Fresh news for male genitalia, in a Daily Jocks e-mail ad today (5/13): DJX Prime Enhancing Underwear: an instant bulge booster. Provides the illusion of great size, thereby addressing the American male obsession with genital size as an indicator of solid masculinity, power, and consequence (one big dick to rule them all, as the saying goes). Also provides a soft but protective pocket in which a man’s package (of whatever size) can be unconstrained (hang free or peter out, as the slogan goes). And of course it comes in fabulous colors, for the fashion-minded; the ads revel in pink.
Archive for the ‘Music’ Category
The pocket bulge
May 13, 2026The chopped / shot reference
May 9, 2026From Bethany “Bitty” Ramirez on Facebook on 5/8:
I chopped the rhubarb
But I did not chop the strawberry
— (#1) Ramirez
BR often writes (mouth-wateringly) about food and its preparation, but not lined out like this, and not with what looks like a reference to the song “I Shot the Sheriff” (in either of its two most famous recordings). Depending on your knowledge of popular music (which probably depends on your age), this is either an ostentatiously playful allusion — pretty much everybody of a certain age knows the song, so it leaps right out as the model for #1 — or an Easter egg quotation — a kind of hidden bonus for those younger listeners who happen to be familiar with the model. (More on OPAs and EEQs below.)
Out of Switzerland on 942
May 3, 2026Explorations of the channels on my Comcast cable subscription led me to a big block of “music choice” channels in the very high numbers, where I (with my basic cable subscription) don’t normally venture. And there I found channel 942, “classical masterpieces”, offering what ordinary Americans think of as “classical music” (of the serious variety, not the soupy stuff intended for elevators or supermarkets).
Some experience with 942 suggests that it’s very heavily biased towards orchestral music (including orchestral transcriptions of vocal, solo-instrument, and chamber music), especially from the Romantic period. My personal tastes are centered on solo-instrument music (especially for my instrument, the piano), chamber music (which I think of as musical conversations), and opera and art song — especially from the Baroque and Classical periods — so 942’s programming is an imperfect fit for me.
On the other hand, the programming tends to favor obscure composers (a fair number are people I’ve never heard of, though you might take that just to mean that I’m a poorly educated philistine) and obscure compositions by more well-known composers (for instance, a work by Elgar I’d never heard of) — which brings me to what was playing when I first tuned in to 942: Joachim Raff’s (very long, and dramatic) Symphony No. 1, in a recording by the Bamberg Symphony under Hans Stadlmair.
Bright Jeremiah, play for me
April 30, 2026🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for ultimate April (the rabbits rush in tomorrow, bearing muguets pour le premier mai), with my response to a posting on Facebook by John McIntyre yesterday
Hail! Bright Jeremiah, hail! fill ev’ry heart!
With love of thee and thy celestial art
— adapted from Nicholas Brady’s text for Henry Purcell’s “Hail! Bright Cecilia” (Z.328)
Let’s dance!
April 27, 2026Playing on my Apple Music when I woke this morning (4/27): the trio and chorus “They shall be as happy as they’re fair” from Act V of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, Z. 629, with its forward-driving syncopations accompanying the repeated “happy, happy”. A wild wedding song to start the day:
They shall be as happy, happy, as they’re fair,
Love shall fill all the places of care;
And ev’ry time the Sun shall display his rising light,
It shall be to them a new Wedding day,
And when he sets a new Nuptial night.
Every day a new festive wedding day, every night a new conjugal wedding night; let’s dance!
I was profoundly happy.
More questions for anauralics
April 15, 2026Following up on my 4/13 posting “A host of voices”, on
an enormous amount of variability in the way mental imagery and mental sounds work, in different people and for different purposes
focusing on auralia, on hearing sounds in the mind, and on anauralia, its lack (in a small percentage of people), in various contexts:
in silent reading, in the voice of an internal adviser, in recollected speech or music, in auditory hallucinations, in speech or other sounds in dreams
I had my University of Arizona colleague Heidi Harley as an exemplary anauralic (while recognizing that each person has their own profile of mental-percept abilities); what she can tell us is important, beause it appeared then, and still does, that there’s not much research on mental sound (or mental imagery), in perceptually deficient subjects (anauralics, aphantastics) or even in perceiving (“normal”) subjects (auralics, phantastics), though it looks like there’s an enormous amount of variability.
Now: two further contexts to consider.
Triplefruit trail mix, the musical score
April 13, 2026A couple days ago, with my helper Isaac, I was preparing triplefruit trail mix: a large pouch of commercial trail mix — of almonds, cashews, and (dried) cranberries — with added packs of (dried) blueberries and cherries. (A couple handfuls of this trail mix is then added to some granola — rolled oats with almonds, raisins, cranberries, and pecans — to make a bowl of my breakfast cereal, which is, finally, moistened with yogurt and milk. Fiber, fruits, nuts, probiotics, and yumminess.
Assembling the trail mix involves dumping the pouch of commercial mix and the packets of dried fruits into a large plastic container, fixing the top firmly on the container, and then getting its contents thoroughly mixed, by turning and shaking the container briskly, over and over.
Trail mixing is noisy, energetic, and surprisingly entertaining. You are moved to treat the stuff in its container as a percussion instrument, to sway your hips a bit, and to contemplate breaking into song. This time, Isaac and I had the very same inspiration:
Shake it up, baby … Twist and shout … Come on and work it on out
Oh yeah! There’s a musical score for trail mixing, and it’s glorious.
Countermanic Baroque
March 27, 2026E-mail from Ellen Kaisse this morning, for the annals of mishearing:
— EK > AZ: I got all bent out of shape this morning when I thought I heard an ad for a prescription drug called Vivaldi. How dare they appropriate the name of a beloved Baroque composer? Further investigation revealed that it is called Lybalvi.
— AZ > EK: Lovely. With you, I am offended on Vivaldi’s behalf.