Archive for the ‘Rhyme’ Category
October 14, 2024
(About gay porn, with rapt attention to men’s bodies and sex between men, in street language, so entirely inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest)
Dirty Words is a new release from NakedSword Originals (in the Falcon family of gay porn studios). Not about dirty words ‘taboo vocabulary, offensive or indecent words’, but about dirty writing ‘sex writing’ (erotic fiction, sexual memoirs, sexual advice). The synopsis from the studio (divided into paragraphs for easier reading):
New York City has long been the playground of sex writer Zachary Zane, author of Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto. Threesomes, anonymous hook-ups, and sex parties are all in a day’s research, not to mention questions from blog fans who happen to spot him out and about at his favorite Manhattan haunts.
Even power-bottom stud Michael Boston stops him on the street for some advice on his relationship with fuck buddy Alexander Müller before Zachary finally heads to Fire Island for a few days of rest and relaxation. Quickly, though, Zachary learns that the summer getaway hotspot is packed with inquisitive readers, all of whom want a piece of him – for counsel, of course. What started as an escape from writing deadlines quickly becomes a crash course in better sex for Oliver Hunt, Harold Lopez, Matty West, Beaux Banks, and Axel Rockham.
By the time Zachary returns to his NYC stomping grounds, he’s ready for a vacation from his vacation – but not before weighing in on a kinky threeway that new pal Michael Boston is planning to have with buddies Braxton Cruz and Travis Connor. Never one to say no to a friend, Zachary dispenses wisdom and encouragement in his signature no-nonsense style, proving that he’s always willing to provide more than just the tips.
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Posted in Books, Color, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Language play, Rhyme, Signs and symbols, Taboo language and slurs, Writers | Leave a Comment »
August 9, 2024
The New Yorker cover for the August 12th, 2024 issue is a great big Roz Chast cartoon. With the accompanying cover story, “Roz Chast’s “Flavor of the Week”: The artist’s enticing (and not so enticing) tweaks to one of summer’s enduring pleasures” by Françoise Muhly on 8/5/24:
(#1) Along with plain Vanilla, there are strangely modified real flavors, in it for the alliteration (Microchip Mint, First Avenue Fudge); actual food names not especially attractive in an ice cream (Lard Swirl, Hardtack, the potato variety Yukon Gold); and lots of totally non-food allusive names (Placebo, Bitcoin, Tumbleweed, Amnesia, Tsunami, and the noble gas Xenon)
For the cover of the August 12, 2024, issue, the cartoonist Roz Chast — who has delighted readers since 1978 with her opinionated and peculiar takes on life’s indignities — gives ice-cream makers some suggestions for new flavors. “There are a lot of things I like about ice-cream stores aside from the ice cream itself,” Chast said. “I like looking at the different colors and patterns of all the bins. I like comparing cones: wafer flat-bottom or pointy classic? And the names of the flavors: the more preposterous and baroque, the better.”
(There’s a Page on this blog with links to my postings about Roz Chast and her work)
Preposterous and baroque naming schemes run riot in several domains: famously, for colors, especially of paints and of fabrics; and then widely in the word of ice cream flavors, where many frozen-confection firms exult in their naming practices. I’ll comment on just three US companies, with three different approaches: Häagen-Dazs, Baskin-Robbins, and Ben & Jerry’s.
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Posted in Alliteration, Allusion, Art, Color, Language and food, Naming, Portmanteaus, Puns, Quotation, Rhyme, Taste, Trade names | 3 Comments »
December 1, 2023
It’s December, and as the Christmas elves appear, there comes a startling elfshelfism joke (in abbreviated form), on Facebook today. I got it from Ryan Tamares, who got it from Britannic Xen Osiris Zane, who got it from someone else, and who knows where such memic material originated.
(#1) Yes, Spock on a cock: the science officer of the starship USS Enterprise, riding a monstrously large rooster (across a bleak alien landscape)
To get to the punchline Spock on a cock, you have to recognize the figure of Spock (from popular-culture tv and movie fiction) and also recall that cock — most commonly used for raunchy reference to the penis — is also a somewhat antique or specialist word for a rooster. (As a result, #1 is not only a joke, but also a slightly dirty joke.)
