Archive for August, 2023

Two Pec Men posting in thongish briefs

August 18, 2023

(Gay porn actors displaying their bodies entertainingly in minimalist briefs. But yes, man-on-man sex in street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Just for gasps and laughs. Posted here because of the two model’s presentations of themselves, their stances, their facial expressions, their amusingly skimpy briefs, their body types (especially Rudy Gram’s, which appeals deeply to me), and their evident pride in having developed their pectorals to the point (the point of their sharply erect nips) where those muscles (and Lobo Carreira’s two signally available buttocks) should probably be given names. So I find this p.r. shot for a recently released Lucas porn flick both incredibly hot and laugh-out-loud goofy.

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Annals of error: the carptenters of Southwest Ohio

August 18, 2023

A typo in writing — CARPTENTER, with an anticipation of the T in CARPENTER — which was then not caught by a proofreader, so that it got published looking like CARP-TENTER ‘someone or something for tenting carp’, but written solid. Exposed by Michael Palmer on Facebook on 8/15. The published display, with the beginning of the accompanying news article:


US Senator Sherrod Brown August 15 at 11:09 AM: Today our Butch Lewis Act saved the pensions of 5,400 carpenters in Southwest Ohio, restoring full benefits with NO cuts. When work has dignity, workers can take comfort that the pensions they’ve earned over a lifetime will be there for them when they retire

And then, of course, the playful Facebook comments, starting with Michael Palmer’s initial salvo:

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Love wins in the Queen City

August 18, 2023

From Aric Olnes on Facebook yesterday:


(#1) [AO:] “Love Wins” mural [by artist Matthew Dayler] in Cincinnati, Ohio … Flamingos 🦩, Drag Queens 💃🏿 and winged Leather Pigs 🐖, oh my!

For me, it’s the two guys on the left; I’m a fool for men kissing (in fact, this blog has a Page devoted to my postings about men kissing).

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The grand jury’s cough drop

August 18, 2023

The political / medicinal pun RICO Law / Ricola: on Facebook on 8/15, Kyle Wohlmut passed along  — “meanwhile in Switzerland” — the 8/14 Mike Scollins titling RICO LAW of an image from the classic Ricola (Swiss cough drop) commercial:


Posted within minutes of the Georgia RICO indictments (see below)

Now to the commercially medicinal and the political-conspiratorial.

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At the margins of sleep time

August 17, 2023

(Mentions of male genitalia and masturbation, in street language, so I’m supposed to warn off kids and the sexually modest — though my belief is that these topics (especially masturbation) should be open to adolescents, who have a big stake in the topics. But I’m issuing the warning that laws require.)

This is about the routines of my life, how they have changed as I recover, slowly, from gallbladder surgery (I came home from Stanford University Medical Center about eight weeks ago); adjust to changes in my treatment regimen (which make for fewer whizz breaks during the night, now roughly every two hours, and permit a longer period, on the order of 45 minutes, between the urgent calls to whizz during the day); accommodate the return of my high sex drive (a welcome concomitant of recovery from sickness — but it comes with a certain amount of urgency); adjust to a warming and toning up of my body, plus a huge boost in balance and an infusion of energy and optimism that just magically happened about three weeks ago; and get used to being utterly alone and on my own for essentially everything (my excellent helper León Hernández — who was with me essentially every day for weeks, learned the routines of my life, provided me with excellent company, and became a friend — spent his last day with me a couple of weeks ago; now he has a new full-time patient, in Pacifica, far from here).

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Pablo Picasso and Eminem, together

August 17, 2023

Brief notice: a Facebook posting with a loony AI-generated report — alas, now lost to me — on painter Pablo Picasso and rapper Eminem placed them together back in the 1600s, presumably along with some dinosaurs from those bygone days, and so generated a certain amount of harsh criticism, but also a strange breath of reality on reddit.com:

— r/Showerthoughts 6 mo. ago by -bobby-jackson-: Eminem was born while Pablo Picasso was still painting…

— Odd-Knee-9985 6 mo. ago: I mean, people think Picasso was some 1600’s painter, but he was actually very modern (1881-1973).

Not only very modern in the calendrical sense (that is, not a figure from the 17th century), but in fact one of the central figures in what came to be known as modernism in art; in a sense, in one context Picasso defined “modern”.

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Affinal equivalents

August 16, 2023

In a comment on my 8/15 “niblings” posting, Aric Olnes reports having 20 niblings (sib’s kids), “27 including spouses”. Now, sib’s kid is a consanguineal relationship — of kinship “by blood” — in both of its parts, sib and kid. Including spouses introduces an affinal relationship — of kinship by marriage — into the mix.

A nibling’s spouse would be, technically, a nibling-in-law, but we don’t customarily treat such a person as an in-law; either they’re no kin at all (instead, in some Americans’ terminology, they’re a connection), or they’re treated as equivalent to a nibling (the way Aric treats them); sib’s-kid’s spouse counts as equivalent to sib’s kid.

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Fresh Baby Meat Ravioli

August 15, 2023

In the everlasting battle between brevity and clarity, this grievous loss for the clarity side, in an Australian grocery skirmish, fought in the aisles of the Preston Market in Melbourne VIC some years back.

From Michael Palmer on Facebook yesterday, this photo of miniature ravioli, made with fresh fillo / filo / phyllo pastry (from Antoniou Fillo Pastry in Moorebank NSW — “specialists in Australia since 1960”), and filled with meat:


[MP, snarkily:] Locally sourced isn’t a problem, but free-range babies are difficult to come by these days

It’s hard not to read the four-word label as advertising ravioli made with fresh baby meat — when the intention was to advertise the ravioli as fresh and baby(-sized) and meat(-filled), or (in my words above) as miniature ravioli, made with fresh fillo pastry, and filled with meat.

Brevity stripped the label down to only four (non-compound) words, and then there was no hope for clarity. You can get it down to four words, but you’ll need more space:

Fresh Baby-Size [or Miniature, or Mini] Meat-Filled Ravioli

The noun baby as a modifier has to go, and there’s not much you can do about the order of the modifiers (since these follow an ordering on the basis of their semantics). But Fresh Mini Meat-Filled Ravioli isn’t much longer.

(MP found other images of this display, from other angles, with a dated version back in 2016 that refers to Preston Market.)

niblings

August 15, 2023

Provoked by the Merriam-Webster site‘s “Words We’re Watching: ‘Nibling’: An efficient word for your sibling’s kids”: some reflections on the portmanteauing that gives rise to nibling ‘niece or nephew, sibling’s child’; on “having a word for X in language L”; and on neologism and its discontents.

First, the fun. There’s a book for kids, and there’s a t-shirt for kids, too.

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You look pretty dirty

August 14, 2023

What her mother says to Ruthie in a vintage One Big Happy comic strip that came up in my comics feed some time ago:


How to understand the sentence (X) You look pretty dirty? Ruthie’s mother intends X to be understood as something like ‘You look rather dirty’, while Ruthie understands X as “You look pretty when you’re dirty’ — no doubt a willful misunderstanding, finding a compliment in her mother’s words — and responds accordingly

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