Archive for the ‘Language play’ Category

Morning names: kelp and skulk

January 15, 2024

Immediately, I thought: Kelp and Skulk, Attorneys at Law, famously slimy and devious. But what came into my head on awakening was just the noun kelp, for the algae; and the verb skulk, roughly ‘lurk’. Suspiciously similar to one another phonologically. If you combine them, you get the name of a common fish, the scup. And each of them spins off a huge range of phonologically similar and possibly thematically related words.

I did have an idea of how kelp and skulk got into my head — through a proper name that’s phonologically similar to both of my morning names: the surname Delk. The last name of a character on the American tv show The Closer, which I’d watched two episodes of last night: Thomas “Tommy” Delk, a fictional Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (beautifully portrayed by Courtney B. Vance).

Scup the fish and Delk the cop:


(#1) Stenotomus chrysops, a porgy; and (#2) Tommy Delk, a chief

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Sunday punmanteaus

January 14, 2024

Today’s Bizarro, a Sunday Punnies in which all the puns are incorporated in portmanteaus:


(#1) Three punmanteaus (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 8 in this strip — see this Page)

Now each of them in detail, in turn. In each case, the pun comes in the material shared by the two contributors to the portmanteau — material that is understood one way as part of the first contributor and a different way as part of the second. And then the cartoon combines the two understandings in a single drawing: a (spiritually) aware werwolf (lupine zazen); ill-tempered tempered glass (oh shut up, Silica Boy!); and a matador doorman (the hand that stabs, the hand that opens). (more…)

Three shoeshis

January 6, 2024

Yesterday, in my posting “Today’s food punmanteau”, about this composition:

(#1)

The memic shoeshi is a work of art, made (mostly) from food; it is neither edible nor wearable — though it could be deconstructed, and some of its materials eaten.

In other occurrences, shoeshi is in fact food — edible sushi in the shape of a shoe.

In still others, shoeshi is in fact footgear — footwear in the shape of sushi.

And that’s what’s up f6r Epiphany: 👑 👑 👑 the three shoeshis — the art (above), the food, and the footwear.

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Today’s food punmanteau

January 5, 2024

(Today has been difficult, so this is the best I can do in the way of posting — opening up a topic for further postings, soon to come.)

It starts with this memic shoeshi image I encountered today on Facebook, passed on through various friends and acquaintances, as these things are. A truly wonderful composition:


The memic shoeshi; shoeshi here is a punmanteau: a pun and a portmanteau

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The Hot Days of Christmas, days 2 – 4

January 3, 2024

I have this digital-artist friend (on the other side of the country) who proposed to give me a Christmas gift: daily cards (delivered by the USPS) for the AI Hot Hunk Days of Christmas (with Hot understood as HomoHot ‘arousing to homos’); the (very sweet) idea was to arouse me on a daily basis with a surprise hot guy, one for each of the 12 days from Christmas to Epiphany Eve, as in the song. Mail delivery this Christmas season has been — let me put this in a kindly fashion — erratic. The  day 1 card arrived on day 4, not an unreasonable journey across the country, but then nothing, nothing at all, through to day 8 (8 maids a-milking, New Year’s Day), when the artist and I began to fear that the cards had gone astray, been seized by the post office, whatever, so that I anxiously awaited yesterday’s (day 9) mail. Which brought me days 2 through 4, whew.

By then, the artist had supplied me (by e-mail) with an X-rated version of day 5  (which their printers had rejected as too raunchy) and also its steamy but non-X substitute. So today (day 10) I’m hoping for the day 6 card. And then on from there. Meanwhile, I’ll improve the hours until the mail comes by showing you days 2 through 4.

Along the way, the artist compressed the AI Hot Hunk Days of Christmas to the Hot Days of Christmas, which I think is a stroke of abbreviatory genius, and hereby adopt for my postings from now on.

