Archive for November, 2016

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One more SquirtJet item

November 30, 2016

(In the seminal-ejaculation zone, so not to everyone’s taste.)

It started with a report on ADS-L from Wilson Gray thst Urban Dictionary had an entry for spray and pray conveying (of males) ‘engage in unprotected sex’. I haven’t found that entry, but this one’s close:

spray and pray: have sex with a lady w/ no protection and pray for no children. OMG i just fucked that bitch and left a load. I pray there are no little hommies to become of this. by BamMaster April 14, 2003

The expression has the ejaculatory V spray, a metaphorical usage ultimately grounded in (a) a V of liquid flow (intrans. The water sprayed onto the deck. trans. We sprayed the water onto the deck.), extended to (b) a V denoting a flow of bullets from a submachine gun, assault rifle, or the like; (c) a V denoting specifically a flow of urine from a penis; (d) a V denoting specifically a flow of semen from a penis; (e) a V denoting the dissemination (spread or distribution) of information from some source.

To the Vs in (a)-(d) there correspond product or result Ns spray; sexual spray is then a SquirtJet item like spurt, shower, squirt, jet, spew in a posting of mine yesterday.

Meanwhile, the whole expression spray and pray refers to indiscriminate or unconstrained spraying (in one of the senses (b)-(e)) accompanied by a merely hopeful or wishful attitude towards the consequences or results of the spraying.

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Posted in Conversion, Gender and sexuality, Language of sex, Metaphors | Leave a Comment »

Color-coordinating college

November 30, 2016

Yesterday’s Zits:

Some other orange schools: Florida, Princeton, Univ. of Miami, Oregon State, Idaho State, Oklahoma State. There’s also a bunch of schools with gold — but that’s yellow-orange, not straightforwardly orange. As for teal: Eckerd College, UNC-Wilmington, Coastal Carolina. Scripps has sea-foam green, which is very close to teal. (In any case, teal isn’t a basic color word in English, while orange is, so there’s a big imbalance here.)

There’s a suggestion in the strip that choosing a college on the basis of the school colors is silly, frivolous, inconsequential — the sort of thing an air-headed girl would do. I don’t see that it’s any more frivolous than choosing a college on the basis of the current fortunes of the football and basketball teams. (Please don’t just baldly assert that sports are important, serious, and fashion isn’t.)

 

Posted in Language and gender, Linguistics in the comics | 3 Comments »

Poet in Search of His Moose

November 30, 2016

The title of one of the eleven comic collages by Barry Kite that I have hanging on my walls:

(#1)

Poets and artists notoriously have muses, and poets and their muses are sometimes subjects of an artist’s work: “The Poet and His Muse” by Giorgio de Chirico, “The Poet and His Muse” by Henri Rousseau (both with female muses), and in a very different vein, “The Poet Decorates his Muse with Verse”, a playful photo montage by Duane Michals, with a male muse. Kite’s collage has a central figure that I at first took to be the artist Pablo Picasso, whose many (female) muses were his sexual partners and the subjects of a great many of his works, but that now seems likely to be the poet Pablo Neruda (see below). Women appear in the collage as stylized erotic body parts serving as the landscape the central figure is walking through. Meanwhile, his dogs are in search of the poet’s moose.

The collages are parodic or surreal, and quite funny, combinations of elements from art history and from popular culture, with wry titles. Like Bill Griffiths on art in Zippy the Pinhead, Kite shows great affection for the culture that he ransacks to create absurdist, countercultural works.

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Posted in Art, Humor, Language play | 4 Comments »

Sperm, sperm, wonderful sperm, and all that jizz

November 29, 2016

(Some may find the topic distasteful; take the title as a gauge of the content to follow.)

Another essay on the seminal-ejaculatory vocabulary of vernacular English, following on the discussion in my “Face work” posting of the 27th: on the seminal N sperm (not in the earlier posting) and its verbing; more on the seminal N and ejaculatory V jizz; and a note on the SquirtJet word spew.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language of sex, Language play, Slang | 1 Comment »

And so it begins

November 28, 2016

… winter that is, with cold nights (cold for this part of the world), and one rainstorm after another sweeping down from the northwest (over the ocean). And with the First Cymbidium of Winter:

The shoot appeared several weeks ago, and the buds began opening on Thanksgiving Day, just the way they’re supposed to (first plants flowering in late November, last ones finishing in mid-June).

