Archive for the ‘Holidays’ Category

A custom-made eggcup

May 4, 2024

Today’s holiday news: today is (at least) three holidays, one deadly serious, two entertaining. I will discourse later about Four Dead in Ohio Day (remembering the 1970 Kent State shootings), Star Wars Day, and (in the US, where May 4th is 5/4) Dave Brubeck Day (for the 5/4 time signature in music). (Oh, there’s also a very local holiday, the Palo Alto May Fête, lightly connected to Cinco de Mayo, which is tomorrow — but the fête is always on a Saturday.)

But first, the actual topic for today: a custom-made eggcup.

The eggcup, 3D-printed in purple and pink plastic, was given to me last Saturday by Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, who recognized that I could use a lightweight, nearly unbreakable replacement for the white porcelain eggcups and demitasse cups that I’ve using for my five daily dosages of medications (an hour before breakfast, with breakfast, with lunch, with dinner, at bedtime) — the porcelain resources I’ve gradually been destroying, smashing by accident because they’re too heavy and slippery for my disabled hands. EDZ’s intention is that there should be more, enough that I can retire the remaining porcelain cups. No more little shards of glass on the kitchen floor.

A photo (inexpertly achieved with my new little camera) of the 3D printing and the porcelain alternatives:


In the front, the 3D delight, looking very purple in the photo; then, on the left, a demitasse cup, and on the right, a conventional eggcup

Two more 3D eggcups have (just) now appeared. Two to go.

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N1 of N2

May 1, 2024

🐇 🐇 🐇 from my 5/1/20 posting “Trois lapins pour le premier mai”:

It’s the first of the month, which I have learned to greet with three rabbits — by starting the day saying “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit”. More than that, it’s the first of May — by some cultural reckonings the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere and also (in some countries) International Workers Day, so: dance around the maypole, set bonfires for Beltane or Walpurgis, prepare for outdoor bo(i)nking (rabbits again!), break out the lilies of the valley (muguets pour le premier mai), cue the choruses of L’Internationale, and march in solidarity with the workers. (Feel free to choose from this menu, as your taste inclines and your schedule allows.)

But enough of lapins; time to attend to our moutons, the sheep of the day being English NPs of the form N1 of N2 (like bouquet of flowers and tons of stuff) and how they work as subjects of clauses. These sheep came to us on 4/29 from Steven Levine, who wrote on Facebook:

Here’s a sentence I just came across that seems odd to my ears:

By the mid century a variety of celebrations was engaging morris dancers.

I know that the subject is variety [AZ: no no no; the subject is a variety of celebrations; this is important] and the verb is was, and yet it seems off to me — I was expecting were. I’m not asking for a grammatical analysis, I’m asking if this would stop you for a second if you were just reading along.

To which I wrote:

Steven said he didn’t want a grammatical analysis, but here it comes anyway.

I warned you.

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Rabbit hordes will shake the darling buds of May

April 30, 2024

🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for ultimate April; this is Lepus Eve, that fearful moment before the rabbit hordes of May descend, in a cloud of fragrant muguets, to ravish and despoil the golden youths of spring, the band of bros, of buddies, bonding to spread their seed and alliterate aimlessly: Bunnies Bash Buds

Two images for the day: a cinematic account — Night of the Lepus — of the threatening rabbit hordes; and just one of those adorable buds at risk in this moment of peril: Dean Young. serving as the embodiment of the vulnerable golden youths of spring.

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Juneau homo logo

April 23, 2024

From Alaskan Chris Waigl on Facebook on 4/20, who commented “Great logo” (to which I assent):

SEAGLA (Southeast Alaska LGBTQ+ Alliance: “providing a supportive social network for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in Southeast Alaska”) announcement on 4/18 for Juneau pride week, June 14th – 23rd

Alaskan images, going through the rainbow flag from red to purple, with a few touches of pink. From the SEAGLA site:

We’re so excited to reveal this year’s Pride logo! It’s designed by Lillian Egan (@diamond.lils.art on Instagram) and Mel Izard (@thetoadstoes).

I had hoped to get a detailed inventory of the items in the logo, since they are supposed to characterize (southeast) Alaska, but will be seen by many outsiders (by me in particular, and now by my readers around the world); that is, they convey more than generic allusions to tall trees, wolves, porcupines, crabs, bears, and so on. What jellyfish? What caterpillar? What (two types of) mushrooms?  But no responses so far.

 

 

Love what Scrivan did with the rabbit pun!

April 1, 2024

🐇 🐇 🐇 three rabbits to inaugurate the new month, 🃏 🃏 🃏 three jokers for April Fool’s Day, and 🌼 🌼 🌼 three jaunes d’Avril. yellow flowers of April, all this as we turn on a dime from yesterday’s folk-custom bunnies of Easter to today’s monthly rabbits; for this intensely leporine occasion, a Maria Scrivan hare-pun cartoon:


(#1) (phonologically perfect) pun hare on model hair, taking advantage of I love what you’ve done with your hair as an common exemplar of the stock expression (I) love what you’ve done with X; a cartoon posted on Facebook by Probal Dasgupta, who reported, “Even I groaned at this one”

Things to talk about here: my use of turn on a dime just above; Easter + April Fool’s; the yellow flowers of April (which will bring us to Jane Avril — Fr. Avril ‘April’); and the stock expression (I) love what you’ve done with X.

