Archive for the ‘Categorization and Labeling’ Category
August 5, 2020
Yesterday’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, with songs you just can’t get out of your head:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)
A wonderful collision of worlds, set off by the idiomatic (and colorfully metaphorical) N + N compound earworm: the world of DJs — the ear world (disc jockeys providing sonic pleasures for the ear) — and the world of caterpillars — the worm world (caterpillars being one type of worm in colloquial English).
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Posted in Abbreviation, Categorization and Labeling, Idioms, Initialisms, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Music, Names, Taxonomic vs. common | Leave a Comment »
August 4, 2020
(All I need to tell you is that this posting takes off from a line of Cumdump jockstraps offered by the Breedwell company in deliberately provocative ads, and you should see that it’s totally not for kids or the sexually modest.)
A Daily Jocks ad from 11/4/19 shows us the jock in red, with a model presented faux-naturalistically as a tough working-class guy in a blue-collar setting (a railyard, shipyard, or truckyard). Ad copy for the jock:
The new Breedwell Cumdump Jock [available in white, black, red, yellow, and blue] is a take on the classic, old-school woven jock.
Features a black centre patch with the Breedwell logo and signature “Dirty By Choice” motto. The back of the jock features ‘Breedwell’ across the entire back.
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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Masculinity, Metaphor, Porn, Pornography, Portmanteaus, Scalarity, Semantics, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
June 6, 2020
A usage that was new to me, suddenly George Floyd-prominent in the news. Two examples, with the usage boldfaced:
— “Watch: ‘Black Lives Matter’ mural painted on streets leading to White House”, caption for an NBC News video accompanying the story “D.C. Mayor Bowser has ‘Black Lives Matter’ painted on street leading to White House: The act was intended to honor protesters who had peacefully assembled earlier this week” by Rebecca Shabad and Dartunorro Clarkon on 6/5/20.
— from the Valley News Live site (KVLY-TV, Red River Valley News in Fargo ND): “DC paints huge Black Lives Matter mural near White House”, with this photo from CNN:
(#1)
Murals usually go on walls. This one — surprise — is on a roadway.
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Posted in Art, Categorization and Labeling, Metonymy | 1 Comment »
May 27, 2020
From two friends on Facebook (lightly edited) on Tuesday (US Memorial Day having been on Monday):
1: What is up with “Happy Memorial Day?” It’s a day to remember the dead … I feel like people have no idea what Memorial Day is!
2: I’ve seen a lot of “happy” Memorial Day comments too. Unfathomable.
For them, such well-wishings are akin to “Happy Yom Kippur” (the Day of Atonement in Judaism) or “Merry Good Friday” (Crucifixion Day in Christianity) as expressions of goodwill — deeply at odds with the solemnity of the occasions.
Their reactions have been shared by many others. There’s a simple response, which I gave on Facebook and repeat below. Then there’s a more complex, messy response. (The topic will eventually lead, given my inclinations, to discussions of homowear and gay porn for the holiday — definitely racy, but not, I think, quite over the line into Not Safe For Minors territory.)
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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Gay porn, Holidays, Homosexuality, Underwear, Usage, Usage attitudes | Leave a Comment »
March 14, 2020
(Mostly an essay on American social practices and traditions, but with major helpings of manflesh and mansex, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
St. Patrick’s Day is the holiday. In the US, where its celebration is especially significant, it has taken on something of a carnival character, so of course there are gay porn sales for the holiday; gay men are ever bent on putting the carnal back in carnival, after all.
Meanwhile, at least in America, the saying is that on St. Patrick’s Day everybody is Irish. And in the US, we conspicuously — though very erratically — celebrate our diversity. So it’s not entirely a surprise that a brand of gay porn (the playfully and crudely named Peter Fever) devoted to the “highest quality Asian men, pants down” should undertake a big sale for St. Patrick’s Day. A sale including a bdsm porn flick set in the world of Japanese gangsters.
Now, that is diversity: go green, kinky queer yakuza!
(#1) Suit and Tied: Yakuza Control (“Submission, Obedience, Love, Deception”), with bdsm furniture in the background: dom Duncan Ku, subs Caged Jock (CJ), Tyler Slater
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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Lexical semantics, Race and ethnicity, Semantics | Leave a Comment »
March 1, 2020
(Sex toys and all they bring with them, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Today, a leek (for St. David’s Day, March 1st), but yesterday (the intercalary day February 29th) a leap.
The mail arrives and wow! (you exclaim) there’s a Leap Day flash sale at the Guy Gear Store, just for today! You have visions of well-designed equipment for hunting, fishing, and camping; cool bikes; hot athletic shoes; t-shirts for teams, bands, and plain ol’ aggression; tools Craftsman never dreamed of; electronics to rule the world of the future; and all that good guy stuff.
And then you examine the ad in detail:
(#1) Quick! Identify the three sale items in the ad; the model’s shapely buttocks are not actually on offer
Probaby not your father’s idea of guy gear.
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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Connotation, Gender and sexuality, Language in advertising, Masculinity | Leave a Comment »
February 15, 2020
In my “Socka Hitsch” posting yesterday, Christian Zwicky / Socka Hitsch described by the nominal
old eccentric rural Swiss roadside sock vendor ‘old, eccentric sock vendor on the roadside of rural Switzerland’, ‘seller of socks along the road in the countryside of Switzerland who is of advanced age and exhibits unconventional behavior’
An unusually long nominal — I was showing off some — but not one with unusual components, put together in unusual ways. In the middle of it, rural Swiss roadside, with the complex adjectival rural Swiss, modifying the compound noun roadside — a perfectly routine and unremarkable expression (compare rural Dutch in the attested rural Dutch landscape, urban English in the attested urban English roadworks, etc.), but one of some interest to people who fret about how the form — the morphology and syntax — of expressions (like rural Swiss) links to their meaning — their semantics and pragmatics.
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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Language and plants, Lexical semantics, Modification, Semantics, Semantics of compounds, Switzerland and Swiss things, Syntactic categories, Syntax, Words and things | Leave a Comment »
November 25, 2019
A return to the subject of my 3/10/16 posting “Male beauty”, on cultural categorizations of attractiveness and masculinity, primarily as evidenced in facial characteristics. Adding to the mix (a) yesterday’s posting on my man Jacques Transue as a young “dreamboat” (“Him, 55 years ago”); and (b) repeated passing references here to the Clint Eastwood of the tv series Rawhide (1959-66) as “young and beautiful, but ruggedly handsome”.
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Posted in Actors, Categorization and Labeling, Facial expressions, Masculinity, Movies and tv, Photography, Shirtlessness | 1 Comment »