 

The strap-like leaves belong to the cymbidium. The plant in back of it is a kalanchoe, and the other visible leaves belong to pelargoniums (what are commonly called geraniums). Plus a shaft of early-winter sun.

Rain over the weekend. Now it seems that the next storms went inland well north of here and will miss us, so no rain for, oh, maybe, 10 days. Nice crisp days, but no drought relief for a while.

Posted in Language and plants | Leave a Comment »

Annals of cartoon understanding

November 28, 2016

Here’s a cartoon I once came across:

“If the recount doesn’t work, it’s up to us.”

How do we understand what the cartoon is about?

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Posted in Context, Linguistics in the comics | 1 Comment »

My tongue broke out in unknown strains

November 28, 2016

Yesterday, shapenote singing (Sacred Harp, Denson Revision 1991) in Palo Alto. The Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend (in the U.S.), so songs of thanks (there are a great many of these). And the first Sunday of Advent, so songs with come significantly in the text (pretty many of these) and, looking forward, Christmas songs (there are tons of these); meanwhile, we are now firmly into the commercial and cultural Christmas season, so of course Christmas songs. But we wandered onto other church holidays: Easter Anthem #236, and the passionate Pentecost song Conversion #297:

  (#1)

In the events alluded to here, on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, a group of very early Christians (among them, the Apostles and Mary, the Mother of God) are possessed, enraptured, by the Holy Spirit, manifested as tongues of flame that descend upon them, granting them God’s grace and so transforming them, making them new, and, in addition, giving them the ability to speak in all languages (earthly or divine), to speak in tongues, as this ability came to be known.

So Pentecost is one of a small set of linguists’ holidays (up there with Hangul Day in Korea and an assortment of invented occasions like National Grammar Day).

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Posted in Holidays, Language and religion, Music, Translation | Leave a Comment »

The band names of middle age

November 27, 2016

In today’s Zits, Jeremy offers up a slew of band names that should please his dad:

They’re all fake, of course — but I was hoping against hope that there would be a band named SlipperStank. Alas, googling for it nets you nothing but lots of advice about (and assorted products for) getting rid of foot stench.

We last visited Jeremy’s band names back on 1/21/14, where in comic strip #2 we learned about his favorite bands Six Trees, Lord Foulmouth, and Howler Monkey’s Lunch. Oh, to have Lord Foulmouth and SlipperStank together on a concert lineup! Let’s get down and dirty!

Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Names | Leave a Comment »

Face work

November 27, 2016

(About semen and sex acts and facial expressions and slang and syntax — but, yes, semen is central to the posting, and there’s a lot of talk about sex acts in very plain terms. Only one photo, but it might make some people uneasy. So probably not for children or the sexually modest.)

Over on AZBlogX, a sale ad suggesting that the Lucas porn studio could supply you with a high-protein dessert for Thanksgiving: a splash of semen on your face. Lick and savor.

#1 there shows a man with a cumface, the result of a (cum) facial, the cum / jizz / spunk / cream / spooge supplied via the quite substantial cock also shown in the photo. On AZBlogX there are six more guys who’ve been facialed, who’ve gotten a facial (from a shooter), been given a facial (by a shooter), whose faces have been jizzed / spunked / creamed / spooged (by a shooter).

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Posted in Argument structure, Facial expressions, Gay porn, Gayland, Gender and sexuality, Language of sex, Language play, Nouning, Poetry, Slang, Syntax, Verbing | Leave a Comment »

medium-hater

November 25, 2016

Today’s One Big Happy has Ruthie, once again, coping with an unfamiliar expression whose meaning is at least roughly clear to her:

She and her brother Joe need  someone who can help settle their fight by treating each of them equally, and she’s got the /mídi/ initial part and the /étǝr/ final part, but the combination of the two isn’t familiar to her, so she fills a middle part in to make the whole familiar: /ǝm/ to complete /mídi/ and the minimal consonant /h/ to precede /étǝr/. To give /mídiǝm  hétǝr/.

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Posted in Holidays, Music | Leave a Comment »

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