Archive for 2013

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Stimulating and desensitizing

June 25, 2013

(Sexually explicit language to follow.)

An ad for MovieMountain and GameLink (sources of porn movies) today features a variety of products classified as lubes. Some are simple sexual lubricants, but others are designed to provide stimulation or its opposite, desensitization (depending on what the users want). Some of them are far from lubricants, but there seems to be no label for the category that includes lubricants, stimulating products, and desensitizing creams. (On the larger category of ADJUNCTS to sex, see this posting on gay sex toys.)

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Gender and sexuality, Language in advertising | Leave a Comment »

Stella Dallas

June 25, 2013

(Not much about language.)

Today’s Zippy summarizes the 1937 movie Stella Dallas, with screenplay by Harry Wagstaff Gribble (a name that undoubtedly attracted the cartoonist Bill Griffith):

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Movies, Names | 1 Comment »

terminal sire

June 25, 2013

On a postcard in the Beautiful Farmyard set (“100 gorgeous portraits of chickens, cows, ducks, owls, pigeons, pigs, rabbits, sheep & tractors”), a Suffolk sheep, identified as “the leading terminal sire breed in the UK”. Terminal sire is obviously a technical term in animal breeding, but its meaning wasn’t obvious to me. Turns out that the breeding practice in question comes in two steps, and a Suffolk ram plays a crucial role in the second, terminal, step.

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Posted in Language and animals, Ordinary vs. technical lg | Leave a Comment »

Coping with figurative language

June 25, 2013

Two recent cartoons on figurative language. Yesterday’s Pearls Before Swine:

(#1)

And today’s Dilbert:

(#2)

In #1, Pig takes the figurative saying “There are plenty of fish in the sea” literally, and comes up with a fish as a replacement (an unsatisfactory one) for his lost Pigita.

In #2, Dilbert’s pointy-headed boss produces a novel analogy — which Dilbert then brings to life.

Posted in Figurative language, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Springing into summer

June 24, 2013

Back in May there came botanical evidence that we were moving from spring into summer. In places with cold winters, it became possible to plant nasturtium seeds, because those places were moving past their last frost date. Meanwhile, here in Palo Alto, my geranium plants (in containers on my patios), which went through the winter as foliage plants, broke into bloom (as the cymbidium orchids moved into summer dormancy).

I’ve referred to these summer plants by their common names — as nasturtiums and geraniums — but their genus names are, respectively, Tropaeolum and Pelargonium. And to make things more confusing, there are genera (of different plants) Nasturtium (to which watercress belongs) and Geranium (the cranesbills).

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Posted in Etymology, Language and food, Language and plants, Ordinary vs. technical lg | 1 Comment »

More gay greens

June 24, 2013

In the previous installment, “Gay greens: the big two”, I looked at arugula (UK rocket) and radicchio, with an excursion into chicories — especially (curly) endive and Belgian endive — and an appendix on cruciferous vegetables. Now on to a wider set of greens.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Gender and sexuality, Language and food, Language and plants, My life, Names, Ordinary vs. technical lg | 2 Comments »

Zesty Anderson Davis

June 23, 2013

(Not much about language, but about gender and sexuality — and phallic symbols.)

In my recent mail, an image from Chris Ambidge of an ad for Kraft’s Zesty Italian salad dressing:

  (#1)

Handsome, naked Anderson Davis in a classic porn pose (which I’ve called “pits ‘n tits”), with a half-smile on his face and his privates just barely covered — and with a phallic wine bottle paired with testicular grapes, to ramp up the sexual message. Such images appeal to almost everyone: straight guys would like to be that guy, straight women would like to do him, and gay men would like both.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language in advertising, Shirtlessness, Signs and symbols | 2 Comments »

Over on AZBlogX

June 23, 2013

Four recent postings on AZBlogX that haven’t been linked to from this blog:

6/15/13: Heretic sweat (link): sweat in the gay porn flick Heretic — six shots from an ad, plus information on the eight actors in them

6/16/13: Morning Wood redux for Pride (link): another angle on a three-way from the gay porn flick Morning Wood

6/17/13: Who WAS that masked panda? (link): five recent images (most X-rated) from Chris Ambidge

6/22/13: Cattions 6: twelve more (link): twelve more cattions (only one X-rated), based on Taubenheim, Thoma, Reh, and Roffman photos of men

Posted in Captioning, Gender and sexuality, Links, Photography | Leave a Comment »

Cinderella 1957

June 23, 2013

(Not about language, but about actors and acting.)

In a set of Rodgers and Hammerstein postcards, one for the 1957 television musical Cinderella, which I was somehow unaware of (it was my freshman year at Princeton, and a lot of television passed me by); the production involved a number of my favorite character actors.

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Posted in Acting, Music, Pop culture | Leave a Comment »

On the comics page

June 22, 2013

Today’s Zippy, a meta-comic about where Zippy is located on the comics page:

The first comic strips mentioned — Crankshaft, Buckles, Marvin — are relatively recent ones, but then Zippy recalls vintage strips, and Charles Bukowski surrealistically appears.

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics | 1 Comment »

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