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The power of a tiny prick

December 28, 2023

(Vast amounts of penis-talk, and frank discussion of sexual acts, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Appearing in the last few days, a spot tv commercial for Roman — or Ro, or ro — generic ED (erectile dysfunction) medication. It goes by very fast, but involves the administration of some medication with a needle, accompanied by a breathless voiceover, approximately:

Who would have thought that a little tiny prick could be so powerful?

I’m sure about little tiny prick / tiny little prick; in the sociosexual culture that surrounds me (in which big dicks are highly valued), my dick (which is on the lower end of normal) is pegged, sometimes contemptuously, as small (I’m happy with it, and I have some fans, but I’m understandably a bit sensitive on this point); and, in addition, like most men of my advanced age, I’m erectilely dysfunctional — hardonless — and have been for about 20 years, something I’m not particularly sensitive about (since during this time all my sex has been solitary, and there’s been a hell of a lot of it — one to three times a day, prompted by my fantasies, my dick gets a bit firm, my balls get tight, and I shoot, whoopee, like Billy the Kid) — and I wouldn’t want to add a powerful drug to the roughly 20 medications I’m taking now (but I appreciate that other guys might be anxious to get it up to please their partners and ashamed when they can’t, so ED medication is a wonderful thing at the personal level, and also to be applauded as a genuine social good).

But the commercial, with its obtrusive crude pun — prick, vulgar slang for ‘penis’ and for ‘contemptible man’ — on prick ‘a piercing, puncture’, what about the commercial?

The ads for Roman products that I’d experienced up to this one had all been serious, comforting, and reassuring, offering treatments for premature ejaculation, hair loss, and more, as well as for hardonlessness. But this one had to be a joke, one that Adweek hadn’t yet gotten around to reporting on.

Well, it wouldn’t be Roman’s first ED joke ad. There’s their 2017 number “Thinly Veiled Metaphors”. It’s a hoot.

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Randy elves, coming in Latin, and a Korean feast

December 26, 2023

(The randy elves of 12/22/23 are engaged in 3-way man-on-man sex, described here by its makers in street language, so this part of the program is unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest (IF THAT’S YOU: DO NOT READ); the rest of it is about a variety of seasonal customs, some of them off-beat but none requiring policing (PLEASE READ AND ENJOY))

In my title: highlights of the first day of the three-day run-up to Christmas 2023.

Each day provides two occasions to celebrate:

— 12/22/23: CAYF (the gay porn movie Cum All Ye Faithful) climax day, with that Christmas-elf 3-way sex as the centerpiece of the final scene in the movie and the title of the movie distantly connected to the Christmas carol in Latin, Adeste Fideles; and Festoonus (celebrated at my house with that Korean feast)

— 12/23/23: Last day of Saturnalia; and Festivus

— 12/24/23: Fourth Sunday of Advent; and Christmas Eve (finally, two well-known holidays — though how Christmas Eve is celebrated varies enormously)

Notes on the first two days, on which fall four occasions of minor rank (at least in the modern world).

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Packing Extreme Meat

December 18, 2023

(A lot of this posting is about the title of a Lucas gay porn movie, slated for full release in March 2024, but with its scenes being released one by one before then — the first, baldly titled “Dom King pounds Leonardo Bravo”, out last Friday (12/15), is described in one section of my 12/16 posting “Christmas days at the gay porn factories”. Before going on to an analysis of the movie’s title, I’ll unload some of the Lucas p.r. for the flick, and provide a sweet shot of the young Argentinean bottom LB in its first scene; this stuff is all about men’s sexual parts and man-on-man sex, in crude street language, so it’s entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest. After that, you’ll get some sexual slang, though treated analytically; mostly there will be a lot of technical linguistics, but I’m trusting you to handle this material like adults. Relax, you can do it (as Frankie Goes to Hollywood didn’t quite say).)

