Archive for December, 2019

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The year in spam

December 31, 2019

The most recent posting on this topic: on 3/5/19, “Another 100k spams”, where I noted that the number of spam comments here (since the blog started in December 2008) passed 5,600,000 on 3/3. Some were automatically deleted by WordPress software, a great many more were made available for bulk deletion (or individual inspection) by me, and some were submitted to me individually for moderation. In periodic spam attacks, comments spam arrives at the rate of more than one per second (until the software wrestles it to the ground again).

That was 3/3. On 7/23, the count passed 5,700,000. And then, yesterday (12/30), 5,800,000. 6 million beckons! (Probably not next year, but soon.)

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Posted in Actors, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Phallicity, Shirtlessness, Signs and symbols, This blogging life | Leave a Comment »

The time of mildly debasing yourself

December 29, 2019

Nathan W. Pyle’s Strange Planet cartoon for this season:


(#1) The pleasures of the Christmas season, followed by resolutions for the New Year

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Posted in Holidays, Idioms, Language in social life, Linguistics in the comics, Social life | 1 Comment »

Holimanteaus and restaumanteaus

December 27, 2019

Two bulletins in the portmanteau news: portmanteau holiday names for combinations of holidays (especially in the December holiday season); portmanteau restaurant names for types of restaurants with something extra added. For example: the holimanteau Chrismukkah, the restaumanteau breastaurant.

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Posted in Holidays, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Names, Pop culture, Portmanteaus, Slang, Trade names | 2 Comments »

The first two days of Christmas

December 26, 2019

On the first day of Christmas, in a Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, Jesus seeks therapy for a life that has gotten out of his control. On the second day of Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day, Daily Jocks enlists a hugely overstuffed musclehunk to memorialize St. Stephen of the Sacred Box.

(Note: a certain amount of male flesh, crude wordplay on package and box, and lots of sacrilege. Use your judgment.)

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Posted in Comic conventions, Fiction, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and sports, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Linguists, Reference, Underwear | 1 Comment »

Revisiting 40: Bird X

December 25, 2019

Yesterday’s posting “Hung with care” was about, among many other things, animal alphabets, including in #8 one from Sally King McBride (going from alligator A to zebra Z), about which Robert Coren asked in a comment:

(#1)

Do you happen to know who the “X” bird in #8 is? It’s the only one I can’t identify.

How many X birds could there be? you ask. Well, a fair number, but my guess on this one is the ovenbird xenops, but I could be wrong. (McBride is alive and working in NYC, so if someone wants to figure out how to get in touch with her and is willing to write to her, they might be able to find out her intentions and report on them here.)

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Posted in Language and animals, Names, Taxonomic vs. common | 9 Comments »

Hung with care

December 24, 2019

Yes, cheap louche wordplay, and for Christmas. Manifested in the playful and deeply carnal CGI artwork of Vadim Temkin, in his alphabet of gay sex, where the letter shapes are formed by men’s bodies and body parts, many engaged in a variety of intense sexual acts.

This material, chock-full of sex talk in street language, is massively unsuitable for kids or the sexually modest, even without the images rife with male genitalia (which are in a posting on AZBlogX, 12/21/19, “Surprise! Vadim’s gay alphabet”).

Then, though the alphabet began merely as a set of 26 images, it came to me as worked into another genre: these images on the faces of surprise cubes, a set of 8 cubes which arrived a few days ago as Vadim’s New Year’s 2020 gift.

But first, the images, especially the one for the letter X, “eXcited Xmas eXhibitionist”, showing a well-hung Santa, with a Christmas wreath hung on his thick, solid erection (fuzzed over for WordPress, but inspectable on AZBlogX), while Santa himself hangs on a St. Andrew’s Cross, welcoming restraint, abuse, and pain. It’s a complex message.

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Posted in Alliteration, Art, Gender and sexuality, Language and plants, Language and the body, Language of sex, Language play, My life, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Toys and games | 10 Comments »

Pareidolia, they control ya

December 23, 2019

The Zippy from the 21st takes us into a world where hidden identities surround us everywhere:


(#1) Griffy gives the definition, and he and Zippy supply examples — in particular Karl Malden’s nose

Notes on pareidolia, on Karl Malden’s nose, and the Kinks’ “Destroyer”.

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Posted in Actors, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Perception | Leave a Comment »

Zeitgeisty

December 19, 2019

By William Haefeli in the 12/2/19 New Yorker, this entry in his chronicles of fashionable urban upper middle class gay men, especially in couples, especially in New York City:


(#1) “Someday I’ll buy a little place in the country and take my finger off the Zeitgeist.”

Meanwhile, both men are on the cutting edge of the Zeitgeist in fashion for men. Black guy with dreads and a neck tattoo on the left, white guy with a short ponytail and an ornate curly beard on the right. (I won’t even go into the clothes and accessories.)

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Posted in Actors, Homosexuality, Language and society, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv | Leave a Comment »

Adapted for Christmas use

December 18, 2019

With a bit of adjustment, or just relabeling, almost anything can be made relevant to the Christmas season. For music, you can just throw in some seasonal reference, or — as in today’s Zits — a refrain of solfege syllables common in traditional English music, famously in the fa la la of the Christmas carol “Deck the Halls”:


(#1) Deck the rats with love of spleen

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Posted in Holidays, Language in advertising, Linguistics in the comics, Music | Leave a Comment »

All I want for XXXmas

December 17, 2019

… is you in your homowear. I just want you for my own / More than you could ever know.

From Daily Jocks ads of the season: Boy offers himself, in his Cellblock 13 Covert jock and harness, to serve his Master; and SeksiMatti lowers his Helsinki Athletica shorts to make his jockstrap-framed pygian orbs available for use.

(A dip into gay male fetish-land, with bdsm, and puppy play as well; and then into the sexual display of the male body, especially the buttocks — so not for kids or the sexually modest, though there will be an entirely innocent digression into the self-deprecating Finnish cartoon character Matti.)

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Posted in Captions, Finnish, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Names, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

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