Thanks to a pointer from Jeff Bowles, this first panel from a Peanuts strip (dated by Charles Schulz as from 2/16/60), now a candidate for my on-line icon:
(#1) Schroeder at his toy piano, on which rests a somnolent Snoopy, emitting the cartoon Z of sleep (also the Zwicky initial); for further personal meaningfulness, I am a former pianist (still an enthusiast of the piano repertory), now an analyst of the comics (among other things)
(Along the way, some direct talk in street language about man-on-man sex, so not for kids or the sexually modest)
On AZ’s Astounding Bookshelf, the remarkable Mammoth Drop: Murder, Mammoths, and Mimosas (Kea Wright Mysteries) by R. J. Corgan, independently published in 2022 in paperback and Kindle editions. An ad for the book (supplied to me on Facebook yesterday by Michael Palmer, with a link to the Amazon site for the book):
(#1) Obviously up my alley: as a fan of murder mysteries and a highly visible homo, with a woo(l)ly mammoth as my totem animal (MP has my number)
A just-installed photo gallery on the wall above the desk in the study of my condo. An addition to the visual density of the place, providing enjoyment for me, but also intended to absorb and please friends and visitors (I am a deeply sociable person, and I like to entertain, in several senses.)
About Street Life. A display of six sex-tinged (but not actually X-rated) photos of men on the street (from Samson McGee, who maintains a gigantic library of malesex photos for sale), each with a fortune from a fortune cookie. I have given them titles and ordered them below in a kind of natural progression; here with the fortunes:
— Soon Paid Off: street hustler, iconic and tough; All of your hard work will soon be paid off.
— Performance over Speed: street hustler, not at all toughened up yet; People forget how fast you did a job — but they remember how well you did it.
— Time Not Money: two sailors, possibly cruising, maybe even hustling; A friend asks only for your time and not money.
— Offer Affection and a Sea-going Hard-On: two sailors strolling, one with a hard-on; Love is being offered to you, be affectionate in return!
— Offer Affection and an Unbuttoned Hard-On: two guys talking on the street, one with a hard-on and his fly open; [once again] Love is being offered to you, be affectionate in return!
— Fish Sticks and Moose Knuckles: two guys talking on the street in front of a shop selling fish sticks (one sporting a tremendous moose-knuckle); Every wise man started out by asking many questions.
Once again, I would like to give you a photo of the display, but I have to wait until I can get someone to take a picture for me.
The visual density of my environment. First there are the books — in the big main room, the study, and the bedroom. Mostly a deeply random collection of things saved from the dispersal of my 40,000-volume professional library, though there are some coherent subcollections. But possibly worth scanning: I doubt that there’s anyone else in the world with this collection of titles, so you might find some surprises.
Then on almost every remaining horizontal surface, collections of objects — remarkable, pretty, funny, sexy, artfully made, full of affectionate associations. Gay symbols, penguins, mammoths, phallic symbols. In the heavily X-rated bedroom, representations of dicks, simulacra of dicks, creatures with bodyparts in the shape of dicks, and so on.
And on almost every available vertical surface, artworks, cartoons, collages, Zwicky images, postcards (men, animals, food, whatever), and photographs, both family photographs and hot guys. In the heavily X-rated bedroom, a huge assortment of my XXX-rated homoerotic comic collages.
Much here to amuse the eye and engage the mind. Come visit sometime.
For Woo(l)ly Mammoth’s #82: a fresh greeting formula, a morning hummer, and a fairy woodland bouquet. To which I’m adding some carrot cake and coffee ice cream: it’s not only my birthday, it’s also National Coffee Ice Cream Day, which I’m honoring all aslant (with coffee gelato), as I do so many things. To alter a family saying (If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly): If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing eccentrically (for other occasions: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing outrageously).
