An occasional poem (in free verse) for my friend Sharon on her recent birthday, wrapped up in the calendar, the female body, and plants and their sexual symbolisms, with photos. The poem first, then remarks on its form, then a bit of background information.
Archive for the ‘Tongue twisters’ Category
A rose for Sharon
June 21, 2025Double damask
March 10, 2020My morning name from ten days ago, from a celebrated comedy routine: a double dozen double damask dinner napkins. The original was apparently two dozen double damask dinner napkins, and it sometimes is performed as a dozen double damask dinner napkins, but its tongue-twisteristic core is the double damask dinner napkins part — and the history is interesting, but what consumed me that morning was where I’d first encountered that phrase and the routine.
I was pretty sure it was at Princeton in 1959-62, in the Bendon/Daingerfield menage on Nassau St., and I recalled clearly that I was familiar with them in the fall of 1962, when Ann Daingerfield and I moved into our house in Cambridge MA and discovered we were in possession of several dozen double damask dinner napkins; we dissolved in giggles repeating the phrase. (I still have some of those napkins; they are not only handsome but durable.)
(#1) An Irish linen double damask dinner napkin, in service
The better body butter, with Whipped Shea Butter
October 15, 2019Now seen on tv, commercials for Gold Bond creams. In particular, this remarkable item:
(#1)
Radiance Renewal Whipped Shea Butter. Body Cream: 8 oz. Buttery smooth, ultra-rich hydration moisturizes skin for 24 hours.
Have you ever wished you could have all the benefits of a raw Shea Butter, but with a smooth, easy application? Meet GOLD BOND® Radiance Renewal Whipped Shea Butter.
Oh, honey, I have yearned for raw Shea Butter, but always hoped it could somehow be whipped into smoothness, for I am a sensitive fellow. And I’ve long mused about the fabulous Irishman Shea who gave his name to this remarkable ultra-rich hydrating substance.
Imagine my astonishment when I discovered that Shea was not Irish at all but West African, and that he was a nut-bearing tree. Also that Shea Butter, like Coconut Oil, provides not only moisturization, but also nourishment. Shea is, in a word, eminently edible.
Annals of inadvertently cute creatures
May 9, 2019During the frustrating days of searching for a source of the Japanese-Spanish “Ariperro” cartoon (5/5 report on this blog here), I wrote on Facebook:
Stacy [Holloway] says there’s no clear answer. I say I’m sad about the unclear answer.
And Stacy offered to allay my sadness with something happy, specifically, from the My Modern Met site, “Adorable “Leaf Sheep” Sea Slugs Look like Cartoon Lambs” by Jenny Zhang on 8/22/15:
(#1) A leaf sheep sea slug, Costasiella kuroshimae
Pickled pricks
May 4, 2018(Treat the title as a warning — or as an invitation, whichever suits you.)
Yesterday, the posting “He said “prickles””, on prick, prickle, dick, prickly, and pickle (with notes on pickles as phallic symbols) and various combinations of these words, including prickle as a portmanteau of prick and pickle. To which Chris Hansen commented:
I can’t tell whether you’ve ever referred to a work of art I remember seeing but can’t locate online. It was a pickle jar filled with penises, and it was named “Prickles” There was vinegar in it too.
Well, yes and no. I’ve posted on an artwork of this description, but it wasn’t entitled Prickles (though it could have been).
That will take me to Peter Piper, and also to actual pickled penises.
The fan, the spathiphyllum, and the impressionist garden
September 10, 2017Juan came by on Friday to replace the left fan in my laptop (it had reached airplane takeoff mode) and bring me small birthday presents: some mini-cheesecakes from Whole Foods (one berry, one espresso), an excellent but hard to pronounce houseplant, and a visit to the Gamble Garden to view ranks of gauzy late summer and autumn plants in bloom.
The computer repair took only a few minutes — I am now enjoying the silence of the fans — so I’ll focus here on the vegetative side of things: the birthday plant, a spathipyllum (say that three times fast!); and those seasonal flowers, which are gauzy only to a cataractive guy like me (but the Monet impressionist-garden effect is actually quite pleasing, one of the very few positive consequences of gradual vision loss).
Metalinguistic tasks
August 12, 2017In a recent One Big Happy, Ruthie’s father tries to get her to play with tongue twisters, but she treats the texts as stories about events in a real world:
Playing with tongue-twister texts is metalinguistic behavior, an activity in which bits of language are treated as objects in themselves, rather than being used to report, inquire, exclaim, instruct, etc. Small children (as above) and people in nonliterate societies are known for sometimes resisting metalinguistic talk of various kinds, instead confining themselves to concrete talk — what I’ll call planolinguistic talk (suggesting ‘flatly linguistic’, rather than ‘beyond and above’ language).
Three more Reapings
April 13, 2017The latest bulletin from Pinterest featured a Reaper Jokes board maintained by Kathy-Lynn Cross. More Grim Reaper cartoons, including one that especially caught my eye because of the two idioms in the text. A Mark Parisi showing one (angry) Reaper confronting another (disconsolate) Reaper: “I’ve had it with you! From now on, you’re alive to me!”. Nice reversal of the idiomatic you’re dead to me ‘I disown you, cut you off, will never see or speak to you again’. Spoken by Death to Death, you’re alive to me conveys the same.
More on this cartoon, then two more Grim Reapers, to add to the 14 already posted on this blog; it’s a very popular cartoon meme.