Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
March 11, 2025
An excursion into the title of yesterday’s posting “Things fall apart”, a wry tale of the misfortunes of daily life, with the following moment, in which a can opener literally falls apart, as its comedic center:
Can openers are difficult for me to operate. But I wrestled with it, and had gotten the can half open when the opener sprung apart, spraying gears and handles and other parts all over the kitchen counter. I then discovered that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again; the can opener had turned into a useless pile of metal and plastic trash.
My title has a distinguished pedigree, in this poetic line from William Butler Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Which then provided the title of the stunning 1958 novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
(more…)
Posted in Books, Humor, Poetry, Titles | Leave a Comment »
February 25, 2025
Today on Facebook, in a report on grocery prices, I reviled Helmet Grabpussy, Felonious Bunk, and the Anaranjado Rapist. Hana Filip then initiated a meta-discussion, about my discussion:
— HF: What a nice collection of monikers
— AZ >HF: Everyone should have a hobby (and, said the Cold Duke of Coffin Castle, mine is being wicked — but mine is collecting names for that obloquy magnet, 45+47, the Orange Menace)
— AZ: Ok, ok: The Cold Duke is from James Thurber’s The Twelve Clocks. Not everyone knows this, but you probably should
(more…)
Posted in Books, Insults, Names, Pragmatics | Leave a Comment »
February 7, 2025
A Sandra Boynton turkey cartoon from 1980, showing a (polite) offer framed as a request in the form of a question, using the formula May I VP?:
(#1) The exchange — with the offer made by a turkey who appears to be an attendant at a women’s checkroom (see the window in the background, with women’s dresses on hangers in the room behind the window) — follows the polite service script (involving an attendant and a customer, female in this case) in the first two panels, then runs off the rails in the third panel, where an ambiguity in the verb take rears up; the turkey assumes ownership of the coat and walks off with it as their own, leaving a nonplussed coatless customer
Three things here: the turkeys (who are a long-standing thing for Sandra Boynton); the polite service script (which incorporates conventionalized versions of some very indirect speech acts); and the ambiguity of take (which provides a surprise shift from the sense appropriate to the service script to an outrageous and dumbfounding larcenous sense).
(more…)
Posted in Allusion, Books, Cartoonists, Jokes, Language and animals, Language play, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Politeness, Pragmatics, Semantics, Social interactions, Speech acts | 1 Comment »
January 21, 2025
(all about an artist who celebrates male genitals and men sharing theirs with one another for fun and pleasure, whose work I will be discussing in street language, so this posting is totally not for kids or the sexually modest — though to satisfy WordPress’s strictures, there are, alas, no genitals displayed for open view)
The artist is the beefcakemeister Kent Neffendorf, who came to me this morning in this painting on Pinterest:
(more…)
Posted in Allusion, Art, Books, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Phallicity, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
January 17, 2025
From Will Leben in Zuckie’s Playroom on 1/15, this image from the Weird Wheels group:
(#1) Comment by Todd Ivler in the group: Due to lagging Cybertruck sales Tesla branches out…
Now: a bit of background on the Tesla Cybertruck, whose style inspired the mensroom accessory in #1; and my reaction to this accessory.
(more…)
Posted in Allusion, Books, Furnishings and tools | Leave a Comment »
December 8, 2024
From Tim Evanson on Facebook yesterday, this cover art by J.C. Leyendecker (1874-1951): The Literary Digest of 6/12/1909:
(#1) Homoerotic soft porn in the style of classical sculpture (complete with a laurel wreath for the author au naturel); the laurel wreath identifies the writer as an incarnation of Apollo, the god of poetry, who is often depicted with a laurel wreath (recalling his desire for Daphne, a nymph who was transformed into a laurel tree to escape the god’s advances); meanwhile, the writer is nude, because he’s a god (the model for this drawing was JCL’s favorite model, also his partner in life, Charles Beach (1881-1954))
I’m a writer (among other things), and I mostly work in my underwear, but I don’t write commando. Well, I’m no Charles Beach, and certainly no Apollo.
(more…)
Posted in Art, Books, Clothing, Fashion, Homosexuality, Language and plants, Language and the body, Masculinity, Myths | 1 Comment »
November 11, 2024
🎆 🎆 🎆 fireworks for 11/11, the double-lucky day the Great War was over (my parents, now long gone, were only 4 at the time and didn’t remember it; I was just short of my 6th birthday when V-J Day, recognizing the end of World War II, came along; celebrating it on the streets of West Lawn PA is my first clear memory of events in the larger world)
Hard to appreciate now what a gigantic rupture the Great War (beginning in 1914) was; the horrors of its modern warfare came along with those of the Russian Revolution (beginning in 1917) and the great influenza pandemic of 1918, and (as Paul Fussell argued in The Great War and Modern Memory) fostered a disillusioned modernist sensibility, wiping out much of what had gone before.
