Accumulated: a recent rush of bits of stuff — mostly, but not entirely, silly and playful — that might conceivably be turned into blog postings. I posted some of them yesterday on Facebook, and elicited some comments from readers there. In any case, I’m parking some notes here, rather than in computer files or little pieces of paper. This material is skeletal, but you might find some of it entertaining or thought-provoking. Warning: men’s underwear figures prominently.
Dubious trade names department.
[AZ] I probably won’t be able to get to posting on the wonderful trade name Krakatoa Underwear (for men), so here it is for your musing pleasure.
[ensuing cascade of cheap puns]
Components of an elaborate joke, fantastical story, or bit of free verse.
[AZ] Something else I might not get around to posting on: Roddy O’Nederland, aka “Dutch Roddy”, the Pride of the Low Country Irish [the Lowcountry Irish, in SC, are an actual thing, by the way] — what’s he famous for?
[components] Radio Nederland, the Dutch national radio service. Roddy O’X as a pattern of Irish names: googling provides (at least) Roddy O’Connor, Roddy O’Donnell, Roddy O’Kane, Roddy O’Keeffe, Roddy O’Neill, Roddy O’Sullivan. The Netherlands as one of the Low Countries. Apparently no Low Country in Ireland, but…
[South Carolina Lowcountry on the Hilton Head Island site] “History of the Irish in the Lowcountry: The Irish influence extends far beyond St. Patrick’s Day” by Alison Hersh (Charleston Irish, a pub, has a FB site)
[Aaron Broadwell] Does he appear in an underwear advertisement with a low country shillelagh?
[Wikipedia on shillelagh] A shillelagh is a wooden walking stick and club or cudgel [used for fighting or in self-defense], typically made from a stout knotty blackthorn stick with a large knob at the top. It is associated with Ireland and Irish folklore. (shillelagh as phallic symbol)
[Joel B Levin > Aaron Broadwell] I did not know shillelaghs came in distinct low country and high country versions. Interesting. (Or do I find it where left-handed monkey wrenches originate?)
Teal on the wing. Inspired by a steamy PUMP! men’s underwear ad, four models posing (with a variety of cruise faces and four underwear types) in the PUMP! Activate collection (in deep purple, teal, and white). [need photos here]
[AZ] One more: what happens in the romantic popular song “Teal for Two”? (If it’s set in a tealroom, whazzat?)
[Aric Olnes] 🎼 Darling this place is a lover’s oasis where life’s weary chase is unknown. [AZ] Jackpot! [Aric] Yup, it totally works with the gay cruisy tearoom sexual innuendos.
[NOAD] noun tearoom: North American informal a public restroom used as a meeting place for homosexual encounters.
[Jens Fiederer] Apparently that is a nail polish. There are actually TWO popular tea songs, I don’t really know the commonly known one [“Tea for Two”] (but have heard of it and possibly even heard it) but I know very well the operetta duet “Tea en deux”…which is about an ambassador’s daughter luring a mandarin.
[Color Club site] with its nail polish Teal for Two
Feigned pedophilia.
[AZ] And yet another, an observation with a severely raised eyebrow, on getting an ad from a gay porn site I’d never heard of before, ick, Bring Me a Boy: a series I’d never heard of before, ick-squared, Daddy’s Boy Whore — now, oh jesus, at *Volume 28*.
[AZ thought] I was hoping for Daddy-Boy pairings with figurative rather than literal Boy. But by the cover of the DVD, alas no.
Camptown Races. On 9/15 Ann Burlingham sends friends a photo of puffball soup, made from a gigantic puffball she’d foraged herself
[Ann] I can’t stop eating the puffball soup
[AZ > Ann] Soup looks ok, line needs to be set to music. We want soup you can *sing*!
