Archive for the ‘Gesture’ Category
September 4, 2024
In this morning’s comics feed, two linguistic jokes from the Roman Empire (in a Rhymes With Orange and a Bizarro); maybe it’s just something in the air, but on the other hand, September 4th, 476, marks the end of the Western Roman Empire as a political entity and consequently (in some people’s view) the beginning of the Middle Ages. So let’s say goodbye to the boy emperor Romulus, aka Augustulus, and antiquity; and hello to the barbarians and, oh yes, medieval times!
Bye-bye, Imperial times
Took Romulus to the border, to see the Empire die
I’ll get to Augustulus in a while. But first the cartoons.
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Posted in Gesture, History, Holidays, Idioms, Linguistics in the comics, Opposition, Plays, Puns, Semantics, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
July 9, 2024
Yesterday’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro strip, set at a rock concert and turning on a straightforward pun heavy metals on the model heavy metal (band):
(#1) Cu on drums, Co on (electric) guitar, Ni on vocals, Zn on acoustic guitar. But then there are all the devilish details, in the text and the images (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)
The details are devilish because there are so many of them, involving choices made by Wayno in putting the cartoon together: the name of the concert venue; the size of the band; the name of the band; the physical appearance of the band members, their clothing, and their instruments; and their stances and gestures in the performance depicted here. Some of these choices were conscious choices by Wayno, but most just flowed from his pen, as it were, governed (if governed at all) by unconscious crafting of the material.
My task here is to catalog what I think are some of the most notable of the choices Wayno made. Unfortunately, the more I look at the cartoon, the more I see; there seems to be no end of details to note. So I’ll start by listing some things that came to me just moments ago, in the writing up of this posting, then go on to a more systematic discussion.
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Posted in Art, Gesture, It's Just Stuff, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Names, Puns | Leave a Comment »
February 25, 2024
(Underwear models in, well, nothing but underwear, with plain talk about their bodies, so not to everyone’s taste.)
From the folks at Daily Jocks in yesterday’s e-mail, this ad for the company’s racy DJX underwear:
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Posted in Art, Gaze, Gender and sexuality, Stance, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
June 13, 2022
(Warning: this posting starts out being about food, but quickly shifts into man-on-man sex, in very plain anatomical and interactional language, so it’s not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
The morning name from 6/7: spatchcock. From NOAD on spatchcock:
noun: a chicken or game bird split open and grilled. verb [with object] [a] split open (a poultry or game bird) to prepare it for grilling: these small spring chickens can be bought already spatchcocked. [b] informal, mainly British add (a phrase, sentence, clause, etc.) in a context where it is inappropriate: a new clause has been spatchcocked into the Bill. ORIGIN late 18th century (originally an Irish usage). [but in any case, the cock in question refers to poultry and not to penises]
Illustrated on the Fifteen Spatulas site, in “Spatchcock Chicken” by Joanne Ozug on 12/7/18:
(#1) [from the site:] Spatchcock Chicken roasts in half the time of a whole trussed chicken, and also cooks more evenly. … Once you spatchcock, you don’t go back to roasting whole chickens.
I had two visceral responses to the photo: one, as an umami-loving carnivore, my mouth watered in pleasurable anticipation of consuming that spatchcocked chicken; and two, as a hookup-loving pedicant, my sexual parts all tingled in pleasurable recollection of past encounters in which I was that spatchcocked chicken. On my belly, legs apart, buttocks in the air. Or, more briskly: prone, splayed, humped up. (You have to make some allowances for the anatomical differences between your typical roasted chicken and me in heat, so that drumsticks ≈ buttocks.)
