(Sex talk, but in mostly academic style. Still, definitely racy; use your judgment.)
This vision of shirtless high-masculinity turned up on Pinterest this morning:
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There will be another satisfyingly shirtless cowboy (these two images chosen from dozens, maybe hundreds, that are available), but the focus of this posting is on the saying
(1) Save a horse, ride a cowboy.
on its syntax, its semantics, and of course its allusion to positions for sexal intercourse.
(Talk of sexual bodyparts and sexual acts, but with symbols rather than pictures of carnal reality.)
From the NYT‘s Fashion & Style section on the 14th, “Gaymoji: A New Language for That Search” by Guy Trebay, with the hot gay news from West Hollywood CA:
You don’t need a degree in semiotics to read meaning into an eggplant balanced on a ruler or peach with an old-fashioned telephone receiver on top. That the former is the universally recognized internet symbol for a large male member and the latter visual shorthand for a booty call is something most any 16-year-old could all too readily explain. [Maybe most any 16-year-old, but not a lot of older people; see below.]
As with most else in our culture, demographics define the future, particularly those describing an age cohort born with a smartphone in hand. That, at least, is the calculation being made by Grindr, the successful gay meeting app with ambitions to overhaul itself as an internet commons for a generation of young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their pals.
And so, starting this week, Grindr will offer to users a set of trademarked emoji, called Gaymoji — 500 icons that function as visual shorthand for terms and acts and states of being that seem funnier, breezier and less freighted with complication when rendered in cartoon form in place of words.
One of the new emoji, an image of semen / ejaculăte — jizz, spooge, cum, cream, spunk, etc.:
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The Bizarro from 1/6/16:
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(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
But elephantitis would refer to an inflammation of the elephant. And elephantiasis is an actual (dreadful) disease. Maybe elephantosis would cover the condition depicted in the cartoon.
It’s been a while since I featured male dancers. And now, BR, a young (now 23) dancer with the National Ballet of Canada (in Toronto), seen here in a wonderful photo (by Karolina Kuras) on the NBC site:
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Rudisin is tall, lean, long-necked, and long-bodied, with a beautiful line in this shot. And of course with the muscled legs and arms required by his job.
An Avi Steinberg cartoon in the March 20th New Yorker, combining cavemen, clothing, and nipples:
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Cavemen: a cartoon meme. Clothing: one-shoulder garments for men. And of course men’s nipples. And then there’s Avi Steinberg, who’s a cartoonist+.
In the NYT Book Review on 3/5/1 7, under the heading “Walk on By” — subtitle (in print) “A tribute to the pleasures of aimless urban exploration, female style”, (on-line) “A Celebration of Women’s Pleasure in Wandering a City” — a review by Diane Johnson of Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London by Lauren Elkin (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016).
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The cover art captures well Elkin’s reconfiguring the identity of the flâneur, for nearly 200 years the exclusive property of men, as a female identity, the flâneuse. Still urban and modern and primarily European in outlook, but now available to women (of independent spirit).
Today’s Frazz, by Jef Mallett:
The substance of the strip is entertaining in itself, but here I’m interested in quotative (be) all, in
Mrs. Olsen was all, “I can’t …”
Research a few years back suggested that this quotative, which once was widespread among young speakers in the U.S., was receding fast, in favor of quotative (be) like. But here it is in the mouth of 8-year-old Caulfield (Frazz himself is 30). Well…
… of very different body types. Things saved up for some time, now to put them out.
Sage Brocklebank (Psych); Jordan Gavaris and Dylan Bruce (Orphan Black); John Wesley Shipp and Grant Gustin (The Flash).
For Pi Day, 3/14, from Chris Hansen, this 2005 Bizarro:
Not only the pi connection, but also a Dan Piraro piece of pie.
