In the NYT on the 17th, an obituary “Marc Simont, Classic Children’s Book Illustrator, Dies at 97” by Margalit Fox, beginning:
Marc Simont, an acclaimed illustrator whose work, embodying both airy lightness and crackling energy, graced some of the foremost titles in children’s literature, died on Saturday [July 13th] at his home in Cornwall, Conn.
The associations of the word pain are mostly strongly negative; it’s the opposite of pleasure, and pain is normally to be avoided. But there are contexts in which pain is embraced, for its psychological values — as in BDSM practices. For instance, in man-man sex, as noted in an AZBlogX posting of mine (of 2/25/13) on “Fetish/kink porn”:
An overarching theme [as in the gay porn flick Hoodies] is Taking It: experiencing, and enjoying, pain, humiliation, and abuse … An exhibition of parodoxical masculinity, showing how much of a man you are by showing how much you can take from other men. But also Submission, an abandonment of will to another man, recognizing him as superior to you.
Pain, suitably limited, also stimulates the release of hormones that can be experienced as intense pleasure. In addition, the Way of Pain in BDSM is highly ritualized, designed to work for both participants, which opens BDSM to being understood as a kind of ceremony or therapy.
That brings me to Leo Forte (treated in an 7/28/13 AZBlogX posting here), a star on the gay BDSM circuit who sometimes bills himself as “The Prince of Pain”, because of his appetite for torment (and other forms of kink).
Today’s Dilbert has Wally shamelessly slinging technical jargon to his boss:
Everything in “Advanced scripting structure for internetwork optimization of SQL datases” is genuine (SQL stands for Structured Query Language, for instance), but it’s a real challenge to make sense of the whole.
Posting on National Ice Cream Month and Day led me to a feature on the Mental Floss site on “10 Monty Pythonesque British Place Names” (by Virginia C. McGuire). It turns out that lists of rude British place names constitute a small genre of their own.
Bright sunny flowers of summer, yellow and orange, composites, strongly scented, edible, and easy to grow from seed in a wide range of climate zones. Two genera: Tagetes (called simply marigolds in the U.S.) and Calendula (pot marigolds, or very commonly, calendulas).
Two portmanteaus in my mail: a hybrid animal (not new on this blog, but offered here because I now have a really adorable photo) and yet another way of referring to the male anus viewed as a sexual organ.
A Dinosaur Comics from a few years ago (passed on by Bert Vaux), on the Paradox of the Heap:
Notice: “at some fuzzy point” and “Language isn’t that precise”.
The cover of the next New Yorker, with “Carlos Danger” by John Cuneo:
From the magazine’s website:
“With a topic like Anthony Weiner, how can you find anything broad or funny that he hasn’t already personally breached?” says John Cuneo, the artist who painted next week’s cover. He continues: “Free association made me think of the Empire State Building, and then King Kong, the iconic image of him straddling it. And then Weiner sexting, his head tilted and looking a certain way — I just stumbled upon the image as I was sketching. But all I could think about while working on this piece was, ‘Will Weiner still be in the race by the time it runs?’”
The penis-wielding Carlos Danger astride one of NYC’s iconic phallic symbols.
A feature from Advocate.com last December: “The Golden Age of Denial: Pimping the Military” by Christopher Harrity, on recruitment art of the last century. Two themes (of several) in the feature: bare-chested men thrusting phallic symbols; and orgies of gang bathing.