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Posted in Argument structure, Facial expression, Gender and sexuality, Language and food, Language and the body, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Metaphor, Metonymy, Morning names, Movies and tv, Stance | Leave a Comment »
May 6, 2022
Today’s e-mail ad for a Daily Jocks sale features an ornamental (rather than strictly functional) wrestling singlet — a striking piece of homowear — worn in a sexual (rather than strictly athletic) stance by a model I’ll call Joe:
(#1) Joe has pulled the top half of his singlet down to fully expose his lean, nicely muscled upper body; meanwhile he’s in a stance no wrestler has ever used in an athletic competition: resting on his elbows, back arched, ass humped up in the lordosis position (see my 4/7/21 posting “Assuming the position”, about the lordosis, tail-in-the-air, or FMP (Fuck Me Please) body position, with links to other postings)
If Joe’s coach taught him that stance, then the coach had something in mind other than preparing Joe for an athletic match on the mat — men can be matched on a mat in other ways (videos with hot wrestlers grappling sexually are a subgenre of gay porn) — and that would be sexual imposition, not coaching. (But #1 is an underwear ad that is merely fantasy-framed as depicting a wrestler — a homowrestler in homowear.)
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Posted in Facial expressions, Gender and sexuality, Language and sports, Language and the body, Stance, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
March 30, 2022
Two ways of looking at lounge shorts (for men) in two ad campaigns. Both touting the softness of the clothing (genuinely desirable in coverings for men’s private parts), but one pushing it as a vehicle for sexual display, the other celebrating it as a vehicle for joy.
The first (from Helsinki Athletica) in a Daily Jocks ad from 3/26, marketed as homowear — the shorts are a very pale pink, whispering I Am Gay — highly sexualized (the model is sitting up on his knees, in bed, and his crotch is the visual focus of the photo); an accompanying photo has him in gray shorts (more macho, less homo), lying on his belly on a sofa with his ass humped up for sexual penetration. In both he displays an impressively muscled body (bulging biceps, massive pecs, rocky abs), a businesslike mustache, no-nonsense hair, and an impassive face with a challenging gaze (conveying: are you man enough to take this, buddy?).
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Posted in Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Gesture, Language in advertising, Names, Stance, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
February 10, 2022
(Note the title. Stud hustling and men tricking with men, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
The Daily Jocks ad in my e-mail on 2/7 reproduces the archetypical cruise pose, deployed in both hustling (for sale) and tricking, or hooking up (for play), by men for men:
(#1) [ad copy:]
NEW: UTILITY SHORTS
BE READY FOR ANYTHING
Everyday practicality with weekend style, your new favourite shorts have arrived at DailyJocks.
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Posted in Art, Books, Facial expression and gesture, Gender and sexuality, Gesture, Homosexuality, It's Just Stuff, Linguistics in the comics, Male art, Masculinity, Movies, Photography, Poetry, Stance, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
November 18, 2021
(Attractive men modeling underwear, some of them contemplating their genital packages. But nothing raunchy.)
Yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad with the model I’ve called Helgi in Helsinki Athletica Kasper long johns, contemplating his own handsome body:
(#1) Helgi4, following three previous DJ photos of this model set in a trendy bathing room; like Helgi2 and 3, modeling long johns, this time in an off-white with just the slightest touch of pink (a shade DJ calls Dusty Pink); like Helgi1, casting his gaze downward to admire, Narcissus-like, the weighty excellence of his own genital package, but now sliding his right hand down his firm belly under the waistband of his underwear (man’s got a hand in his pants)
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Posted in Gaze, Gesture, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
June 12, 2021
One more rainbow for the season, in my USPS mail yesterday: from Stanford QUESTer Ryan Tamares, wishing me Happy Pride Month, this LGBT Lives Matter postcard (with the “LGBT Lives Matter” legend abstracted away from the postcard):
(#1) Logo designed and sold by AthleticHeroes on redbubble.com
Note the POW, or PUNCH, lines surrounding the central image, a drawing of a raised clenched fist, with a long (presumably polished) thumbnail — either female, or gender-nonconforming male.
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Posted in Gesture, Rainbow, Signs and symbols | 1 Comment »
