mathematician many years ago and published in and taught mathematical linguistics for some time (and sort-of-married into a nest of mathematicians: my husband-equivalent Jacques’s father and older brother were both mathematics professors).

Interesting piece, though it’s just a scratch into the immense range of material available.

What then caught my eye was the very first sentence:

While writing a paper entitled “The Representation of Mathematics in the Media” for a weeklong symposium …, it became evident that many mathematical problems, puzzles, conjectures, and equations had specific names attached to them.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed this, but since I’m a scholar of SPARs (here and here), I caught the subjectless predicational adverbial requiring a referent for the subject.

(more…)

Posted in Danglers, Discourse | 5 Comments »

Moral senses

March 23, 2011

Some playful conceptual art by David Byrne (yes, the multifaceted Byrne of Talking Heads): “Hutcheston’s Moral Senses” (2004), in McSweeney’s:

No, I don’t have an interpretation.

 

Posted in Art/lit/music/film | 1 Comment »

Getting a phone sex zeugmoid

March 23, 2011

From an ad for phone sex at the beginning of Vivid Video gay porn compilations, a promise of hot horny guys out there for you (if you’re a gay man):

They’re all waiting to
get you on the phone,
get it out of your jeans,
get it on with you,
and get you off.

An elaborate VP zeugmoid, with get used in four different ways, the last two in sexual idioms (get it on with s.o., get s.o. off). As a bonus, the middle two have it used in two different ways — referentially, with it referring to a penis, and then non-referentially. Finally, there’s the on – off contrast in the last two, and the repetition of the 2sg pronoun all the way through, but with varying syntactic function (direct object, possessive modifier, object of preposition, then direct object again). Also notice the balanced direct objects: you, it, it, you.

The ad as a whole is pretty crude, but this bit shows some real style and verbal playfulness.

Posted in Language of sex, Language play | 2 Comments »

The penguin crop

March 23, 2011

A collection of penguin images that have been collecting for several months, from several sources; just silliness.

First, a Penguin Nativity scene:

Then (link from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky), Penguin Food you can make at home:

And, via Frank McQuarry, some Ominous Penguins:

Finally, via Chris Ambidge, the Three Wise Penguins (following the rainbow rather than a star) and the Kool Penguin:

15 cents a pack!

 

Posted in Not about language, Silliness | 2 Comments »

Cartoon etymology

March 23, 2011

Bizarro looks at boxing:

OED2 has the verb box tr. ‘to beat, thrash; (later) to strike with the fist, to cuff, to buffet; (now usually) to strike (the cheek, ear, etc.) with the hand’, and intr. ‘to fight with fists (now mostly of purely athletic practice with boxing-gloves)’ (both from the 16th century)  from the noun box ‘a blow, a buffet’ (from the 14th century through the 18th), then more specifically ‘a blow on the ear or side of the head with the hand; a slap, a cuff’ (15th century on). Alas, this noun box is of  unknown origin, but it seems pretty clearly to have nothing to do with the receptacle box (going back to Old English, and related to the box of boxwood, referring to a tree or shrub of the genus Buxus and to the wood of the box tree, from which receptacles or cases can be made).

Boxing, of course, started out as bare-knuckles fighting; the protective gloves were a later addition, but they’ve been around at least since Ancient Greece. They were eventually mandated in Britain by the Marquess of Queensberry rules (1867).

 

Posted in Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Writing errors

March 22, 2011

An assortment of my errors in writing (some typing, some handwriting), with several different lessons to be drawn from them.

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Posted in Errors, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Porn titles

March 21, 2011

I get a giggle out of language play in “ludic locales”: headlines in science reporting, playfully named entries on restaurant menus, titles of gay porn movies, and so on. Yesterday I reported on Vivid Video compilations of gay porn, in particular Nutrageous and A Bronco Named Brad.

Now, for sheer entertainment, a few more Vivid compilation titles:

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Posted in Language of sex, Language play, Silliness | 5 Comments »

Jell-O is the gay dessert

March 21, 2011

From Chris Ambidge a few days ago, this reproduction of a Jell-O ad from roughly 50 years ago (now in a color version unearthed by Chris Hansen). Go gay with Jell-O today!

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Posted in Language change, Lexical semantics | 7 Comments »

Solidification

March 21, 2011

John McIntyre on his Baltimore Sun blog:

MARCH 18, 2011
MOMENTOUS AP STYLE CHANGES

When the word went out today that the editors of The Associated Press Stylebook would announce changes in AP style at the national conference of the American Copy Editors Society, the nation ground to a halt.

(more…)

Posted in Spelling, Usage advice | 12 Comments »

Dean Phoenix on gay-for-pay

March 20, 2011

From an interview with Curtis Dean Hutchinson, the pornstar known as Dean Phoenix, here:

One area that confuses even a veteran like Hutchinson is the gay-for-pay genre. Asked about Randy Blue star Chris Rockway, who says he’s straight, Hutchinson’s response is, well, straightforward. “He’s not that good of an actor,” he says. [note of-marked Exceptional Degree Marking in not that good of an actor] “He’s gotta like it.” Hutchinson agrees that the draw of gay-for-pay is the fantasy of a hetero being converted, but “Anyone who does it has some kind of wanting to be gay. They’re gonna miss it ten years from now.”

(On gay for pay, on this blog, here. On Chris Rockway and his career as gay for pay, on my X blog, here.)

As I posted about Dean Phoenix on my X blog recently, he’s what I sometimes label “frankly gay” and has been out of the closet since he was a teenager. He’s also an enthusiastic and affectionate sex partner in his films; he takes evident pleasure in the sexual acts. It’s understandable that he would have little sympathy with the way men like Rockway configure their sexuality. It’s hard for him to imagine that anyone who performs sexually as well as Rockway does truly lacks desire for his partners.

Me, I’m inclined to take Rockway at his word about being straight, but would note that in the right situation — surely, acting in gay porn with some very sexy partners should count as such a situation — many straight men can experience some degree of desire for another man, and not just physical pleasure in the encounter. The world of sexuality is complex.

Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Gender and sexuality | 3 Comments »

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