As described in my 12/22/22 posting “Elfshelfisms”, the elfshelfism is a riddle form presented visually, and depends on rhyme (perfect rhyme or half-rhyme), with example punchlines: lemur on a femur, Dolly [Parton] on a tamale, and sonorants on cormorants.
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Posted in Formulaic language, Jokes, Language and animals, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Rhyme, Riddles, Taboo language and slurs, Understanding comics | 1 Comment »
May 17, 2023
That’s the punch line, right up front. I was going to post about the complex practices that attend my living in Urinal City in the Land of Diuresis, and maybe I’ll get to that some day, but today it’s pretty much just giggly stuff about English lexical items.
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Posted in Abbreviation, Language and medicine, Language and the body, Movies and tv, My life, Puns, Rhyme | 3 Comments »
December 22, 2022
Two especially satisfying examples of the elfshelfism, a riddle form presented visually:
(#1) Image: a cute furry mammal clinging to a bone. Punchline: lemur on a femur. (note: like elf and shelf, lemur and femur are (perfect) rhymes; unlike elf and shelf, however, they’re rare and remarkable nouns)
(#2) Image: a buxom woman reclining provocatively on a pile of Mexican food. Punchline: Dolly [Parton] on a tamale. (note: for most American speakers, Dolly and tamale are perfect rhymes, but for a substantial minority of American speakers, and for many others, they’re half-rhymes)
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Posted in Books, Formulaic language, Holidays, Jokes, Language and animals, Language and food, Phonetics, Phonology, Rhyme, Riddles, Toys | 5 Comments »
July 29, 2022
O pickle, my love / What a beautiful pickle you are!
Blame it on Nancy Friedman (@Fritinancy on Twitter), who took us down to the pickle plant in Santa Barbara on 7/18, citing these 5 delights, with their label descriptions:
Unbeetables (pickled beets with unbeatable heat) – pun on unbeatable
Carriots of Fire (pickled carrots to light your torch) – punning allusion to the film Chariots of Fire
¡Ay Cukarambas! (dill-icious spicy dill pickle spears) – complex portmanteau of the American Spanish exclamation ¡ay caramba! and the noun cuke ‘cucumber’
Asparagusto (pickled asparagus with a kick) – portmanteau of asparagus and gusto
Bread & Buddhas (semi-sweet bread & butter pickles) – pun on bread and butter (pickles)
(#1)
Pickles are automatically phallicity territory, and the Pacific Pickle Works in Santa Barbara CA (website here) doesn’t shy away from their penis potential, augmenting it by references to phallic carrots, asparagus spears, and unpickled cucumbers. If you have the eye for it, we all live in Penis Town.
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Posted in Alliteration, Double entendres, Language and food, Language in advertising, Language play, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Phallicity, Poetry, Portmanteaus, Puns, Rhyme, Slogans, Taboo language and slurs | 1 Comment »
August 30, 2021
Caught in passing on tv, a reference to heinous crimes in which the /h/ of /hénəs/ was so brief that the pronunciation came very close to /énəs krájmz/ anus crimes. I reflected for a moment on what those might be, passing over the obvious and distressing possibility ‘anal rapes’ to consider merely improper alternatives, like farting in public, or crimes that were only figurative, like anal bleaching, that crime against fashion.
But then my attention was caught by the rhyming phrase heinous anus, and I fell into musings about meanings for the expression — see below — until Famous Amos hit me (notes on Wally and his celebrated cookies further below). Oh my, now I had
the Famous Amos heinous anus
and my day was complete.
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Posted in Faces, Hats, Language and food, Language and the body, Language play, Rhyme, Silliness | 2 Comments »
May 26, 2021
In the One Big Happy strip from 4/30, Ruthie explains, impishly, that there’s a name for her grandma’s special brand of perceptiveness:
Even better, that name rhymes with the historical model for nouns in –dar, denoting ‘the ability to detect some quality’ (like having dyed gray hair)
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Posted in Libfixes, Linguistics in the comics, Portmanteaus, Rhyme | 1 Comment »
