Linguistics news from Stanford: the public portion of a PhD oral exam, next Monday, 6/19/17, 3-4:15: Jeremy Calder, Handsome Women: A semiotics of non-normative gender in SoMa, San Francisco.
Drag queens in the 2015 SoMa “Oasis Follies” drag night
Archive for June, 2017
On the fierce femininity of drag queens
June 12, 2017Anniversaries: 50, 55, and more
June 12, 2017Today, June 12th, is Loving Day (the anniversary — the 50th — of the court decision in Loving v. Virginia) and also Pulse Day (the anniversary — the first — of the murders at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando FL), plus the anniversary — the 55th — of my graduation from Princeton. In four days, more anniversaries: Bloomsday (the anniversary — the 113th — of the day during which the events of James Joyce’s Ulysses unfolded and also my step-son Kit Transue’s birthday — a solid square number — and the anniversary — unbelievably, the 55th — of the day when Ann Daingerfield and I were married.
You can dress a fox in hen’s clothing, but…
June 11, 2017… you’ll do better dressing a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Rhymes With Orange from the 9th:
Wolves and sheep share a basic body pattern (four legs, tail, etc.), but foxes and chickens diverge substantially. A wolf might pass for a sheep, but not a fox for a hen.
Making fun of Batman
June 11, 2017Two Batman cartoons have just come to me. Passed on by Chris Hansen, this uncaptioned (and unsourced) cartoon:
(#1)
Batman at a bustop with four old women: what to make of the scene?
And in today’s comics feed, this Bizarro:
(#2)
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 13 in this strip! — see this Page.)
Shit yes! Fuck no!
June 11, 2017Apparently the obscenity policy of the Syfy channel: shit is fine, fuck has to be bleeped. This on cable tv, in the middle of the night. At Syfy, there are some lines that Cannot Be Crossed.
An observation prompted by my viewing the glossy, hysterical, high-energy vampire flick From Dusk till Dawn on Syfy in the dark of the night. The film is jam-packed with occurrences of shit and fuck, in a variety of uses, including this crucial line at end of the film:
Kate [played by Juliette Lewis] asks Seth [played by George Clooney] if she can go with him to El Rey, Mexico, but he declines, saying, “I may be a bastard, but I’m not a fucking bastard.” (Wikipedia link)
That’s what’s in the film, and the fucking is important to the character, but Syfy bleeped it — along with every other occurrence of fuck, while leaving a veritable shitstorm untouched. The effect is bizarre.
Mixing it up
June 11, 2017Pulled out the pink #2 bowl in my melamine bowl set, to use as a salad bowl — it also gets used as a pasta bowl, a stir-fry bowl, and of course as a mixing bowl in cooking — and once again admired the set: for its durability, its utility, and the cheery beauty of its colors:
(#1)
From smallest to largest: orange, pink, red, green (lime, rather than forest), and blue. Five of the six primary colors, with pink standing in for purple/violet, and missing yellow.
It ended in a Mexican Caesar salad
June 10, 2017It started with surgery, for gallstones. That was Wednesday. Resting at home, attempting nothing challenging, the lightest of food (miso soup), even after no solid food in 24 hours.
Thursday I managed my senior fitness hour — the old g(r)ay bear, he ain’t what he used to be — with great effort, but without using my walker.
And then my reward, a return to real food: a Mexican Caesar salad at the restaurant Reposado, up the street from me. Delicious, but only distantly related to classic Caesar salad.
Music hath powers to repel the savage pest
June 10, 2017In today’s Zits, Connie Duncan schemes to rid the house and garden of chipmunks:
Her weapon in this anti-sciurid campaign? Her son’s rock band.
It’s a lot like using classical music to disperse loitering teenagers from public areas.
Three cactuses
June 9, 2017Three entries from Rudolf Slaba, The Illustrated Guide to Cacti, Sterling Publishing Co., 1992. Just because the illustrations by Petr Liška are so pleasing. (And of course because these cacti, like so many, are phallic.)
