(Not much language in this.)
In a response (from me) to a comment on my June 14th posting “Most unusual ties” (about Steven Levine and his extraordinary collection of ties), I wrote:
What I have is a world-class collection of paisley and floral ties — gorgeous, rather than entertaining.
Herewith a small sampling of the paisley(esque) section, in mid-width ties (I also have skinny ties and big wide ties; I’ve lived through quite a few shifts in fashion.)
I’m preparing to scan in a set of penguin-themed thoroughly XXX-rated collages in relatively large originals, but mixed in with these in my files are two entirely R-rated collages, SuperPenguin and Potpourri, which I’ll report on here.
More news for penguins…
It’s harvest season here in the Northern Hemisphere, so along with the bounty of autumn’s actual harvest, we get a parallel harvest of fruit and vegetable art, especially in ceramic and blown glass. From the Palo Alto Art Center in the mail today, this pleasing display of ceramic pears (in a ceramics and jewelry sale November 19th and 20th):
(#1)
(You can find tons of ceramic fruits, of all sorts, on the web.)
(with the Brazil nut tree as a bonus)
An old friend L. and his partner I. spent an afternoon a few days ago in Kyoto’s vast botanical garden, where I. took photos of a number of the plants, including shots of two showy flowering trees that L. e-mailed me: Camellia sinensis and Barringtonia racemosa:
(#1)
(#2)
The tea tree and the powder-puff tree, respectively.
On AZBlogX, two postings of homoerotic Pingu-based collages (featuring the animated penguin Pingu), 8 in each set: “Pingu: first wave” (here) and “Pingu: second wave” (here) — being birds of the sea, penguins come in waves.
Pingu will then lead us to other pingu- words, only a few penguin-related; and to the pungi, a musical instrument (cobras will be involved).
Left out of my AZBlogX posting of the 19th, “Spanish lessons”, was this item (#11 in the set), decidedly homoerotic but not actually X-rated:
A Daddy-Boy scene, illustrating el papá.
… choosing words as trademarks. NOAD2 on trademark:
a symbol, word, or words legally registered or established by use as representing a company or product
Such words often come with associations to existing words, or parts of words, in the language, and sometimes there are official origin stories that invoke these associations, though the official stories often just scratch the surface of the full set of associations.
Which brings me back to my posting of the 16th on the Parisian home furnishing company FLEUX’ (and its mascot, Zwicky le Chat): where does the company name come from? (and why is the cat named Zwicky?)
(About music rather than language.)
Woke briefly in the middle of the night to the glorious sound of Alexis Weissenberg playing the piano part (which is to say, the bulk) of Frédéric Chopin’s Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” for piano and orchestra, Op. 2 (yes, 2; Chopin was 17). It brought me great joy: I delight in the Mozart and I love variation pieces, especially for the piano (Mozart wrote piles of variations). It’s always seemed to me that Chopin got Mozart down perfectly here (including both the simple tuneful, even bubbly, side representing Zerlina and the darker side representing Don Giovanni, with his designs on Zerlina’s body), except that Chopin’s version is really really showy — like Mozart with all the stops out.
Continuing to scan in (mostly) XXX-rated collages, set by set. Five more AZBlogX postings in the last three days, in a variety of styles and tones:
10/17/16: “Baskets of Joy”: 2 sex-heavy collages based on a photo of a basket store
10/18/16: “ALL CAPS”: 11 collages, many powerfully sexual and elaborately staged, using a set of big all-caps letter stickers for their main texts
10/18/16: “Fossils on a field of purple”: 8 collages; background fossil images; lots of body dislays and man-man sex; texts from various sources and artfully arranged stickers
10/19/16: “French lessons”: 10 collages, in pairs, based on Tom of Finland and Bob Mizer images; silly pairings of word and defnition, whimsical animal stickers, but most collages with at least one significant dick in them
10/19/16: “Spanish lessons”: 10 homoerotic collages, most of them simple, and most of them homo-suggestive rather than explicit