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A sculptor in Kyiv

February 10, 2023

An accidental find on Pinterest: Huzenko Kyrylo, a Ukrainian sculptor working in Kyiv, in a considerable range of forms, but specializing in emotionally intense male nudes, in socially and politically informed works of great power. (Note: there will be two of his male nudes reproduced below, which I believe to be acceptable on WordPress through the Fine Art Exemption for such things, but which some viewers might disapprove of.)

You can view a gallery of his daily life and works on his Instagram page (text in Ukrainian, but with — not very dependable — English translations available); there seems to be no on-line source of information about him and his career.

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Posted in Art, Male art, Ukrainian | Leave a Comment »

Robotic ravioli

February 9, 2023

Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, in which George Lucas tangles with Hector Boiardi in an interleaved portmanteau:


(1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)

Orthographically, we’ve got Chef Boyardee (a brand of canned ravioli) confronting R2-D2 (a film robot), which don’t join easily to get Chef BoyR2D2. But it’s all in the pronunciation. In transcription, marked off in syllables, with the shared parts underlined:

bòj.ár.tu.dí.tu  =  bòj.ar.dí + ár.tu.dí.tu

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Posted in Books, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Portmanteaus | 1 Comment »

Oskar Zwicky: from Odesa back to Canton Glarus

February 9, 2023

From my 6/28/22 posting “Zwicknames”:

some of us Zwickfolk probably have a Slavic ancestry, way back when, so there’s a kind of poetic symmetry in a migration of Swiss people, among them a notable Zwicky [Johann Heinrich Zwicky, known as Henry] east to [the Odesa area] in 1822, to establish vineyards there (in [what is now] Ukraine). Some stuck it out there, but others fled north to what is now Belarus. [see my 5/22/19 posting “Tsviki from Belarus”] In the mid-20th century, the [Shabo] Zwickys fled back west on a tortuous route, eventually re-establishing themselves in Switzerland (one — Oskar Zwicky, born 9/23/30 — is, astonishingly, still alive and giving interviews; posting to come). And then more recently, many of the Tsvikis from Belarus also fled west, some to Switzerland, some to the United States (including the Miami area and NYC).


(#1) Oskar Zwicky, looking very Swiss, in an engaging 2022 interview, in Oberterzen, Canton Glarus (photo: swissinfo.ch)

This is the fulfillment of that promise: a posting about Oskar Z, born in Shabo, near Odesa in what is now Ukraine, now living back in Canton Glarus, in Switzerland’s northeastern alpine region.

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Posted in Zwickys | 3 Comments »

Two excellent things about the spotted snow skink

February 8, 2023

Carinascincus ocellatus, the spotted (or ocellated) snow (or cool-) skink is very small and inconspicuous and hangs out on an out-of-the-way island — Tasmania, way down south — but offers two excellent things for us to enjoy:

— the name spotted snow skink, an /s/-alliterative double trochee (SW SW) that lends itself to satisfying repetition as a found mantra

— the occasional individual that’s sexually discordant — of one sex anatomically (and reproductively), but the other sex genetically (for these skinks, anatomically male but genetically female); the change in anatomical sex during incubation (for these skinks, associated with temperature then) is attested in some oviparous (egg-laying) fish, amphibians, and reptiles, but not, until recently, in a viviparous (live-bearing) creature. Most lizards are oviparous, but Carinascincus ocellatus is viviparous, so it’s a new frontier in sexual discordance.

There turns out to be quite a lot to say about this little creature; bear with me as I wander, pretty much aimlessly, over a large intellectual landscape.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and animals, Poetic form | 2 Comments »

More on the social lives of Ruff Dudes

February 8, 2023

(all about men’s bodies and sex between men, in street language, so entirely not for kids and the sexually modest)

The social lives of Ruff Dudes, including fashion choices and sexual practices. Specifically, on Fuck Me socks and fuck machines. In the fulfillment of a promissory note from my 10/21/22 posting “Neon jocks”.

