Archive for the ‘Language and the body’ Category

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Muscle daddies for Fathers Day

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.

(more…)

Posted in Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex | Leave a Comment »

24 Hours, 24 Kisses and 24 Magazine Covers

June 13, 2018

(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:

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and the body, Race and ethnicity | Leave a Comment »

The rose and the flames

June 3, 2018

(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.

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Posted in Art, Books, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and food, Language and religion, Language and the body, Language of sex, Music, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »

Bathroom words

June 1, 2018

The One Big Happy from May 5th:

What to call this room, with the facilities for urination and defecation? Most of the standard terms are named metonymically, by association with other activities often engaged in in such a room: bathroom, by association with bathing; toilet, by association (in French) with dressing; lavatory, by association with washing (Latin lavatorium ‘place for washing’); washroom; restroom.

(more…)

Posted in Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Syntactic phrase, compound word, portmanteau

May 24, 2018

(Gay sex talk in street language: use your judgment.)

Encountered today in reports of the slang of young gay men, three words for ‘male anus viewed as a sexual organ, male sexcavity, (figurative) vagina of a man’:

munt /mʌnt/; mussy /’mUsi/, bussy /’bUsi/ (bunt /bʌnt/ is not recorded, but has probably been coined on occasion)

These are portmanteaus derived from the compound nouns man / boy + cunt / pussy, as examined in my 7/26/13 posting on expressions for the male anus viewed as a sexual organ.

Three steps in the tightness of connection between the elements participating in an expression:

(more…)

Posted in Compounds, Connotation, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Metaphor, Morphology and syntax, Movies and tv | Leave a Comment »

The cumless cake

May 22, 2018

(Semen is a theme, and, eventually, sexual practices involving semen, so some readers might want to exercise caution.)

Today’s taboo avoidance story, brought to my attention by Ben Zimmer, who provided a link to [UNN] (an unnamed national newspaper that lies behind a paywall for me, so I now lie behind a citewall for them; in this case, it seems to have broken the story), here as reported in today’s Daily Beast story “Publix Censors ‘Summa Cum Laude’ on Graduation Cake Order”:

(#1) The cumless cake
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language play, Taboo language and slurs | 5 Comments »

Balls on the N + N compound watch

May 18, 2018

In today’s Dilbert, Catbert persecutes Dilbert (as Alice looks on):

(#1)

N + N compounds are notorious for the wide range of interpretations available for them: what’s the semantic relationship between head N2 and modifier N1? As above, where the choice is between ‘ref(N2) relieves, reduces ref(N1)’ (the reading for a conventionalized compound stress ball and many others, like headache pill) and ‘ref(N2) causes ref(N1)’ (as in death ray) — where for an expression X, ref(X) is the referent of X.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Compounds, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Semantics, Subsectivity, Toys and games | Leave a Comment »

Deshagged and pedicured

May 17, 2018

(This starts innocently enough, but quickly descends into male body parts and mansex, in very plain language. All this in text, no X-images, but, still, not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Last week, as usual around the beginning of each month, I had my moments of body care: a haircut, to get deshagged (as I think of it); and the services of a neighborhood nail salon, to get pedicured.

Then I thought: I get deshagged regularly, but I don’t get shagged, haven’t been since sometime in the last century, don’t even remember when. Also, I get pedicured, but I don’t get pedicated. I like the sweetly raunchy verb shag and the owlishly learnèd verb pedicate. So different in tone, but they both roll off the tongue. Two ways of dancing.

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Posted in Books, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Metaphor, Metonymy | Leave a Comment »

trigger finger

May 16, 2018

I had this affliction, for about three months. It involved myalgia — that’s the name of the symptom, muscle pain — that limited my movements, produced frequent nasty cramps in several parts of my body, made me miserable and depressed. Among the affected muscles were those in my fingers, which cramped up painfully without warning. Especially my ring finger (third finger, left hand).

Eventually, it was seen to be a side effect of the very powerful statin drug I was taking (for blood pressure and cholesterol control), generic atorvastatin, trade name Lipitor, a very powerful statin prescribed at maximum dose. Which was breaking down muscle fibers. Essentially, I was being poisoned by one of my medicines.

That’s now over — I went off the Lipitor three months ago and recently started small doses of the steroid prednisone for symptomatic relief —  and I feel very much better, but an odd effect remains. My ring finger occasionally gets stuck in a bent position. No pain, no swelling or anything, just stuck, as here:

(#1) Stuck bent finger (workdesk spathiphyllum plant as background)

I can push it back with my other hand, and it makes a little pop! as it resumes its normal working position.

It’s called trigger finger, fancy name tenosynovitis. And it has nothing to do with the Lipitor poisoning.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of medicine, Metaphor, My life, Social life, Technical and ordinary language | 3 Comments »

Down and dirty underwear for Mothers Day

May 12, 2018

(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.

(more…)

Posted in Captions, Holidays, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

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