(About anatomical organs and sex between men, totally not suitable for kids or the sexually modest)
On the Naked Sword site yesterday (9/19), this remarkable ad for Fort Troff BOOF CBD suppositories (“It’s like poppers for your ass”):
Archive for September, 2020
Annals of remarkable commerce
September 20, 2020The mystery scribble
September 19, 2020I wrote about this on Facebook yesterday, but now (at Ellen Kaisse’s urging) I’ve managed to get an image of the mystery scribble to preserve in my WordPress archives.
The set-up: I sometimes jot down stuff from dreams during the night, usually just a word or two, but occasionally something longer. (Not infrequently this is pointless; because of my disabled right hand, I often can’t read my own handwriting.) A message from the middle of last night appears to say:
circuses engines — need recovery from moon craters
I am baffled. Don’t know whether that’s because I’m reading the message wrong, or whether the idea is just loony. (I also sometimes get hot inspirations about linguistics in my dreams, and these always turn out to be incoherent or stupid. No benzene rings for me. More detail below.)
Later: well, maybe “churches engines”; I reject “carcuses engines” (carcasses engines?), but none of the possibilities make any sense.
Out of the water and back again
September 19, 2020In the 9/21 issue of the New Yorker, this Lila Ash cartoon “Evolution of Man”:
(#1) New Yorker description of the cartoon: The evolution of man from a fish to a human throwing their phone in the water, and swimming in to retrieve it.
Yet another variation on the Ascent of Man theme; there have been so many of these on this blog that there’s a Page cataloguing them, here.
Marrow among the courgettes
September 19, 2020(This moves pretty quickly to men’s genitals, so it’s not appropriate for kids or the sexually modest.)
From the distinguished phonetician John Wells (in England — the England part is significant) on 9/18, this garden photo, with John’s caption:
(#1) Look carefully, and you’ll see a big marrow hiding underneath the courgette.
A FB reader (since I’m not sure about privacy protections, I won’t use their name) then wrote:
[A] Oh what a beauty
to which John replied
[B] …never seen one as big as that before!
taking us right into the world of sexual double entendres having to do with penis size. I admired the move (John and I are both openly gay, and that too is significant), and John delicately provided me with the source of the A – B sequence; it’s a famous quote from BBC comedy.
Born on the same day
September 18, 2020Today is the birthday of my second mother-in-law, Monique Serpette Transue (born 1912). And also of Samuel “Dictionary” Johnson (born 1709). A coincidence of dates that entertains me. When I noted this on Facebook yesterday, Ned Deily wrote:
The interwebz assert that no single word exists, in English at least, to describe people who share the same birthday anniversary. Time to invent one? A lexicographer’s work is never finished.
After a digression on what lexicographers do and another on Samuel Johnson and a note about Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, I’ll make a stab at coining.
Caillebotte’s garden
September 17, 2020From Joelle Stepien Bailard on Facebook, this wonderful 1878 painting by Gustave Caillebotte, The Orange Trees, or The Artist’s Brother in His Garden:
(#1)
It’s like a snapshot photo — people caught in the midst of going about their day — while being carefully composed formally (the dog lying on the path is an important feature in the composition) and combining highly realistic elements (the metal chairs, in particular) with some impressionist elements (the flowers, in particular). Complex and satisfying.
Then an exchange with Joelle:
Arnold Zwicky: Caillebotte is underappreciated, I think.
Joelle Stepien Bailard > Arnold Zwicky: I agree. I often feel he was too sophisticated to be properly appreciated in his own time.
As it turns out, his time eventually came, but that was in the 1960s, long after he died, young, in 1894.
Waiting for my man
September 16, 2020(Men’s bodies and sex between men, in street language, totally not for kids or the sexually modest.)
He’s never early, he’s always late
First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait
I’m waiting for my man
(from Lou Reed’s “I’m Waiting for the Man”)
Today’s Daily Jocks ad, for a jockstraps sale, has yet another model posed as offering himself for anal intercourse, something of a DJ specialty; these ads show really handsome male buttocks, minimally clothed, and right up against the line with porn. In today’s case, I’ve chosen to spin a whole sex story (in free verse, as a caption) about the man in the ad. Under the fold.
Modern still lifes: Darren Jones
September 15, 2020(Some very plain talk about sex between men, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Thanks to my 9/13 posting on Stephanie Shih’s West/East digital still life in “Mid-autumn memento mori for the times”, Pinterest has been sending me modern still lifes. Among which is a way gay photo composition by Darren Jones:
(#1)
The image is dominated by the pump bottle of Gun Oil lube (more below).
Cocktail music
September 15, 2020Today’s morning name. Lounge music for the cocktail hour.
(#1) DJNTV’s (Disc Jockey News TV) Mobile Music with DJ Jason Jones features mobile DJs from around the country who are playing weddings, schools and bars to find out how and what they play and when they play it.
Tom of Finland at 100
September 15, 2020(Well, it’s Tom of Finland, so it’s all about men’s bodies and mansex, and not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
On the Advocate site on 9/14, “Happy 100 Years: The Tom of Finland Biography”, on a new book on ToF:
(#1)
ToF is flagrantly about huge penises and muscular buttocks, and about intense sex between men, but (more important) also about the emotional relationships beween those men. It’s all extravagant fantasy, but also a celebration of gay male desire and affiliation in all of its forms, and so it has provided reassurance to untold numbers of gay men who scarcely resemble the fantasy sexually heroic figures of ToF — we are, variously, indetectable in the straight world and effeminate and dorky and little-dicked and horse-dicked and insecure and out-and-proud and full of shame — but can find in these figures validation of their desires and practices (notably, receptive anal intercourse: Real Men Take It Up the Ass). Plus, a lot of it is funny.