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Posted in Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language of sex, Masculinity, Parody | Leave a Comment »

The tiger and his boytoy

February 8, 2023

… on the psychiatrist’s couch, in a 7/12/11 cartoon by Canadian cartoonist (illustrator, graphic novelist, and children’s book author) Dave Whamond:


(#1) A cartoon about cartoon characters (from Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson), with a character reversal — the tiger Hobbes is real, and the boy Calvin is his stuffed toy, though Hobbes fantasizes that the boy is real

(more…)

Posted in Cartoonists, Comic conventions, Etymology, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

The faces of a baker’s dozen fcleffings

February 7, 2023

(solidly about men’s bodies and man-on-man sex, in street language, so entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)

For the background, I return to two postings on this blog from July 2022:

— from 7/3/22, “Smiles of the summer days”, about a sexual encounter between Cocky Boys Levi Karter and Blake Mitchell that exemplifies a common trope of gay male porn combining a facial component — two faces pleasurably engaged with one another (in what I’ll call facial coupling) — and a groin-buttocks component — a back-on-front sit-fuck (what I’ll call a lap fuck, aka Reverse Cowboy):


(#1) 1 ONE-SIDED interaction: R[eceptive] Levi Carter, I[nsertive] Blake Mitchell)

— from 7/5/22,  “The reverse of me”, about gay pornstar Zach Astor, with X-rated images in an AZBlogX posting of 7/5/22, “Zach Astor”: ZA engaged in such an encounter with Tannor Reed:


(#2) 2 ONE-SIDED interaction: I Zach Astor, R Tannor Reed

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Posted in Facial expressions, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex | 2 Comments »

The boys of summer

February 6, 2023

Return with me now to (what was by one reckoning) the beginning of summer, seven months ago, when I started a complex posting on the boys of summer. Now it’s chilly winter / spring in Palo Alto (night-time lows around 40 F.) and it pleases me to contemplate warmer times.

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Posted in Art, Books, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and sports, Language and the body, Male art, Movies and tv, Music | 3 Comments »

Don’t call me a “creative”

February 5, 2023

Today’s (2/5/23) Doonesbury strip  shows us artist J.J. Caucus and her husband Zeke Brenner in her studio, with J.J. fuming about being labeled a creative:


(#1) “I’m a noun, not an adjective!” But then Zeke shifts the ground from be a creative to be creative, noting (in effect) that be creative denotes a characteristic, not an identity, so “less pressure”

J.J.’s complaint is about the nouning of the adj. creative, yielding a C[ount] noun creative that apparently just means ‘creative person’, but she’s more than a creative person, she’s a professional creator, an artist. As it turns out, the C noun creative is a great deal more specific that ‘creative person’ — and in its established usage it refers to a type of professional in the advertising industry, so in fact doesn’t apply to J.J. at all. Gripe on, J.J.!

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Posted in Beheading, Context, Conversion, Nouning, Pragmatics, Style and register | Leave a Comment »

On the power of music

February 4, 2023

It begins with Rainbow (SH 344) in Palo Alto CA (where I live now) and ends with Gospel Trumpet (SH 99) in Exeter Township, Berks County PA (the county I grew up in), about 2500 miles away, and it’s about the power of music.

Moving from a California low-slung open-plan church complex (UUCPA: the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto), in a 6/5/22 singing celebrating 50 years of Sacred Harp singing in Palo Alto, which I was able to take part in face to face (and to supply recollections of how I got into shapenote singing, in Columbus OH, and how I became part of Sacred Harp groups in the Bay Area). With Rainbow, an ecstatic hymn of praise.

And then to one of the regular Sacred Harp singings at the Exeter Friends Meeting House, a small stone meeting house built by Pennsylvania Quakers in the 18th century — in January 2019, when a singing of Gospel Trumpet (loud, raw, powerful) was captured on videotape.

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Posted in Language and religion, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »

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