Archive for the ‘Language and medicine’ Category
September 6, 2026
The big scheme is Pleasure as Therapy: something I do for pleasure (or play or engaged curiosity) turns out to be excellent therapy, alleviating some affliction of mine or extending my life. These are unintended, but gratifying, consequences. Gravy.
Previously on this blog, the story of my singing Sacred Harp hymns in communities of shapenote singers, a practice that moves me deeply, sometimes taking me into an ecstatic state. That’s the pleasure. Then my pulmonologist — who had me using breathing apparatus to strengthen my lungs — discovered this and said that my singing full-out was much better therapy than his, and I should do it as much as possible, ideally some every day. I see this as getting a prescription to eat cake. Or, to pick a different metaphor, go for the gravy.
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Posted in Age, Language and medicine, Lexical semantics, Linguists, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Music, My life, Play, Social interactions, Social life | 2 Comments »
September 3, 2026
(fecal matters in street talk; you might find it offensive)
Previously on this blog, in my 9/1 posting “Send in the rabbits”:
Made it back to my apartment, at which point the enema kicked in and I pretty much exploded with shit, everywhere, in piles. Vast amounts of cleaning up to do, and I still have to get someone in to scrub my workroom carpeting, which is beyond my (dis)abilities.
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Posted in Language and medicine, Language and religion, Language and the body, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »
September 1, 2026
(bodily unpleasantness, much of it in street language, so likely to be offensive to many readers)
🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for terminal August; send in the rabbits of September, and we can marvel (with Stephen Sondheim) Isn’t it rich? / Isn’t it queer? — that we should come to this time of the year
Yes, this is getting out a day late, but I have an excuse. It’s both painful to hear about — involving 12 hours of excruciating pain for me — and deeply revolting — well, literally shitty — so I’m having trouble framing the story for you. Then, as a kind of ghastly sideshow, various pieces of essential software (Facebook is mostly to blame) simply stopped working as they should, making it impossible for me to make my blog postings available through FB. All together, giving the Lost Blogging Day of 8/31.
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Posted in Events and occasions, Language and food, Language and medicine, Language and the body, My life, Stories | Leave a Comment »
August 23, 2026
Today’s foodmanteau — the hybrid food’s my very own, composed yesterday (8/22) to be served for the first time today — is
biryanestrone = biryani + minestrone
The elements: (1) from the Hyderabad Dum Biryani in Mountain View CA, lamb keema biryani plus paneer (spicy fried cheese cubes); (2) from the Menlo Park Safeway store, Signature brand minestrone soup.
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Posted in Language and food, Language and medicine, My life, Portmanteaus, Taste | 1 Comment »
August 22, 2026
My right hip joint is now a metallic wonder, a titanium replacement in 2012 for the joint nature gave me, which had excruciatingly degenerated from osteoarthritis. I love the name titanium: it trips off the tongue, and as a proud gay man and an enthusiast of MND (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) in several of its incarnations, I choose to understand the name as a reference to Titania, Queen of the Fairies — silly faggot, titanium is for ur-deities.
Now to unpack all of this.
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Posted in Chemistry, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and medicine, Language in advertising, Music, My life, Myths, Physics, Play, Plays | 3 Comments »
August 20, 2026
(Lots about bodily fluids, up close and personal, and the male body, a lot of it in street talk, so inadvisable for kids and the sexually modest)
Another little posting that might — like “Struggling Actor” earlier today — go far. But it starts with recollections of pomanders from my childhood, sparking my interest in getting some for my Avant apartment. Why should I want to do this? (aside from sentimentality), you ask; I will explain. It’s all about the whizz.
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Posted in Death and dying, Language and food, Language and medicine, Language and plants, Language and the body, Language of sex, My life | Leave a Comment »
August 17, 2026
It’s mid-August, and still hot summer in Palo Alto, but the nights are now cool (quilt time is upon me) and it’s cool when I get up (around 3 am), moving me to put on a thick flannel shirt and gelling the coconut oil I use to treat my body (it becomes a thin clear liquid in the heat of the day, but the gel is what you want if you’re using it for skin and hair).
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Posted in Chemistry, Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and medicine, Language and the body, My life, Smell, Taste | 1 Comment »
August 16, 2026
It starts with the movies, dwells on a paradox of dementia — that it can allow someone to experience something again for the first time — and picks up another paradox — that it’s possible for someone to forget everything and still successfully follow enormously complex routines. I will illustrate the first from my guy (my husband-equivalent) Jacques Transue in the early stages of his life-ending dementia and the second from myself under the sway of a powerful steroid drug. This will be a lot less grim than it sounds.
Then some professorial reflections on what it’s all about. I’m sorry; the professor comes along with the story-teller, it’s a package deal.
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Posted in Language and medicine, Memory, Metaphor, Movies and tv, My life, Terminology | Leave a Comment »
August 6, 2026
A few days ago I suddenly developed an impressive case of laryngitis — utterly painless, but incredibly annoying — which I attributed to a change in my medications (a huge increase in the dosage of the steroid prednisone). And so it might have been.
Then after breakfast this morning (around 4:30 am) I was visited by the unmistakable intestinal symptoms of cryptosporidiosis, crypto for short — notably uncontrollable watery diarrhea, dammit. Some days earlier, when a widespread US outbreak of the infection was reported, I had put great mounds of possibly infected greens down the garbage disposal, but apparently I had already eaten enough of them that the parasite was just lying in wait, gathering in strength to wreck havoc on my guts. Fortunately, I have weapons of my own, and have been able to do a pretty good job of wrestling crypto to some kind of standstill. But let me tell you, it’s no fucking picnic.
It’s incredibly tiring — I’ve had two long naps today — and requires me to consume mass quantities of rehydrating liquid. Meanwhile, it seems likely that my laryngitis is a respiratory symptom of crypto; my breathing is now often uncomfortable (though not disabling).
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Posted in Language and food, Language and medicine, My life | 2 Comments »
August 2, 2026
(talk on bodily functions and the vocabulary for them, sometimes in street language, so not to everyone’s taste; also more than you might want to hear about Arnold’s Wonderful Whizz World)
About my current medical regimen, which involves significantly large doses of the steroid prednisone, intended to treat serious kidney problems (resulting in fluid accumulations in several parts of my body, quite visibly in my feet and legs) while staying under the dosage that, historically, makes me (to put this in the plainest terms) crazy. It’s a balancing act.
Yesterday, when I was overloaded with household revisions (including a new computer and printer) and had little time to sip my green tea pleasantly, the tide turned: I began, as we say, pissing like a racehorse, really quite remarkable amounts (also, I have to say, enormously pleasurable). For years now, I’ve lived with urinals scattered everywhere, so I can take quick whizzes without disrupting whatever I’m working on (if I’m laser-focused on what I’m doing, I can go for an hour without a whizz, but that’s pretty much my limit).
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Posted in Language and animals, Language and medicine, Lexicography, My life, Taboo language and slurs, Technical and ordinary language | Leave a Comment »