At Whole Foods today, looking for interesting frozen meals, we came across whole cases full of items designed to appeal to vegetarians (or vegans). Of special interest to me, since I’m preparing some postings on the etymological fallacy, originally inspired by complaints about the expression meatless meatballs, that it was contradictory (how could balls of meat be meatless?) and therefore unacceptable. Some on-the-spot photos by Kim Darnell, starting with this example:
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(Some vulgar sexual slang from the world of gay sex, but nothing beyond that.)
More drawers of my files moved from Staunton Ct. to Ramona St. (and into the oaken desk there). Almost all academic files, but the drawers contained a few surprises, like two gay porn magazines from early 2001, in particular the Torso from February of that year, with the friction fiction “Fire-Station Stud: Italian Muscleman Starts a Fire” by a prolific writer of such stories, “Bearmuffin”. The teaser insert in the story:
Two points here: the verbing of the noun spunk ‘semen’ and the poetic form of the insert’s text, which is perfect iambic pentameter (with the bonus of the internal half-rhymes spunked … trunk and between … tree).
.. and Halloween, though, pleasingly, neither has anything to do with All Hallows’ / All Souls’ / All Saints’. A One Big Happy that’s a study in American (and Antipodal) phonology; and a Zippy with a fallen roadside fiberglass hero, the Green Giant of Pahrump NV:
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Recently unearthed: a long poem I wrote in 1990 (in first draft) while I was visiting at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and then revised during my year there. It’s part of the outpouring of visual art, poetry, plays, memoirs, and fiction that followed on the AIDS crisis, so it’s very much of its time (though just a bit before Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Thom Gunn’s AIDS poetry). Thanks to friends and to Fellows at CASBS for their comments (though many were too stunned to say much about the piece, and a novelist friend judged it to be just another item in an over-crowded field). I put it aside at the end of that year and hadn’t revisited it until last week, when an old friend wrote me about it, quoting his favorite section.
I made much of white space in the lines of the poem, an effect that was completely undone — insert furious swear-stream here — by the software on both WordPress and LiveJournal. I have now created a .pdf version preserving the spaces, which you can access by clicking on Candy Store poem. (It’s just over 8 pages long.)
(Necessarily, discussion of (female) body parts and plain talk about them. A warning if you’re especially sensitive about these matters.)
In today’s mail, a piece of mail art by Ryan Tamares:
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An amendment of an image that’s been making the rounds, in response to the spoutings of Squire Grabpussy. Fuck yeah!
Halloween advances upon us, and there are sales of all kinds. As always, sales in the gayverse, including men’s underwearworld, where Daily Jocks made an offer today:
A bright orange C-IN2 strap jock (with that criss-cross effect), on a black body. Or at least what we describe as a black body, though outside the domain of skin color, the (absurdly fit) model’s body would be described as dark chocolate brown.
(Plenty of language stuff, about English and French, but also quite a bit about man-man sex, sometimes in very plain language, so use your judgment.)
Over on AZBlogX, the posting “A fucktage”, with an ad flyer for a Falcon Studios sale, a montage of fuck scenes from four recent releases. A small WordPressable sample from this scrum of bodies and body parts, with especially notable facial expressions:
The portmanteau fucktage (accented, like montage, on the second syllable) is my take-off point here, for musings about montage, mounting sexually, pederasty, gay slang, and children’s songs.
