Archive for the ‘Color’ Category
September 7, 2025
Sharon Gray of Bay Area Geriatric Care turned up yesterday with a surprise present for my 85th birthday: a big vase of orange roses (on the pinkish or peach side of the color), because those were the really big and beautiful roses she could find on the spur of the moment, without assigning any meaning to the color (though I’m a Princeton A.B., rah rah orange and black and all that), and indeed not knowing what the particular variety was named (you wouldn’t believe how many rose-growing companies there are in the world and what an encyclopedia of names they have registered for orange cultivars). Now located right in my line of sight as I type at my worktable:
Roses of the Orange 85th; for roses, orange seems to be the color of joy, enthusiasm, and desire, and that does feel like a good fit for me
Now, how the color orange came to be associated with Princeton is a remarkably tangled tale involving the Holy Roman Empire (the tale begins in 1163), the French region of Provence (the town of Orange), the Rheinland-Palatinate region of Germany (the town of Nassau), the Netherlands, and of course William-and-Mary, rulers of Great Britain and Ireland. Quite remarkably, oranges the fruit and the color orange have nothing to do with all this, or at least didn’t until Princeton (founded in 1746) adopted orange and black as the official colors for academic gowns in 1896, which is virtually yesterday in this context (I mean, my father and mother were born in 1914). What the story does have to do with is mostly the astounding rapacity of the great bulk of the ruling classes. I will attempt to fill in some of the details in a forthcoming posting, but today I just want to enjoy those roses.
Posted in Color, Events and occasions, History, Language and plants, My life, Signs and symbols | 1 Comment »
August 26, 2025
From Steven Levine on 8/19, this image from a Facebook group on thrift store finds, about a rectangle of needlepoint (probably intended to be a wall hanging) depicting penguins marching from left to right, through a rainbow, each emerging from the other side with its body, inside and out, in one of the colors of the gay pride flag; the rainbow makes them gay:
(#1) Steven of course thought of me, but appreciated that this would not be the time to be giving me penguiniana, so contented himself with letting me enjoy the strange spectacle
I’d never seen anything quite like it. Marching penguins, yes, of course. Penguins in the colors of the gay pride flag, of course. I’ve posted both. But the preposterous fantasy of penguins getting gay-transmuted by passing through a rainbow, absolutely not. And then to realize it not in drawing, painting, or trick photography, but in the unpretentious craft medium of needlepoint, where we expect earnest images (stylized birds) and slogans (BLESS THIS HOME), well, that’s wonderfully goofy.
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Posted in Art, Color, Furnishings and tools, Gender and sexuality, Penguins, Rainbow, Rainbows | Leave a Comment »
July 12, 2025
A surprise on my Pinterest this morning: a sinesagittal St. Sebastian from Texan artist RF. Alvarez (who offers tender, communal gay machismo, which is Tex-Mex to boot):
(#1) Alvarez, St. Sebastian (2022), aka “Meet me under the pomegranate tree, St. Sebastian” (a self-portrait of the strikingly handsome RFA in the St. Sebastian pose, with a vulnerable but unharmed body, and steadily meeting the viewers’ gaze, conveying neither agony nor ecstasy); the figure here is hooking up with St. Sebastian, and he’s also mirroring St. Sebastian (with his hands behind his back, perhaps tied to a tree, only a bit of drapery barely covering his genitals)
But why a pomegranate tree (not part of Christian legend)? And the deep orange suffusing the figure’s entire body and filling all the background behind him and the tree — another pomegranate allusion (though pomegranate fruits and juice are garnet-red, not citrus-orange)? An allusion to the Greek myth of Persephone and her pomegranate seeds?
I’ve now looked at quite a lot of RFA’s paintings, and this one stands out from all the others, including his other self-portraits (for instance, Self-Portrait with Grandfather’s Hat (2023)). So it cries out for some explication.
