November | 2016 | Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Archive for November, 2016

Perverted tastes

November 8, 2016

A gift from Kathryn Burlingham in the mail yesterday: a sturdy shopping bag with, on one side, a graphic of melons (canteloupes, specifically); on the other, this quotation from Martin Luther (in English translation):

You pant after
the garlic and watermelons of Egypt
and have already long suffered
from perverted tastes.

That’s Luther, the main figure of the German Reformation, translator of the Bible into German, and prolific writer of hymns — and also an often-incendiary writer and speaker, given to insult (as above).

I’ve been musing about “perverted tastes”. I have a taste, indeed a fondness, for certain perversions, but I doubt these were what Luther had in mind; I suspect his thoughts were on food: foods from the seductive Mediterranean basin, aphrodisiac foods, phallic foods.

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Posted in Language and food, Quotations | 3 Comments »

News for animated penises

November 8, 2016

Now in theaters and being advertised on tv: the animated movie Sausage Party, pretty much an extended (but good-hearted) dick joke. Innuendo in the posters (fill alluding to insertion, rise alluding to erection):

(#1)

(#2)

Profanity and sexual allusions abound in the movie — but there are, of course, no actual penises: the main characters are (simulacra of) penises but don’t themselves have penises.

Note the female character in #1. Yes, a hot dog bun (to put a penis, er, hot dog, in).

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Posted in Innuendo, Language and food, Movies and tv, Phallicity | Leave a Comment »

Animal instincts

November 7, 2016

Today’s Bizarro:

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)

Lionesses do most (but not all) of the hunting for a pride, often in groups, so it’s appropriate that Piraro’s character, retired from the hunt to take up office work, is depicted as a female secretary.

Then there’s the idea that hunting down and devouring prey is an almost uncontrollable animal instinct, urge, or drive — in the very nature of lions — which requires constant effort to keep in check.

Ah, we’ve seen an analogous idea in a very different sphere.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the sexes, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Correct it, Joe

November 7, 2016

Today’s One Big Happy has Joe making a classic response to his dad’s attempt to get him to “correct” a sentence.

(#1)

His dad is working from the position that the sentence is in fact incorrect, and incorrect in a specific way, namely grammatically: it contains the grammatical triple-threat ain’t got no. As far as Joe is concerned, there’s nothing wrong with the form of the sentence, so his dad must be asking for a correction of the content. Joe recognizes that his sister Ruthie does in fact have cereal, but thinks that she lacks sense, so he offers that as a correction.

Two issues here. First, the sentence is grammatically ill-formed only in a particular variety of English, formal standard English, while Joe is speaking an informal non-standard (but extremely widespread) variety, in which don’t got no is entirely well-formed. What Joe’s dad is asking him to do is shift from his everyday variety to another variety, one you’re supposed to use in school and some other social contexts.

Second, ordinary people frequently (and children quite regularly) understand requests for correction (and requests for judgments on particular examples) to be about matters of fact, not matters of form. Judging sentences on their form, rather than their content, is something you learn to do in school — a special skill that doesn’t come naturally or easily.

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

Seward Johnson

November 7, 2016

It looks like the bots at Pinterest are doing a pretty good job. Thanks to my having posted, in “Giantess Jackie” on the 2nd, a bit about Seward Johnson’s “Forever Marilyn” statue in Chicago, this morning Pinterest offered me a page of “New ideas for you in Sculpture”, entirely devoted to Johnson’s bronze oeuvre, for example this visual parody of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”, entitled “God Bless America” (now in Florida):

(#1)

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Posted in Art, Parody, Pop culture | Leave a Comment »

November 7th, in the liminal zone

November 7, 2016

Twilight Dawn in America

Between the dark and the daylight,
Between the end of Daylight Time and Election Day,
When the light is beginning to fade,
Comes a pause in the year’s occupation
That is known as Revolution and Solidarity Day,
Or, take your pick, Freedom Fighters Killing Day.

November 7th in America. We can be pleased that today’s birthdays include Marie Curie and Joan Sutherland. But then there’s the former national holiday of Bangladesh, a sad story of rebellion and ensuing dictatorship in a dreadfully beleagured country. And of course the terrible story of one of today’s saints, Ernest of Zwiefalten, disemboweled in the wars between Christianity and Islam, for God and territory (in roughly equal measure), over 800 years ago. A bloody awful day, in several senses.

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Posted in Holidays, Language and politics, Language and religion, Parody, Poetry | Leave a Comment »

Wearing the 1970s

November 6, 2016

A little while back, Kim Darnell pointed me to several sites with collections of astounding men’s clothing (some underwear, some not) from the 1970s. Culled from a great trove of material, here are six of these gems, with captions added by me.

Let me say that while I indulged in various regrettable items of clothing (including bell bottoms, muscle shirts, and remarkable underwear) during this period, I didn’t reach the heights illustrated here. So I snicker and guffaw, but nervously.

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Posted in Captions, Clothing, Fashion, Underwear | 2 Comments »

Vases for phallophiles

November 6, 2016

(Warnings: penis simulacra by the handful. And not much about language.)

Home furnishing news for penises, starting with a bud vase featured (very briefly) in the Bel Ami porn flick An American in Prague. Actually, this gauzy shot is from an unused solo scene by the pornstar known as Chance. The vase, with a single red rose in it, appears in the background, on a nightstand next to the bed Chance is lolling lustfully in, and simultaneously in a foreground shot that very quickly dissolves, so this is a sex-red dream-like moment.

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Posted in Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Phallicity | Leave a Comment »