I was in the middle of singing along (at home, by Zoom) to the Palo Alto All-Day Sacred Harp Singing (10-4 today), when the following appeared on my screen, representing a fellow electronic participant:
(#1) Image identified as belonging to James Solheim, who I happened to know was actually singing along from Omaha NE, using technology much cooler than Zoom
But whoa! Is this a slogan? Is it a thing? I appreciated that it was surely intended as an exhortation to ingestion, not fellation. But still… The woolly mammoth is my chief totem animal, and Woo(l)ly Mammoth is one of my pseudonyms; I am W M, I am. And I take these things personally.
As it happens, I’ve met Solheim, who sang with the local Harpers a while back, when he was visiting his daughter Jenny, who’s a recent addition to the set of local singers (more on her below). But I had no idea what he did for a living. Turns out he’s an artist and an author, specializing in books for kids. Of which Eat Your Woolly Mammoths! is one.
Knowing that the woolly mammoth is my primary totem animal, Anneli Meyer Korn has pointed me to this little slice of the University District in Seattle:
(#1) The Woolly Mammoth shoe store, 4303 University Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105: “Comfortable, high quality, good-looking shoes and excellent customer service”
And from Wikipedia, on the excellent qualities of Mammuthus primigenius, the original woolly mammoth:
The woolly mammoth coexisted with early humans, who used its bones and tusks for making art, tools, and dwellings, and hunted the species for food.
M. primigenius provided humans with comfort, offering up its huge bones to form into shelter, and beauty, in ivory carvings. Plus useful tools and life-sustaining meat. The Woolly Mammoth store’s shoes provide comfort and good looks, but can they be used as needles or stave off hunger? I thought not.
Still, those are damn fine shoes. Especially the Birkenstocks:
… and the ferocity of gatherers. In the heat of the moment, it all came down to:
IT WAS IN THE WAY
The Sunday (and so landscape rather than portrait, also Piraro-only) Bizarro from 2/26, posted here for International Women’s Day, 3/8:
(#1) Mammoths, hunter-gatherers, and the power of women (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are, omigod, 13 in this strip — see this Page.)
Apparently, she took the mammoth down with a sharp stick, something she was perhaps gathering as firewood. Wow. Don’t mess with Bess.
(References to penises but no depictions of them , even (alas) on plastic action figures. On the other hand, there’s a neon pink dildo, so readers might want to exercise their judgment.)
My neon pink DJX Trough jockstrap (in size L) has arrived from the antipodes (the company is in Australia, but the jock was shipped from New Zealand) and been installed in its place as an item of decor in my living room. Meanwhile, my new Lollicock neon pink dildo has come to rest on the desk in my bedroom; it has become a Desk Dildo. And I am finally releasing a portrait of three gay action figures and their three companion mammoths, engaged in a ritual celebration under the blazing bedroom sun (on what I still think of as Jacques’s dresser, even though it’s the one I use in daily life — the dresser on which J once erected a small shrine to Mark Wahlberg in his (Marky Mark’s, not J’s) Calvins).
Anyway, it’s all dick-heavy (on the scene and even in reminiscence), though there are no discernible actual dicks.
Well, yes, it’s a big thing, or will be if it works, but the story here is about a proposal to revive — de-extinct seems to be the technical term — the woolly mammoth, à la Jurassic Park.
Dinosaurs, no; see the scientist in this wry cartoon by Tom Gauld (originally from New Scientist, then reprinted in You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack and in Department of Mind-Blowing Theories):
(#1)
But woolly mammoths, sort of and maybe. And on that there’s recent news from Harvard (where is Tom Lehrer when we need him?).
Back on 3/16, I was honored by not one, but two, Facebook postings on the theme “this made me think of you”.
From Michael Palmer, a flyer for the 1897 mammoth opening of the swimming season at the Sutro Baths in San Francisco (MP: for “Arnold Zwicky, because mammoth”, alluding to my attachment to creatures of the genus Mammuthus).
And from Livia Polanyi (alert to my writing on gender and sexuality), 1940 gender adventures in Dallas: hunky male car hops in shorts and cowboy boots.