Part the First: four guys with big dicks. The Lucas Entertainment press release for the whole film, in gayporntalk:

Release Date: Mar 01, 2024

Performers [alphabetically ordered by first name]: Austin Ponce, Craig Marks, Dom King, Jacob Lord, Jeffrey Lloyd, Kosta Viking, Leandro Bravo, Sean Xavier

Some guys have such huge dicks that they can barely keep them under control… that’s when you know they’re PACKING EXTREME MEAT! Dom King unleashes his huge cock on Leandro Bravo and pounds him bareback. Kosta Viking and Jacob Lord suck and fuck until they nut. Sean Xavier slams Craig Marks with his enormous piece of man meat. And Jeffrey Lloyd funds Austin Ponce with his fat uncut dick!

[Linguistic note. Most of this is familiar ornamental gayporntalk: pound and slam ‘fuck’, nut ‘ejaculate, come, shoot’. But fund (with) used like award or bestow (with) as yet another way to convey ‘fuck’ (fucking as figuratively giving your dick to another man, bestowing it on him, bestowing him with it) is new to me. Promoted no doubt by the orthographic / phonological similarity between FUND and FUCK.]

From the first-released segment, I give you, not the big-dicked muscle-stud topman DK, contemptuously pounding Argentinean ass, but his lean, hairy, and very hot, novice pussyboy LB (as a receptive / bottom, long retired from active service, I note that I view the label pussyboy as playful and celebratory):


On the beach: Leandro Bravo in basic black

Part the Second: based on a hot-cock POP. This section is about the title Packing Extreme Meat, which is a pun on Packing Extreme Heat, so I turn now to the VP pack extreme heat. Which is an unusual (but attested) type of POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau). Whose contributing phrases are figurative expressions, one conveying ‘having a big penis’, the other ‘being sexually arousing’. And whose shared (overlapping) material — heat — has different senses in the two contributors, so that the portmanteau is also a pun, a punmanteau, if you will.

Yes, it’s complicated. It just has to be unpacked bit by bit. Stay with me.

I’ll start with two general observations about POPs, one about their form (about where the shared material comes in the two contributors — in the middle, at the beginning, or at the end), the other about their interpretation (about whether the shared material has the same meaning or different meanings in the two contributors — in what I’ll call vanilla POPs vs. pun POPs). There will be generous collections of examples from real life; don’t be alarmed by all this abstract description.

— Where does the shared material come? In your everyday POP, the shared material comes in the middle, but the beginning and the end are other possibilities:

medial sharing: A B C = (A B) + (B C) — sweet tooth fairy = sweet tooth + tooth fairy; Chia pet cemetery = Chia pet + pet cemetery; Home Birth of Venus = home birth + Birth of Venus; Billy Zane Grey = Billy Zane + Zane Grey (almost all POPs are of this form)

initial sharing: A (B + C) = A B + A C — paranormoralegal = paranormal + paralegal (a minority option)

final sharing: (A + B) C = A C + B C — L. Ron Mother Hubbard = L. Ron Hubbard + Mother Hubbard (another minority option)

— Is the meaning of the shared material constant or divergent in the two contributors? There are many vanilla POPs, like sweet tooth fairy, Chia pet cemetery, and Home Birth of Venus above. But there are also a ton of pun POPs, along the lines of:

snow border collie = snowboarder + border collie; Edgar Allan po’boy = Edgar Allan Poe + po’boy

similarly: Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young Frankenstein, Fleetwood Macchiato, Half a Key Largo, Pacific Rim job, iPad Thai

Yes, the really memorable pun POPs tend to be pretty outrageous; they figure in elaborate pun jokes.

