(Not much about language in this one.)
The title of the cover story in the NYT Magazine on the 10th, with this illustration:
(#1)
Las Vegas claims the title “Sin City”; this is New York’s bid to be “Love City” — challenging Paris, Rome, and (in the U.S.) San Francisco, where Tony Bennett famously left his heart:
June is a month of Sundays. Today in the New York Times it’s the Sunday of Love, with 24 alternative cover photos of couples (of all sorts — mine had two Latino men) kissing, plus photo vignettes of love around the city on Saturday May 19th (the day of the royal wedding in London). Next Sunday is, once again, Triple Play Day: Fathers Day, Commencement Day at Stanford, and World Music Day, all rolled into one (last year’s occasion was also insanely, record-breakingly hot — marking the onset of the chronic dyspnea that has dogged me ever since). And then two Sundays from today: the San Francisco Pride parade. Things to post for all of these occasions. Today, a look forward to Fathers Day, prompted by an ad from the Levenger company.
(After some extended moments of reflections on religious belief, this posting will venture into the sexual wilds, and the later material will not be suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
Two design drawings by Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky (from a set available to the public in an Instagram file): one a rose window (alluding indirectly to such images at Stanford’s Memorial Church, which serve as potent Christian symbols); and one suggesting tongues of flame / fire (alluding to those that figure in the Christian religious holiday of Pentecost, which fell this year on Sunday, May 20th). Two religious symbols, with associated linguistic expressions (rose window; tongues of flame/fire, to speak in tongues).
First, things: the rose, and flames.
Then, these things serving as symbols in Christian ways of thinking (actually, each can have several different symbolic values, even within this specific sociocultural context).
Then, these symbols, with these values, deployed in art, music, film, and fiction, and even in food and in plant names.
Then, the original things — rose and flames — serving as symbols in other sociocultural contexts: in particular, as sexual symbols, for body parts and for sexual acts.
On AZBlogX today, a posting “Memorial mansex”, about a Lucas studio gay porn sale for Memorial Day 2018, with an ad offer (cropped below to avoid penises) showing three naked men with narrowed eyes, plus a shot of the onset of fellatio (with two men knee-deep in a pool of water, for added interest), to show you the sort of thing you can get from the Lucas sale offer:
(#1)
To come: on porn for the holidays; then on narrowed eyes and drooping eyelids and how these might be interpreted.
(Talk about mansex in street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest — or, for that matter, Facebook the Prudish.)
From the TitanMen gay porn studio, for Mothers Day this year:
(#1) Cropped ad; the full ad can be viewed on AZBlogX, in the 5/12 posting “Mothers / Muthuhs Day 2018”
That’s Dirk Caber and Daymin Voss in New Rules: two hot muthas, and muthas — a variant of the vulgar slang mothers, a clipping of the vulgar slang motherfuckers, an epithet that can be either deprecatory or (as here) celebratory — is the link to Mothers Day.
So we end up with gay porn for Mothers Day — a holiday I’m now tickled to think of, alternatively, as Motherfuckers Day. Or, possibly, Samuel L. Jackson Day, for the great cinematic motherfucker-wielder.
As a bonus, half the men in the cast of New Rules are not only mothers / muthuhs, but also daddies, in one of the gay senses of daddy: ‘attractive older gay man’. In fact, they’re muscle daddies.
(Underwear guy, allusions to sexual practices. Imbibe with caution.)
Yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad, an “X-rated Sale” for Mothers Day weekend, with a caption of mine:
spent husk
drained from a
day in hard harness
sprawled half-conscious
tits jutting codpiece
glistening abs
huge elegant feet
hazy hint of that
hole of male delight
An odd sale offer for Mothers Day weekend, but maybe (as I’ll suggest in another posting) it’s really for Muthuhs Day. That would work.
Early summer as a season of nature (rather than the calendar or culture) is characterized by fairly long days, warm but not hot temperatures (in the low 70s F.), mating behavior of birds and animals, and the flourishing of a characteristic set of plants. Here in northern California, we zoomed into early summer around the beginning of the month, and suddenly the bulbs of spring were succeeded by the extravagant blooms of summer — including, at Palo Alto’s Gamble Garden, a pair of poppies that hadn’t even been visible 7-10 days ago: Romneya coulteri, Matilija poppy; and Papaver orientale, Oriental poppy. They sprung up out of the ground as if by magic.
(from the annals of remarkable company names and the Index Paranomasiarum)
For Naked Gardening Day (today and every May 6th), this shot of a landscaping company in the Miami area:
If Christian Gray is out on call, Marquis De Sod will discipline you — work you over in raunchy verdure under the fierce Florida sun. They will bind you, edge you, train you, hold you back until tomorrow, when they will allow you the release of Masturbation Day.
Rabbits round the workers’ maypole,
Rabbits round the workers’ maypole:
Máy-ó, may-yáy-ay-ay-ó
Maylight come and me wan’ go home
Trochaic tetrameter to welcome in the month of May. Allegro agitato, then andante desideroso.
