(Surprisingly, this posting dips into some hardcore mansex talk — this isn’t Randall Munroe’s point at all, but it happens that I will go there, so later portions of this posting are entirely inappropriate for kids or the sexually modest. Life is complicated.)
A recent xkcd cartoon:
Ah, this is known in the trade as elegant variation. Or thesaurisizing, Be careful who you give a thesarus to.
Yesterday on Facebook, Jeff Shaumeyer with a currently hot meme:
Inexplicably, there are still people in America who believe this is always true!
HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED
THE POLICE LEAVE YOU ALONE IF YOU
AREN’T DOING ANYTHING ILLEGAL
A chain of responses followed (including a long unhappy response by me). Highlights below (reproduced here with permission).
Today’s morning name. So obviously Latin, a 2nd-declension neuter noun. But apparently not; instead it’s a mystery.
OED2 on tantrum:
Etymology: Origin unascertained.
colloquial.
An outburst or display of petulance or ill-temper; a fit of passion. Frequently in plural. Now often spec. a fit of bad temper in a young child.
[1st cite: 1714 E. Verney Let. 30 Oct. in M. M. Verney Verney Lett. (1930) II. xxi. 18 Our lady has had some of her tanterums as Vapors comeing out etc. Then: 1754 S. Foote Knights ii. 41 None of your Fleers!..Your Tantrums! You are grown too head-strong and robust for me.]
fleers? From NOAD:
verb fleer: [no object] literary laugh impudently or jeeringly: he fleered at us. noun archaic an impudent or jeering look or speech. ORIGIN late Middle English: probably of Scandinavian origin and related to Norwegian and Swedish dialect flira ‘to grin’
Etymology occasionally throws up mysteries like this one. If someone now wants to search collections of texts from the period, they might find some clues as to its source. It’s even possible that the noun doesn’t have an ordinary etymology, but was a mock-Latin invention. Whatever; ya gotta know the territory.
(All about men’s bodies and mansex, described in street language, so utterly inappropriate for kids or the sexually modest. As usual, I have more general points to make about sex, gender, and sexuality, but there’s no getting around the flagrant raunchiness of the content.)
An e-mail ad yesterday for a Daily Jocks sale, promoting their DJX fetishwear, specifically their very handsome harnesses and jockstraps, that comes as close to being flat-out gay porn as possible. A beautifully (but not extravagantly) muscled male body, lying prone on the silky sheets of a bed — simultaneously tough and high-masculine and also sumptuously queer — with his knees drawn up to offer his very muscular male buttocks for sex.
Tim Evanson on Facebook today observed that Daniel Goddard (born 8/28/71) is now 49. Happy birthday, Daniel.
Goddard was the star of the the Beastmaster tv series, which has provided me with many cheap-pleasurable hours of viewing, in which his very attractive shirtlessness played a significant part (though his physical acting, his smiles, the excellent supporting cast, and the entertainingly preposterous plots were significant contributions).
(#1) The characters Tao (played by Jackson Raine) and Dar (Goddard): well, yes, Goddard’s admirable torso and arm muscles (not to mention his sweaty body and surprisingy erect nipples), but it’s also a depiction of supportive male friendship, and that’s important
Back on 3/4 on Facebook, from Peruvian linguist Ernesto Cuba, with a photo of him
[Cuba phrase] con mi queridx Iván Villanueva Jordán, traductor queer … lingüistica marica
(#1) Ernesto (right) with his Peruvian student Iván (who’s studied drag queens in Lima)
(Google at the time didn’t try to translate queridx but translated lingüistica marica as ‘faggot linguistics’)
Cuba’s queridx posting led me to discover Dario Cocimano’s song “Hola Queridx” from his 2018 Digno album —
(#2)
— and so to query Cuba about the linguistic usages involved.
They Might Be Giants, “Your Racist Friend”, with the refrain:
This is where the party ends
I can’t stand here listening to you
And your racist friend
I know politics bore you
But I feel like a hypocrite talking to you
And your racist friend
You can experience a live performance of the song here — in Houston on 4/1/16 (the sound quality isn’t great, but you can appreciate their energy).
About the gay erotic artist and cartoonist John Klamik, so there wil be references to men’s bodies and mansex, though the hardcore images are off in a posting on AZBlogX. But the topic will obviously not suit every reader.
(This is also a posting from way back in my posting queue, drawing mostly on material collected in 2016.)
The impetus comes from my 4/28/16 posting on this blog, “Gay comics in the 21st century”, with a comment from Billy Britt mentioning Klamik and Tom of Finland.
A Zippy sequence that began back on 8/3 in this strip (reported on in a section of my 8/3 posting “The art of everyday objects”):
(#1) The premise is that this little house just appeared one day in Bill Griffith’s Connecticut neighborhood, provoking some bafflement as to its origin and function (note: in Bill Griffith’s neighborhood, not in the Dingburg area where the cartoon character Griffy is to be found)
That posting argued that the sliding door with a Z on it is just a standard Z-series barn door.
There followed three strips in which the door slowly opens, revealing someone inside — in fact, Zippy, presenting himself as a real person (like BG (Bill Griffith) rather than Griffy). Then a sequence of 8 increasingly surrealistic strips turning on issues of fiction and reality. Finally, two strips in which it turns out that Zippy is running a farm stand of the mind from that little shed.
Writing about a Haydn Arietta with variations (in my 8/16/20 posting “Name that tune”) brought a powerful musical memory flooding back to me, so powerful that I was moved to tears of joy: Haydn again, but now the Kyrie movement from his Paukenmesse (with its dramatic use of tympani).
The movement has a pattern common to a great many of Haydn’s symphonic movements: an initial slow introduction, then opening up into the main theme — in this case a songlike joyous “Kyrie Eleison”, which bursts out like a suddenly rising sun. Listen to the movement here, in an especially emotional performance conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