Now: pack extreme heat. This is a final-sharing pun POP:

pack extreme heat = pack heat + extreme heat, with contributors:

— pack heat, a verb + object idiom (meaning ‘carry a gun’), with the slang noun heat ‘weaponry; weapon, gun, pistol’ as object

— extreme heat ‘high temperature’

On its face, that would yield an expression meaning something like ‘carry a gun that’s hot to the touch’. But then both contributors are understood figuratively, and sexually; remember that we’re working our way up to the title of a vehicle to (in elevated language) aid gay men to achieve ejaculation through masturbating to the filmed performances. It’s a gay jack-off flick, people, so its title pretty much has to be a dirty play on words; that’s why both parts now acquire dirty figurative senses: the gun of pack heat can be taken as a sexual metaphor, for a (big) penis, so that the phrase can convey ‘have a big cock / dick’. Meanwhile, there are also sexual metaphorical uses of heat, referring to sexual receptivity, sexual arousal, or the quality of being sexually arousing. so that extreme heat can convey high sexual involvement (in mind and/or body).

Voilà! Packing Extreme Heat, an excellent title for a gay porn movie: easily understood as satisfyingly down and dirty (even if you don’t understand the linguistic mechanisms that make it work); admirably raunchy, without using any off-color vocabulary at all (unlike, say, the Treasure Island Media gay porn flick Ruin the Cunt — which, like the Lucas film, is largely focused on bareback anal sex between men.)

Hold that thought about admirable raunchiness. I’ll get back to that in a moment.

But first I’ll do my duty as a linguist to fill in some of the lexicographic details on pack heat from standard sources, rather that just spouting glosses off the top of my head. (Extreme heat is, I think, entirely straightforward.) From NOAD:

phrase pack heat: North American informal carry a gun: he was busted at JFK for packing heat.

And from GDoS:

noun heat: 4 (US) weapons, arms [AZ: this is the M[ass] use, which might be better glossed as ‘weaponry’; but the entry also has C[ount] uses, glossed as ‘pistol’]

One last turn of the sexual screw. Ok, in Packing Extreme Heat, the Lucas Entertainment people had a fine title available to them. But they then decided to gild this lily with a paint gun, pushing the big-dick image hard by punning on pack extreme heat with the off-color pun meat ‘penis’ for the more innocent-seeming slang noun heat. Bringing us Packing Extreme Meat, for the holiday jack-off season (and on until March 1st, when the whole work will be officially released).

I know, I know, subtlety is not their strong point.

 

 

I’ll take Manhattan

December 13, 2023

An Ellis Rosen pun cartoon (which came by me on Facebook this morning) in which ER manages to treat Manhattan, the name of the island that’s one of the boroughs of New York City, as a pun on Manhattan, the name of the cocktail (made with whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters). This is a signal achievement in joke puns, managed by exploiting Godzilla / Gojira, from the Japanese movies, a radioactive prehistoric reptilian monster with a ravenous appetite for urban infrastructure, especially city buildings and large vehicles:


The cartoon, situated in a world of reptilian monsters (a world that’s a translation from our everyday world of restaurant dining); as a bonus, in an inset, the cartoonist’s thumbnail sketch of himself

On his Instagram page, ER says he’s re-posted this old cartoon of his because of the new Godzilla movie.

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Country names and food

December 11, 2023

Country names, take me home
To the place at the table where I belong

(with apologies to John Denver and his collaborators)

This posting is, first of all, about bare-bones pun jokes, typically a one-line set-up followed by the pun in a pay-off line.

In this case, on a theme (food and eating), with the puns all from a domain (of country names); the classic pun name on this theme from this domain is Hungary (punning on hungry). I will illustrate with three Hungary-based bare-bones jokes.

Then, name-domain + theme puns (in this case, country + food puns) can be arranged in a cascade, which can be performed by a single joke-teller or framed as repartee between two performers. The classic country + food cascade is triggered by Hungary (Greece, Turkey, and Chile are other possible triggers); I’ll call it the Hungary For Food Riff, HFR for short. HFR comes in many variants; here I give two repartee versions: one relayed to me by Probal Dasgupta on Facebook on 12/9, the other I found in net collections of puns on Hungary later that day.

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