Archive for the ‘Slogans’ Category

Variations on a theme

May 17, 2026

(by the time I’m just a bit of the way into revealing the themes of this posting, certainly once Jake Mathews appears, it should become entirely clear why this posting is not for kids or the sexually modest)

A follow-up to my posting “Taking Pleasure” yesterday (5/16), with scenes from two gay porn videos:

The two scenes have Mr Deep Voice (the screen persona of actor Thomas Johnson (TJ) ) and Andy Toro (AT) in a random hookup of complete strangers in a scene from Right Place, Right Time (Falcon Studios, 2026); and Tayte Hanson (TH) and Eli Bennet (EB) as step-brothers in (romantic) love in Big Bro Little Bro Raw (CockyBoys, 2021)

Right Place is a compilation video, of 5 Falcon Studios scenes in which chance encounters end in wild raw man-on-man sex: 5 variations on this theme, with different pairings of men, different tones, different stories. Some details below, because one of the pairings has the cute Mancunian muscle bottom Jake Matthews filled with Barcelonian dick and great pleasure, serving as a kind of sweet hero of bottoming, a model for men who love to get fucked (he also stars in gangbang videos, where he takes dick with intense enthusiasm; yes, it’s a performance, but he has fully mastered the Catamite genre, and I want to tip my hat to the maestro).

Big Bro Raw also has a series of variations on a theme, “big bros give it hard to their little bros’ tight holes”, as the Cocky Boys publicity has it. And then this video is the third in a series of “big-dicked tops showing their lil’ dudes how to take dick” (again from their publicity). That is, the last of three compilations of “a cast of men pounding young butts”, with different men and different young butts in each compilation. Yielding a sort of visual encyclopedia of this domain of sexual connection.

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Hang free or peter out

May 14, 2026

Today’s adventure in analyzing the jokey allusions in my postings. The target allusion is the one boldfaced in this passage from my posting yesterday (5/13), “The pocket bulge”:

[The DJX bulge booster] provides a soft but protective pocket in which a man’s package (of whatever size) can be unconstrained (hang free or peter out, as the slogan goes)

I explained half of the joke in a comment about my raw materials for this posting:

“Live Free or Die”, the official state motto of New Hampshire

But then there’s peter out, a verb of fading (before coming to an end), so ‘fade to death’ here, framed with a pun on peter, with a covert allusion to the penis hanging unconstrained within the bulge booster.

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The contrary opinion

April 2, 2026

In the spirit of the Passover season, a Frank Cotham cartoon in the 4/6/26 issue of the New Yorker:


A gentle jab at the stereotypical Jewish inclination to public disputation, alluding to the saying two Jews, three opinions or three Jews, four opinions

Even Moses, parting the waters of the sea (to enable the Israelites to escape the Egyptians pursuing them) was not immune from second guessing, at least in Cotham’s telling (though the event somehow escaped recording in the Pentateuch).

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You know it’s good, because it’s free

February 13, 2026

A step into greater complexity in my blog posting, after re-entry in two brief postings yesterday: “Zichichi” (here) and “Calvin Tompkins (here): two separate subjects, united by being cleverly stitched together in The Bob newsletters (from writer and cartoonist Bob Eckstein), about the 2026 Winter Olympics on television, with this cartoon from 2/7:


(Toon) The Bob at the Winter Olympics; BE says “The bob is here”, with this tag about the Olympics on tv:

You know it’s good, because it’s free

This is subject 1, the excellent tag, which I would like to apply to this very blog of mine: you know it’s good because it’s free (and I have gone to some trouble to make it so; applaud here for me)

Meanwhile, Toon is BE’s wiener dog race version of the Olympics, in which the racing dogs are in hotdog buns, observed by an array of condiment bottles. On Facebook on 2/8:

BE: “I’m I’m watching the Puppy Bowl. It’s not the same. Gambling has ruined it, even though I’m admittedly part of the problem.

BE’s eccentric Puppy Bowl is subject 2, and it has nothing to do with the the tag.

