Yesterday was, as always on 4/1, April Fool’s Day, and just for this year, Census Day; but also Leonard Bloomfield’s birthday, an occasion with meaning for linguists. Yesterday was the 123rd anniversary of his birth.
On Facebook, I said of the occasion, “That ought to be some specially named anniversary” — and got two different proposals: one for naming a 123rd anniversary, one for re-naming Bloomfield’s birthday.
Two cartoons in my 3/14 (Pi Day) feed — a Bizarro and a Rhymes With Orange — that present challenges to understanding; if you don’t get certain cultural references, you don’t get the cartoons at all.
(#1) A Wayno/Piraro collabo; Wayno’s title for it is “Sectarian differences” (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page). So, a snake and a frog, adversaries in real life; but then…
(#2) At the top level, a variation on woman’s complaints that they are given housewares as gifts on romantic occasions (suspend your gender assumptions); but then…
Then it’s no accident that #1 was published in the middle of March, three days before St. Patrick’s Day, which comes at the end of the mid-March run of special days and events (P2P: From Pi To Paddy):
— 3/14 Pi Day
— 3/15 Higashi Day on Ramona St. (see my 3/12/20 posting “Higashi Day cartoon 1: grim Bliss surprise”), but the Ides of March in the larger world
— 3/16 National Panda Day (see the Page on this blog on panda postings) — TODAY! (Take a panda to munch)
— 3/17 St. Patrick’s Day
(Mostly an essay on American social practices and traditions, but with major helpings of manflesh and mansex, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
St. Patrick’s Day is the holiday. In the US, where its celebration is especially significant, it has taken on something of a carnival character, so of course there are gay porn sales for the holiday; gay men are ever bent on putting the carnal back in carnival, after all.
Meanwhile, at least in America, the saying is that on St. Patrick’s Day everybody is Irish. And in the US, we conspicuously — though very erratically — celebrate our diversity. So it’s not entirely a surprise that a brand of gay porn (the playfully and crudely named Peter Fever) devoted to the “highest quality Asian men, pants down” should undertake a big sale for St. Patrick’s Day. A sale including a bdsm porn flick set in the world of Japanese gangsters.
Now, that is diversity: go green, kinky queer yakuza!
(#1) Suit and Tied: Yakuza Control (“Submission, Obedience, Love, Deception”), with bdsm furniture in the background: dom Duncan Ku, subs Caged Jock (CJ), Tyler Slater
Here at Ramona Electronica, the cartoons have been piling up haphazardly, making awkward barriers to even the smallest simulated movements around the labyrinth of virtual rooms. So now, a modest effort at house-clearing — to celebrate March 15th: Higashi Day, formerly known in these parts as (spring) Removal Day, marking the day when, for roughly 10 years in the fabled past, Jacques and I set off to car-trek east, from Palo Alto (and Stanford) to Columbus OH (and Ohio State).
(Its winter counterpart is December 15th, Nishi Day, marking the send-off for the corresponding trip west, from Columbus to Palo Alto.)
I note that, ominously, March 15th is also — oh, Julio! — the Ides of March, but that the preceding day is that edibly mathematical event Pi Day and that only two days later comes the spring green of St. Patrick’s Day (which J and I experienced annually on the road in northern Arizona).
The inaugural Higashi Day cartoon is by Harry Bliss, in the March 9th New Yorker. But first — surely you saw this coming — a note on compass directions in Japanese.
The briefest of celebratory woofs for the 16th (= 10h-th) birthday of Opal Eleanor Armstrong Zwicky, today:
(#1)
(#2)
You are young, Opal Eleanor, the old man said,
And your hair colors wander astray,
And now if you stand on your head, just right,
You’ll be 91 starting today.
(#3)
(A posting on gay porn for Presidents Day in the US (yesterday, February 17th, this year), so awash in male genitals and mansex, described in raunchy street language — so entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest. The actual male genitals are vividly depicted in my posting yesterday on AZBlogX, “Hail to the chief”, but this posting is scarcely decorous.)
It starts with the main Falcon ad for its 2020 Presidents Day (#1 on AZBlogX), featuring a carefully composed image of pornstar Paddy O’Brian with his dick at full salute, that is, hard (O’Brian, meanwhile has his right hand over his heart, as during playings of the national anthem). A cropped version of this ad:
(#1)
In this case, unusually, the dick is actually important. O’Brian (Irish-born, but now saluting the symbols of America), billed as a versatile top with a PSD (Porn Standard Dick) of 7″, is looking earnest while performing what has gone beyond cock-tease to cock-reveal, with the hard dick neatly following the line of the waistband on his pulled-down briefs. It’s that bit of visual play that makes O’Brian’s dick in the ad not just your ordinary sturdy pornstar object of queer desire.
Ultimately, this posting is about O’Brian himself and two other pornstars, Sebastian Kross and Rex Cameron, and how they project (perhaps fictive) personas through displays of their naked bodies — performances in which their cocks, however impressive, play surprising small roles.
(Uncompromisingly raunchy references to male bodyparts and mansex, so absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Lincoln Darwin Valentine Day lies in the cleft between Lincoln Darwin Day, February 12th, and Valentine’s Day, February 14th. It is a day of unbridled mansexual excess, coming as it does between the high seriousness of the day that honors two towering figures — two Great Men — of the 19th century and the romantic heterosexual excesses of Valentine’s Day. It’s Carnal Carnival without reference to the religious calendar (actual Mardi Gras can fall any time between February 3rd and March 9th).
Back at the end of January I noted briefly on Facebook that the January 25th coincidence of Robert Burns’s birthday with the new lunar year — the Year of the Rat, specifically — meant that this year 1/25 was the celebratory day of Basil Ratburn. Crossed swords and groans.
(#1) Basil Rathbone (on the left) as villain — rat — crossing swords with Errol Flynn in the 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood (you are allowed an adolescent snicker on crossing swords — and in fact those snickers have a basis in reality, in the term swordplay referring to body practices between men; see the Swordplay Bonus below)
We advance upon a surprising gift of the Pennsylvania Dutch to American culture: Groundhog Day (February 2nd). In earlier years, this blog provided coverage of Marmota monax (the groundhog / woodchuck), its holiday, and the comic movie, comic movie, comic movie. Now comes Alex (Alessandro Michelangelo) Jaker on Facebook:
I think that, the same way that the Easter Bunny visits and leaves candy [notably, chocolate eggs] and jelly beans at Easter time 🐰🍬🍫, we should start a tradition where, on Groundhog Day, the Friendly Groundhog stops by to visit during the night, and leaves the children a bag of nuts. 🐿🌰🥜
I replied (alas, emojilessly):
Even better: Marmo the Enchanted Groundhog, who leaves a bag of magic nuts.
And Alex countered with:
Or how about: “Chuck the Magic Marmot”.
Much to munch upon here.