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Posted in Art, Color, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and religion, Language and the body, Male art, Myths, Race and ethnicity | Leave a Comment »
January 28, 2025
🐍 🐍 🐍 three snakes to welcome the new year in the lunar calendar and the year of the snake in the Chinese zodiac; today is the last day of a dragon year (I am a dragon), and tomorrow begins a snake year
As usual, there are many graphics for the new year, showing a variety of approaches to the theme, most of them in Chinese red (a color associated with the Chinese nation, the sun, and good luck; it has nothing to do with communism, where the symbolic value of red comes from the Red army (the victors) versus the White army in the Russian civil war of 1917-23). One graphic I like:
Graphic from Bridgetown Bites (a Portland OR food news outlet)
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Posted in Art, Calendars, Color, Events and occasions, Language and the body, Phallicity, Signs and symbols | 6 Comments »
December 1, 2024
🐇 🐇 🐇 three rabbits to inaugurate the month of December; for the occasion, an assortment of non-holiday-related topics — though I have to point out that Saturnalia will be upon us in a couple of weeks, so get your ass in gear for the occasion — that have come by me recently: a rabbit stew for your pleasure
rabbit stew. From Wikipedia, some bare facts:
Rabbit stew, also referred to as hare stew when hare is used, is a stew prepared using rabbit meat as a main ingredient. Stuffat tal-Fenek, a variation of rabbit stew, is the national dish of Malta. Other traditional regional preparations of the dish exist, such as coniglio all’ischitana on the island of Ischia, German Hasenpfeffer and jugged hare in Great Britain and France. Hare stew dates back to at least the 14th century … Rabbit stew is a traditional dish of the Algonquin people and is also a part of the cuisine of the Greek islands. Hare stew was commercially manufactured and canned circa the early 1900s in western France and eastern Germany.
Rabbit stews are characteristically rich and flavorful. Yes, even the British jugged hare.
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Posted in Color, Flags, Furnishings and tools, Holidays, Language and animals, Language and food, My life | Leave a Comment »
November 27, 2024
(Men’s bodies and man-on-man sex, discussed bluntly, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest)
On Pinterest this morning, this painting by Polish queer artist Wojciech Woś (now working in Berlin):
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Posted in Art, Color, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Language play, Lexical semantics, Male art, Phonetics, Polish, Spelling | 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.
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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 »
October 5, 2024
My morning name from Thursday, 10/3: MARENGO. Which is:
1 an Italian place name
2 the name of a Napoleonic battle fought (near) there
And then from that:
3 the name of Napoleon’s horse
4 any one of various place names in Canada and the US
5 the French dish chicken Marengo
6 any of various colors in the black, dark blue, dark brown, and gray or blue-gray spectrum
As if that weren’t complex enough already, the name MARENGO brought with it a torrent of name associations, from MANDINGO to NINTENDO, which I’ll sample below.
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Posted in Color, History, Language and food, Morning names, Names, Semantics | 3 Comments »
September 10, 2024
White Party: my name for the white-flower bouquet that León Hernández Alvarez gave me last Thursday for my birthday, which I trimmed and rearranged yesterday. It sits on my worktable, giving me great pleasure.
White roses are symbols of purity — sorry, not my game at all — and loyalty, which I think suits me pretty well. But then the shock yesterday when I saw that the white rose was actually a very pale pink (symbolizing gentleness, sweetness, and of course femininity, so also — yay for the boys with pretty pink pom-poms — gayness).
The name alludes to the White Party in Palm Springs (this year it was March 29-31), the circuit party that bills itself as “the largest gay dance festival in the world” (there are of course other White Parties elsewhere around the world; there’s some discussion of circuit parties — and for a bonus, shapenote singing — in my 6/22/10 posting “Rivers of Babylon”). Never felt bold enough or hot enough to go to one, and now both my dancing days and my traveling days are long over. But the name comes with sexy vibes, so I’m going with it.
But now about the flowers.
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Posted in Color, Gender and sexuality, Language and plants, Music, Signs and symbols, Smell | 2 Comments »
August 11, 2024
In my e-mail recently, the program for this year’s New Yorker Festival, with some of the interviewees in a display ad:
(#1) No, I don’t know why pink; Cumming, Maddow, and Torres are notably LGBT, but not the other five in this display (maybe 3 out of 8 exceeds some tipping point, but it’s more likely that pink’s just a random color choice, devoid of meaning)
Now, which of these 8 is not like the others? Well, that’s an odd photo of singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, but it’s an atypical one. Otherwise, Julio Torres’s photo does stand, or leap, out, and for him it’s fairly restrained; his pictures show him with a wide variety of hair colors (sometimes involving henna red or bright blue) and bodily adornments, and sometimes in drag. Meanwhile, he’s young, adorable, outrageous, smart, and dead series about creating comedy in a variety of forms.
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Posted in Color, Events, Gender and sexuality, Movies and tv, People, Performance, Photography, Spanish, This blogging life | Leave a Comment »