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School days, Golden Rule days

October 29, 2025

The background, from FactCheck.org (a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center), “Meme Doctors Quote From Well-Known Satirist” by Angelo Fichera on 12/12/19:

[satirical columnist Andy] Borowitz … in a post to his verified Facebook page in 2016:

Stopping T**mp is a short-term solution. The long-term solution, and it will be more difficult, is fixing the educational system that has created so many people ignorant enough to vote for T**mp.

This was quoted (in a punctuational variant) on Facebook today, with ensuing commentary (edited some here):

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Quiche, Henri, les flics!

October 21, 2025

Gretel Cunningham Young (of Columbus OH, where she grew up, with my daughter Elizabeth, many years ago) on Facebook yesterday:


— GY: My goal was to make a half-vegetarian, half-carnivorous quiche, so I ordered this divided pan

Noting her reference to carnivorous quiche, plus an odd quirk in way English vegetarian is used, I reacted to her statement with some alarm (my response in an expanded and improved form here):

— AZ: But I don’t think I want to get near a carnivorous (‘meat-eating’) quiche, lest I be devoured by it. vegetarian quiche has the adjective vegetarian ‘(of food or diet), plant-based, excluding meat’, not the noun vegetarian ‘(of people) a vegevore, someone who eats only plant-based food; a non-carnivore, someone who does not eat meat’. A quiche that’s a vegetarian would not be a threat to me (as a being made of meat), but it would nevertheless be creepy, in a cannibalistic sort of way. The meaty correspondent to vegetarian quiche ‘quiche for vegetarians’ would be quiche for carnivores.

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Days of memory

July 20, 2025

🌝  that’s the emoji for the full moon with face — the “man in the moon” — to mark 7/20, Man On the Moon Day, the anniversary of astronauts walking on the moon for the first time, in 1969 (a day I remember well, as my little family was gearing up for the move from Urbana IL, where (clustered around our little portable tv) we viewed the event; to Columbus OH, in a trek from my first professor gig, at UIUC, to my second, at OSU)

But this posting is going to be devoted to a different day of memory, one that I let slip by on 7/17: John Lewis’s death day, now memorialized in my country as the Good Trouble National Day of Action.

From the New Black Voices website, “Good Trouble Lives On: Honoring Congressman John Lewis with a National Day of Action” on 7/17/25:

Congressman John Lewis [2/21/1940 – 7/17/20], the late civil rights icon and U.S. Representative from Georgia’s 5th District, remains one of the most enduring symbols of courage, resilience, and justice in American history. Known for his unwavering dedication to nonviolent activism, Lewis’ legacy transcends generations. As America continues to grapple with inequality, voter suppression, and systemic injustice, the call to honor his memory has materialized into an annual National Day of Action. This day celebrates Lewis’s life, legacy, and the enduring philosophy he popularized: making ‘Good Trouble,’ such as leading peaceful marches, organizing sit-ins, and advocating for legislative change.

… In the days following his death, activists, lawmakers, and communities across the country vowed to keep his mission alive. His call to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble” became a rallying cry. From marches to voter registration drives, Lewis’ passing reignited a national movement.

To preserve his legacy, the “Good Trouble Day of Action“ has been established as an annual event, observed every July 17, the anniversary of his death.

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Let’s recap

May 23, 2025

Yesterday on this blog, in “Not in a bad mood, just smart”, I looked at this cartoon panel that had appeared on Facebook:


(#1) Image plus text; the image was pretty clearly from Calvin and Hobbes (isn’t that Susie?), but the text (expressing a sentiment  that resonated with me in current times, packaged in a slogan, or tag line) was unfamiliar to me

Then the searches.

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Not in a bad mood, just smart

May 22, 2025

The abbreviated form of a slogan, or tag line, that I came across on Facebook this morning, in what appeared to be a panel from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (see the Watterson signature), or could be an extract from such a panel with the tag line added (we live in a world that has both old Photoshop and new AI, so such things are trivially easy to arrange):


(#1) I had a thought of using this as a visual distillation of my attitude towards the current US government, but I wanted to get the credit right; that became a problem I haven’t yet solved

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Hallucinated proverbs

April 26, 2025

In the Business section of WIRED Daily, a piece by Brian Barrett on 4/23/25 with the headers:

‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw

Google’s AI Overviews feature credible-sounding explanations for completely made-up idioms

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