[AZ to himself] Can’t stop eating the puffball soup, doo wah, doo wah… [“Camptown Races”]
September 18, 2021 at 5:41 am |
I notice right in the first paragraph you mention “blog postings”, and that (or related forms, all a trifle awkward) are also my preferred expressions for single entries on a blog, where here “a blog” or “the blog” is a collection or series of such entries or posts … like a traditional log of course.
But I am aware of a contrary or mixed usage, where someone will speak of “a blog” for a single one of the entries or postings within what I call a blog. So in your headline or title, “Materials for a blog” I wasn’t sure which way you were using it.
I think I first became aware of the “a blog = one entry” pattern very early after learning about blogging at all, in the late 90s, when I noticed people saying or writing thing like “I wrote a blog on that” or “I have to go post a blog now”. And it solidified upon seeing someone scoffing at somebody else’s production and proclaiming “Oh I normally write three blogs before breakfast!”.
In all of these cases it is hard to take “write” along with the sense of “series of postings” since it seems to mean doing all the administrative creation to establish a web log as well as producing a whole series of entries. And thus in the “write three blogs before breakfast” overheard example I realized it just *had* to be a “single entry” sense.
Sorry, forgot where I was going! I don’t disparage or contest that usage, but think the “blog = log, whole series of entries” usage is more familiar; and I sometimes think I see something like pattern or clusters of who (by age, gender, ethnicity) use either one. And I would have put you in the “blog = whole log” group, but today’s blog’s title gave me pause!
September 18, 2021 at 6:40 am |
The word is now ambiguous, in a familiar pattern of whole-part metonymy X vs. ‘instance of X’. For blog the collection sense (I write a blog on linguistics) is clearly the older sense, but the instantiation sense (I wrote a blog on the syntax of frog croaks yesterday) is now well established — as you note, it’s very useful — though not everyone is comfortable with it.
As for the title of my blog posting, devious person that I am, I intended to invite *both* understandings: materials for Arnold Zwicky’s blog vs. materials for a posting on that blog.
September 18, 2021 at 5:59 am |
By chance, a moment after posting that, I ran across https://academic.logos.com/kierkegaards-leap-of-faith/ where one of the editors / blog contributors writes “We recently invited Dr. Mark Tietjen to contribute a series of articles on Søren Kierkegaard,[…]” , and then early in the incorporated article, author Tietjen writes ” In this and other blogs to follow, I hope to point to […]”. So one person’s “article” is another’s “blog”.
September 18, 2021 at 7:29 am |
I thought the refrain in “Camptown Races” was “doo-dah”. (There are a couple of places in Wagner’s Das Rheingold where one of the giants – I think it’s Fafner in both cases – uses the phrase “du da” [“you there”], and it always makes me smile a little bit.)
September 18, 2021 at 7:48 am |
Indeed the refrain in “Camptown Races” isn’t “doo-wah” (as in “Doo-Wah Diddy”). But then the *line* in “Camptown Races” isn’t “Can’t stop eating the puffball soup”, either. Parody all the way.
September 18, 2021 at 8:45 am
Doo-wah ditty? Ditty-dumb did he do? Devious person that he is, evil did he dwell.
September 18, 2021 at 9:18 am
Reply to Stewart Zipperbear Kramer: happy guffaws. Thank you.
Do people ever call you Zip? Zip was my Dad’s college nickname — full of zip, always with a ready smile, and then the alliteration — and it stuck with him as his nickname all his life, I mean *my mother* called him Zip. My college nickname was Zot — good with my tongue, from the anteater in B.C., plus the alliteration — but it didn’t last past Princeton.
September 18, 2021 at 11:20 am
I’m glad I could get you to laugh. Yes, my dad occasionally called me Zip, but not much recently. Of my childhood nicknames, Zipperbear was the only one that lasted. For about a week as a toddler, I could climb up using the furniture, but if I stopped I’d fall over, so I’d toddle back and forth between handholds, zip-zip-zip, all day long, hence the name. The association with bearish men and their clothing is just a happy coincidence.