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PAW days

March 31, 2024

🐅 🐅 🐅 three tigers for ultimate March (3/31) and for Princeton University (from the 19th century, the Princeton locomotive cheer “Rah rah rah! Tiger, tiger, tiger! Sis, sis, sis, boom, boom, boom, ah!”), plus 🐇 a rabbit for Easter (no doubt soon to be devoured by the tigers — though it will be succeeded tomorrow by a tougher trio of rabbits inaugurating the month of April, who might be foolish but have the power of three)

And so I turn to the Princeton Alumni Weekly (which is a monthly publication, but try not to dwell on that) — PAW, from now on — and my relations to it in recent years. While noting that when I die, PAW is the only place where I’m sure to get an obituary, though my Stanford department’s weekly newsletter, the Sesquipedalian, will have a notice, as will the news bulletin from the Linguistic Society of America (the LSA), and friends will say something on Facebook; otherwise, I expect my death to go publicly unremarked (and I encourage my daughter and grandchild not to spend their money on paid announcements), so at least in the death department, PAW looms large.

Now: I’ll re-play (with little further commentary) some history from the past three years in which PAW has been involved, ending with a section from my class notes in the issue that arrived in the mail yesterday (with rather more commentary).

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Easter punday

March 28, 2024

It’s Holy Thursday, and today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro: cartoon jumps the Easter gun, / with an outrageous rabbit pun:


Wayno’s title: “Side Effects May Include Hallucinations” (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page)

model /ístǝr/ Easter, pun /íθǝr/ ether, shared /í…ǝr/, with coronal obstruents between the two syllabics, so not bad for an imperfect pun; meanwhile, the Easter bunny is administering ether as an anesthetic, so the pun fits the image nicely

Two things: Holy Thursday (and Easter Sunday); and anesthetic ether.

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On being, turning, and wearing green

March 17, 2024

(Part of this posting will dive right into gay porn for the day, with street-talk musings on man-on-man sex that’s totally off-limits for kids and the sexually modest; I’ll hold this part off until the end, so if you need to you can bail out then)

☘️ ☘️ ☘️ It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and in my e-mail: two Bob Eckstein cartoons for the day (on turning and wearing green for the day); and a Falcon  Studios sale on gay porn, made holiday-appropriate by the mere addition of a shamrock, but which opens the topic of gay porn with actual St. Patrick’s day themes.

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Grunt Oil

March 15, 2024

(Man-man sex discussed in street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest)

It’s 3/15, the day after Pi/Pie Day (in the US), and the Ides of March (everywhere), and also (in ZwickyWorld) Higashi Day — when, back in the last century, Jacques and I set off from Palo Alto CA (and Stanford) on our annual journey east (higashi) back to Columbus OH (and Ohio State); Nishi Day, for embarking on  the journey to the west, was on 12/15.

My Higashi Day was enlivened by a Fort Troff e-mail sale ad for their Grunt Oil silicone-based lube (named for the sound men make during anal intercourse). A tube of the actual product, with a plug for it that gives a relatively straightforward description of the stuff:


(#1) The packaging varies; there are less raunchy variants (missing the finger and the FUCK ME, COCK TOY! graffiti) and even raunchier ones, as we’ll see in a moment

Description: Hands-down, silicone is the gold standard for durability and slickness. Sure, water-based lubes are good when you need a quick clean up… but nothing beats the smooth, silky feel of pure high-grade silicone. Grunt Oil is super-concentrated for max longevity. It doesn’t break down in water, so you can use it in the shower. Clean up with soap and water.

Fort Troff caters to what I’ve called Ruff Dudes, hypersexual hypermacho anally hyperreceptive man-oriented men (with a fetish for sex machinery), existing in some paradoxical liminal world between actual leathermen and fantastical bdsm creatures. So #1 counts as vanilla in Fort Troff’s world.

But that’s not what assaulted my eye this morning. It turns out that the exciting feature of Grunt Oil is that it looks like cum. Creamy white jizz. This is supposed to be incredibly hot to Fort Troff’s clientele, and I’m really into cum, but an anal lube that looks like cum strikes me as a goofy idea. Even goofier than dildos scrupulously designed to replicate actual penises. (In both cases, the appeal is to the imagination, not to the senses.)

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Bloody Sunday

March 7, 2024

🩸🩸🩸 … on this day in 1965: NEVER FORGET

From my 4/15/22 posting “LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS BLACK WOMEN”, about the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, but also about James Agee’s book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (celebrating the Appalachian poor) and about the late US Representative John Lewis, who on 3/7/65 led the first of three Civil Rights marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma AL — an event now known as Bloody Sunday, because of the savage attack on the marchers by state troopers and police:

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