Archive for the ‘Categorization and Labeling’ Category

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Z & G tumble into a thesaurus

April 10, 2021

Yesterday’s Zippy strip has Zippy and Griffy falling into a delirium of word attraction, savoring a smorgasbord of colorful synonyms, plundering the Rogetian treasures:

(#1)

592 is the compendium section of Peter Mark Roget’s 1852 Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. If we’re to trust Bill Griffith, the 1st edition had numbered subsections, and 592.4 had the words thesaurus, index, archive, and idioticon (yes, idioticon; see below). The successor edition that I have (the 4th, billed as “Americanized”) has a quite different 592, focused on words for abbreviated compendia, like resumé and summary — but the volume does have the word thesaurus, in four different sections. Details below, after I give you some background.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Etymology, Linguistics in the comics, Resources, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Macho toys: the ads

February 14, 2021

(Plain talk about sex toys for men and about male genitalia, so not for kids or the sexually modest. )

A Daily Jocks mailing back on 2/9 offers a novel solution to creating visually interesting ads for sex toys for men (primarily aimed at gay men) — devices designed to improve sexual performance or to provide solitary sexual pleasure (genital or anal), and in themselves not offering much to look at. The ads are playful, purely symbolic, takes on male genitalia.

The 2/9 mailing (“MACHO TOYS IS HERE”) has three images, the first two playful, the third with an image of an electronic toy.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Gender and sexuality, Language in advertising, Phallicity | Leave a Comment »

straight men’s jeans

September 28, 2020

From Steven Levine on Facebook yesterday, some astonishment at getting a targeted ad for

Levi’s® Premium 501® ’93 STRAIGHT MEN’S JEANS

Well, yes, it’s just a familiar sort of structural ambiguity: X Y Z as

 [X + Y] + Z ( [straight men’s] [jeans] ‘jeans for straight men’) (A)

or X + [Y + Z] ( [straight] [men’s jeans] ‘men’s jeans that are straight’ (B)

(where the Adj  straight in (B) is a truncation of straight-fit / straight-leg ‘straight-legged’, while the Adj straight in (A) is a rough synonym of heterosexual)

The Levis people had (B) in mind, But Steven and I, as gay men, immediately perceived (A), straight vs.gay being especialy salient for us, so we found the ad hilarious, wondering just what sort of purity test would be applied before guys were allowed ro buy the jeans.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Categorization and Labeling, Clothing, Fashion | Leave a Comment »

Avocado Chronicles: 8: avocado salad

September 26, 2020

My 7/27/19 posting “Avocado Chronicles: 7 “eatable only as a salad”” explored guacamole as a salad version of the avocado (which one early informant viewed as inedible in any other form).

From that posting:


(#1) Guacamole as a dip; but you can see how it could work as a salad

The dish is sometimes described as a salad, but its standard use these days is as a dipspread. In my 10/13/13 posting  “More dipspreads”, see the section on guacamole.

To recap: on the notion of a dipspread, and on uses of dipspreads as salads. Then: on a class of dishes — bound salads, with egg salad as an example — that are akin to dipspreads used as salads.  And then on to avocado salads that are salad salads.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Language and food | 5 Comments »

Caterpillars spinning platters

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 »

Towards the high end of the hardness scale

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 »

Milk Duds with duck sauce chez Zippy

June 14, 2020

Today’s Zippy, set in Zippy’s fantasy-fulfillment dream diner, Zippy Food, which serves all his favorite foods, in combinations that especially appeal to him:

(#1)

Two things: the food combos; food establishments called Zippy or Zippy’s. We will end up in Honolulu.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Diners, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics | 6 Comments »

murals

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 »

Happy Memorial Day

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 »

A diverse holiday

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 »

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