Archive for November, 2021

The artist known as Zack Zwicky, and three Zachs

November 6, 2021

From Google Alerts this morning, a link to the site (zzwicky.com) of artist Zack Zwicky in Houston TX. A (small) photo of him from LiveJournal, and his earnest and good-hearted, but not very informative,”About” statement on his site:


(#1) Zachary “Zack” Zwicky: ZZwicky!

[About:] Aspiring to educate and influence students has been my focus for nearly two decades. Listening, understanding, and crafting a plan for their success is the best way to guide them. This is my personal endeavor: to inspire the diverse student body and community in my care with a passion for art – helping them to make sense of the world around them and exceed their wildest dreams.

He’s now an art teacher in the Alief Independent School District  in southwest Houston, teaching primary / secondary students who are predominantly “economically disadvantaged”. (The moral taint of poor has become so grievous that many people are reluctant to use it at all, opting to use the ponderous economically disadvantaged instead.)

Before Alief, Zack Z was an Associate Professor at the Art Institute of Houston for nearly 10 years. And he’s done a lot of commercial work of one kind or another, so that we find on LiveJournal:

[About:] Results-oriented Marketing Communications professional with a passion for crafting compelling messages. Extensive project management skills, expert knowledge of print and digital marketing, and a history of teaching others to become creative problem solvers.

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“I want to suck your socks off”

November 5, 2021

(The title alone should be enough to signal that this posting is totally inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest, as are three others to follow it. But a lot of this material is stunningly raunchy and also personal, so I’m issuing an especially strong warning. Two of the following postings merit a warning about heavy linguistics as well — phonology in one, syntax and semantics in the other, but even they are fugues on the vocabulary of fellatio, so men’s genitals and sex between men will be with us all the way through.)

Not a morning name exactly, but a quotation I woke up to a couple of days ago, a quotation bringing with it the recollection of an encounter from 40-some years ago that was so intensely pleasurable that I came to consciousness smiling and chuckling, with morning wood just a stroke short of a happy ending.

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A shot in the back

November 5, 2021

It’s November 5th: Guy Fox Day … um, Guy Fucks … Gay Fucks … Gay Folks … Gay Fox … oh hell, Gunpowder Day. Bang!

For the day, a smoking-gun cartoon, by Frank Cotham from the 10/11/10 New Yorker:

The duelists stood back to back and began the requisite number of paces before turning to fire their pistols — except that the banker wheeled around partway through and shot his opponent — dead — in the back. The cartoon plays on the stereotype of bankers as reckless and driven only by self-interest: Bad, bad Banker Brown / The baddest man in the whole damn town.

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Jordan Zwicky of Glow City Candles

November 4, 2021

Thanks to Google Alerts at the Halloween season, the Insider posting “Carving wax reveals monster candles” (in its entirety) by Kiki Sideris on 11/3, with this seasonal news (plus a YouTube video of the making of a Halloween candle):

Wax artist Jordan Zwicky of Glow City Candles and her apprentice, Clerisca Ribourg, create handmade Halloween candles. They dip each candle to create 30 to 50 layers of wax and carve them by hand. The candles take the form of eyeballs, zombies, skeletons, jack-o’-lanterns, and more. They are made to last forever and glow from the inside out when the wick is lit.

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An address to his penis

November 3, 2021

(A homoerotic pose, with companion poetry set in the world of gay desire. Nothing explicit, but, yeah …)

A Daily Jocks ad for its new Signature line of underwear captures a handsome young man in his white high-rise Signature briefs focused intently on the solidly packed pouch of those briefs and apostrophizing the magnificent penis within:

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The well-placed cactus

November 3, 2021

(Racy stuff about cactuses and the male genitals, so not in good taste, but not actually dangerous.)

Yesterday, from Heidi Harley on Facebook:


(#1) HH: Tucson does good sunrises too

And then in a further exchange:

Emily Menon Bender: Such a well placed cactus!

AMZ: I’m savoring “a well placed cactus”. Being the person that I am, I’m contextualizing it in things like “And in the garden stood a handsome young man with a well-placed cactus”.

Playing on the cactus as phallic symbol, with an echo of well-endowed and an allusion to the use of well-placed objects (even, perhaps, potted cactuses) to conceal naughty bits (breasts, male genitals — the very things that can be referred to as well-endowed) in otherwise nude representations.

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Z: Il dort

November 3, 2021

A Peanuts strip from 6/21/65 (thanks to Jeff Bowles) ends up being a tribute to the letter Z:


(#1) Snoopy the Z: he is sleeping

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Good news from the halls of academe

November 2, 2021

I am putting aside for the moment today’s intended posting, on Tucson sunrises and well-endowed cactuses, to pass on this excellent news, which came to me from my department chair Chris Potts > the department this afternoon:

Please join me in congratulating Professor Vera Gribanova on winning the LSA’s 2022 C.L. Baker Award, which “recognizes excellence in research in the area of syntactic theory on the part of a scholar who is at the mid-point of a distinguished career.”

A wonderful honor for someone who is surely actually only barely even approaching the *mid-point* of their career!

First, some exchanges about the award; and then some about Vera.

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Halloween pompoms

November 1, 2021

🐇🐇🐇 From a visit to Palo Alto’s Gamble Garden on Saturday morning with Kim Darnell and their sister Diana, a plant apparently designed for Halloween: Kleinia cephalophora ‘Orange Flame’:


(#1) A plant for this season (photo by K. Darnell); its many flower heads are orange-red globes, and it blooms late in the season (October), making it an appropriate Halloween plant

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