Then, as I wrote in my 11/11/22 posting “Carousing for St. Martin”:
It’s Armistice Day [commemorating the 11/11/1918 armistice ending World War I] (in the US, Veterans Day), solemnly following on the solemn anniversary of Kristallnacht, but it’s also (as Hana Filip just reminded me) the feast day of St. Martin of Tours: St. Martin’s Day, which has its serious saintly side — St. Martin and the beggar in rags — but is, as well, a day of wild revelling, initiating the winter season. An occasion that, ultimately, inspired a piece of music that is just sheer noisy unbridled fun: the Wine Chorus from Haydn’s The Seasons (aka “Juhe! Der Wein ist da!” from Die Jahreszseiten).
But now about 11/11:
(more…)
Posted in Books, History, Holidays, Music, My life, Numbers | 3 Comments »
October 22, 2024
This remarkable image — In Love’s Garden: “The Peach Blossom” (from 1904) — appeared on my Pinterest feed this morning:
(#1) A peach blossom, with a bit of stem attached, and a female face, adored by a young man (the word sentimental comes to mind); to very modern eyes. just the combination of the word peach and the image of the flower will probably instead evoke buttocks (as the object of sexual desire), in the peach emoji 🍑 used in sexting — though this was obviously far from the artist’s intention 120 years ago
A bit of clicking from the Pinterest image led to the Prints with a Past site (“antique prints dating from the late 1700s through early 1900s”), where color prints of #1 are offered for sale. There the artist was identified as John Cecil Day (US). A search on this name got me nothing; well, illustrators are generally under-appreciated, and Day might have been a niche artist, of little note even in his own time.
But searches will turn up lots of things that aren’t what you asked for but have names similar to your search terms. And so my search for John Cecil Day brought me to an illustrator named John Cecil Clay, who looked an awful lot like my guy. I pulled up my copy of #1, got out my big magnifier, and looked at the signature. Yes, for sure, John Cecil Clay, famous enough to have a Wikipedia page. And the creator of a series of In Love’s Garden illustrations, of flowers that were also women. The Prints with a Past staff had misread the signature.
With the right name on hand, I could find more flowers from Clay’s garden. Two more of these, and then on to the fascinating story of Clay’s life; and a final note on sexting with emoji.
(more…)
Posted in Art, Books, Emoji, Language and plants, Language and the body, Signs and symbols, This blogging life | Leave a Comment »
October 20, 2024
Wayles Browne writes from Cornell:
you might spare a posting for Jacob Wackernagel, the Swiss philologist, who was the first to make sense of second-position clitics (https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/270), born 11 December 1852; and for Jost Winteler, the other Swiss philologist and author of Die Kerenzer Mundart des Kantons Glarus in ihren Grundzügen dargestellt (1876), who may or may not have been a predecessor of phonemic theory, but who definitely was a mentor to young Albert Einstein after the latter moved to Switzerland. Winteler was born 21 November 1846.
This is that posting, First, I have added Wackernagel (12/11/1852) and Winteler (11/21/1846) to my e-calendar.
Then, from my reply to WB:
I used to be an authority on second-position clitics, even have a t-shirt that says PUT YOUR CLITICS IN SECOND POSITION.
As for Winteler, Canton Glarus is where the Zwickys come from — mostly from Mollis.
Meanwhile, I happen to be wearing my Swiss-flag gym shorts. Hail, Helvetica! and all that.
(more…)
Posted in Books, Clitics, Clothing, Holidays, Linguists, Slogans, Switzerland and Swiss things | Leave a Comment »
October 14, 2024
(About gay porn, with rapt attention to men’s bodies and sex between men, in street language, so entirely inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest)
Dirty Words is a new release from NakedSword Originals (in the Falcon family of gay porn studios). Not about dirty words ‘taboo vocabulary, offensive or indecent words’, but about dirty writing ‘sex writing’ (erotic fiction, sexual memoirs, sexual advice). The synopsis from the studio (divided into paragraphs for easier reading):
New York City has long been the playground of sex writer Zachary Zane, author of Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto. Threesomes, anonymous hook-ups, and sex parties are all in a day’s research, not to mention questions from blog fans who happen to spot him out and about at his favorite Manhattan haunts.
Even power-bottom stud Michael Boston stops him on the street for some advice on his relationship with fuck buddy Alexander Müller before Zachary finally heads to Fire Island for a few days of rest and relaxation. Quickly, though, Zachary learns that the summer getaway hotspot is packed with inquisitive readers, all of whom want a piece of him – for counsel, of course. What started as an escape from writing deadlines quickly becomes a crash course in better sex for Oliver Hunt, Harold Lopez, Matty West, Beaux Banks, and Axel Rockham.
By the time Zachary returns to his NYC stomping grounds, he’s ready for a vacation from his vacation – but not before weighing in on a kinky threeway that new pal Michael Boston is planning to have with buddies Braxton Cruz and Travis Connor. Never one to say no to a friend, Zachary dispenses wisdom and encouragement in his signature no-nonsense style, proving that he’s always willing to provide more than just the tips.
(more…)
Posted in Books, Color, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Language play, Rhyme, Signs and symbols, Taboo language and slurs, Writers | Leave a Comment »
