Archive for the ‘Language and the body’ Category
August 19, 2018
It appeared on Facebook today, with this note from Chris Hansen:
(#1) CH: From another list we have a cartoon that takes a heckuva lot of background knowledge to understand. Arnold may want to deconstruct it, if he hasn’t already. I don’t know the cartoonist.
Well, I certainly wanted to deconstruct it, but not without knowing who the artist was. Quickly, however, Chris himself, Brian Guerrero-Kane, and Roger Phillips all supplied that information — Leigh Rubin (who has a Page on this blog) — and led me to fuller versions of the cartoon, with a title that considerably aids understanding. But the stripped-down version in #1, though challenging, is soluble, so I’ll do that first.
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Posted in Language and medicine, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Names, Pop culture, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
July 27, 2018
(Anatomical and sexual double entendres thick on the ground, but mostly in a high-kawaii context. Eventually, talk of relationships and of sexual acts, though not at all vividly. There will, however, be explicit linguistics.)
An answer, offered by the Helsinki Athletica muscle-hunk model known here as SpoJo, in my previous posting today: “I Am Your Bottom” (referring to the bodypart, but if your mind bends in that direction, also to the role in anal intercourse).
The question, in the (recently published) pandalicious children’s book (for reading to kids 3-6) Are You My Bottom?:
(#1)
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Posted in Books, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Possession, Semantics | Leave a Comment »
July 24, 2018
I had the muscle biopsy (left quadriceps) on Monday the 9th. On Monday the 16th the surgeon who did the biopsy removed the waterproof bandage from the site, looked at his work and was well pleased, and explained that the wound would heal soon, leaving only a small scar. I allowed that at this point in my life, a small scar was as nothing; I already had 7 visible scars on my body, the last one an impressive disfigurement, a cicatricial landscape over a foot long and over an inch wide at its maximum. So I should care about a small scar on my left thigh?
Meanwhile, I’m all anxious over the results of the biopsy, which still haven’t come in, after 15 days. (Maybe the crucial staff are on vacation; it’s that time of year.) While waiting, I’ve entertained myself by making an inventory of my visible scars and considering taking photos, so that if I were kidnapped, murdered, and dismembered by a deranged maniac — hey, this happens on television all the time — my body parts might be identifiable through their scars. Morbid, but absboring.
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Posted in Language and medicine, Language and the body, My life | 2 Comments »
July 3, 2018
(Warning: There will be simulacra of unpleasant creatures, sexual body parts, and excrement.)
Through Facebook friends, links to the work of Katherine Dey at Deviant Desserts (in Victor NY, near Rochester) — Facebook page here, website here — beginning with this remarkable creation, Dey’s Madagascar hissing cockroach:
(#1)
Not a creature, but food — though many people won’t touch it because of the way it looks.
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Posted in Language and animals, Language and food, Language and the body, Movies and tv, Phallicity, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
July 1, 2018
In case you wanted to know the word for ‘sieve’ in Ancient Greek, here’s today’s morning name:
noun ethmoid (also ethmoid bone): Anatomy a square bone at the root of the nose, forming part of the cranium, and having many perforations through which the olfactory nerves pass to the nose. ORIGIN mid 18th century: from Greek ēthmoeidēs, from ēthmos ‘a sieve’. (NOAD)
No, I haven’t been suffering from sinusitis. And, though my morning names can sometimes be traced to whatever music was playing on iTunes during the night, that’s dubious in this case: what was playing all night was the complete keyboard works of Haydn, as performed by Christine Schornsheim on various period instruments; there are a great many of these, but nothing about them suggests head bones.
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Posted in Gesture, Language and the body | Leave a Comment »
June 24, 2018
The Bizarro/Wayno collaboration on the 21st is another exercise in cartoon understanding (but a relatively easy one):
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
You need to know the basic outline of a European legend (the major clues to which are the reference to ridding a town of rats and the unusual word pied in the title), and you need to know something about musical instruments (to recognize that the sousaphone — named in the title — plays the role of the (musical) pipe in the legend).
Then there’s more to be said about the parallels between the cartoon world and the legend world, with special reference to wind instruments (of which the sousaphone is the largest). Which leads me to the rich world of the legend and its connection to the real world. And the fictivity of stories; there’s a fair amount of factuality, or at least real-world context, in the legend. And from there — surprise! — to St. John and Paul’s Day next week (June 26th). And from there — another surprise! — to eunuchs and the social world of the Roman Empire.
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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Holidays, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Narrative, Pop culture, Technical and ordinary language, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
June 23, 2018
This morning’s name: the verb pixelate. Based on the noun pixel, with at least three senses, in NOAD:
verb pixelate (also pixellate or pixilate): [with object] [a] divide (an image) into pixels, typically for display or storage in a digital format. [b] (be pixelated) (of an image on a computer screen or other display) be enlarged so far that the viewer sees the individual pixels that form the image, the enlargement having reached the point at which no further detail can be resolved. [c] display an image of (someone or something) on television as a small number of large pixels, typically in order to disguise someone’s identity.
It’s sense c that I’m especially interested in here. That, and the ambiguity of
/ˈpɪksəletəd/
between pixelated, the PST/PSP of this V, and a very different Adj pixilated.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Language and food, Language and the body, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Technology | 1 Comment »
June 17, 2018
(About the social and sexual worlds of gay men as represented in gay porn. About men’s bodies, especially the muscle hunk body type. And about mansex. Not for kids or the sexually modest.)
The intro to today’s posting “Muscle Daddies Day” on AZBlogX, about a TitanMen sale for Fathers Day, featuring Liam Knox and Luke Adams in Muscle Daddies:
The TitanMen sales for US holidays contnue. Recently, Mothers Day skillfully turned into a gay porn occasion by focusing on muscle hunks who are muthuhs, using material from the gay porn DVD New Rules. Then mansex for Memorial Day featuring the DVD Beef. Now for Fathers Day — which in the gay porn world is always going to be about Daddy / Boy relationships — we get, of course, material from Muscle Daddies, a DVD I posted about back in March.
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Posted in Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex | Leave a Comment »
