Archive for the ‘My life’ Category

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Thilopyrus flamminips Wants YOU!

September 23, 2022

(Content warning: men’s bodies, references to sex between men, not suitable for kids or the sexually modest. On the other hand, there will be some delightful birds.)

Yesterday’s Daily Jocks sale ad (for harnesses, plus accompanying jockstraps and athletic socks) via e-mail, featuring the model I’ve called Reggie. In the ad, we see Reggie in character as Thilopyrus flamminips, the fire-nippled flit, performing his mating ritual; note the characteristic cruising facial display (narrowed eyes, intense direct gaze) and the inflamed party plumage (rainbow harness and jockstrap), but especially the left nipple actually on fire (when both tits ignite, the flit spontaneously ejaculates, at the same time producing his climax cry, a fierce, drawn-out whoop: “Fuuuuck”)

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Posted in Clothing, Facial expressions, Gaze, Language and the body, My life, Taboo language and slurs, Underwear | 4 Comments »

Briefly: exocentric V + N

September 20, 2022

(Warning: a vulgar term for the primary female sexual anatomy will end up playing a big role in this posting.)

Where this is going: to an alternative name for an American President (#45, aka TFG); and to an alternative name for a classic American novel (by J.D. Salinger) — both names being exocentric V + N compound nouns, the first in English, the second in French. (I’ll call them exoVerNs for short.)

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Posted in Architecture, Art, Books, Compounds, Derivation, French, Language and gender, Language and plants, Language and the body, Language in politics, My life, Synthetic compounds, Taboo language and slurs, Writers, Writing | 1 Comment »

This week’s astounding job offer

September 17, 2022

Real money! For teaching! (I taught my last class in 2010, but I’ve been surreptitiously lecturing about linguistics and gender & sexuality studies in my light-entertainment postings on this blog — yes, I’ve been using you, and I won’t stop now — though I can’t imagine that anyone would pay for this.) On the other hand, the offer e-mail is a raging wildfire of red flags, a whole trawler packed solid and piled high with stinking dead fish.

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Posted in My life, Teaching and learning, This blogging life | 10 Comments »

Blogger, interrupted

September 15, 2022


The Blogger, tied in furious knots

I was about the do a quick posting on Roger Federer, who announced his retirement from professional tennis today — because Federer is an admirable person in a whole series of ways, and because Federer is really really Swiss (he and I share the Alpine nose!).

But I was interrupted by Life, in ways mostly gratifying, but both time-consuming and exhausting, so the piece about RF and his splendid Swissness remains unfinished.

Well, the Federer piece interrupted my progress on a “RELAX ARNOLD” posting (about something that had popped up in a Facebook ad).

And “RELAX ARNOLD” took me away from posting on two other ads that had appeared suddenly: “funny aperitif board” and “the social lives of ruff dudes”.

And those two interrupted my advance on a whole set of half-prepared postings: “tastes like glazed donuts”, “ride the wild okapi”, and more.

I can’t imagine how I’m going to dig myself out of this hole.

But, you ask, how did I spend this day (after taking in the hot news about Federer)?

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Posted in Academic life, Language and medicine, Language and sports, My life, Stanford, Switzerland and Swiss things | 6 Comments »

Knabenschiessen!

September 13, 2022

The introductory paragraph below was written in a moment of hope yesterday morning (9/12). But then I was consumed by medical problems triggered by last week’s extraordinarily high temperatures; by hours and hours of making arrangements for medical appointments (one this morning, others on each of the following mornings this week, some in the future); hours of doing work-arounds for the continuing non-renewal of my Adjunct Professor position at Stanford; and then, this morning (9/13), trying to cope — all afternoon, problem still far from fixed — with Gmail access on my computer (receiving and sending) disappearing entirely. I am crazed, distraught, angry, gasping for breath, afflicted by joint and muscle pains. But Not Dead Yet.

I did achieve my minimal goals for symbolic recognition of the two cultural holidays yesterday, but at 7 p.m. had to give up on explaining Knabenschiessen to you in a timely fashion. But I’m not sure when I’ll be able to craft a posting. Watch this space.

[9/12] In one part of my life, the Chinese-culture-friendly part, this is the third and last day of the Mid-Autumn Festival weekend, for which I will sacrifice a red bean mooncake as the sun sets. In another part, the Swiss-culture-friendly part, this is the third and last day of (as we would say it in English) Boys-Shooting weekend, for which I am wearing (by fortunate accident) my Swiss flag gym shorts (I have four handsome lightweight gym shorts I rotate through by the week — last week’s Pride Rainbow pair just came out of the washer). (I am also wearing a pink Gay as Fuck t-shirt, but that’s untethered to any immediately relevant gay-cultural occasion.)

 

Posted in Holidays, Language and culture, My life, Switzerland and Swiss things, This blogging life | 4 Comments »

Great age

September 8, 2022

A note from my sister-in-law Virginia Transue (my (late) man Jacques’s (late) older brother Bill’s wife — Virginia and I are the survivors) on Facebook yesterday, in the matter of my 9/6 birthday, this year my 82nd:

VT: Funny how every single year you are 5 weeks ahead of me [her birthday is 10/12]. What a great age we have both reached.

AZ > VT: Yes, always those five weeks. What a great age we have both reached: I’d like to read that as having great ‘of ability, quality, or eminence considerably above the normal or average’ — at an apogee — but you might well just have meant ‘of an extent, amount, or intensity considerably above the normal or average’ — exceptionally large. Well, whatever, somehow we’ve gotten here.

A little lexicography, some personal history involving my first male lover (also a survivor), and it will end with Elaine Stritch singing.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Holidays, Music, My life, Theater | 1 Comment »

The Sprinkles carrot cake caper

September 8, 2022

As reported in my 82nd birthday posting “Three greetings for 9/6/22”, while I was holed up at home in severe and debilitating heat misery on the day, some friends e-mailed me delightful greetings — visual, verbal, and musical — and a hundred or so of them wished me a happy birthday, mostly via Facebook. Meanwhile, I ordered up some coffee gelato (it was also National Coffee Ice Cream Day, and that’s my favorite ice cream flavor) and a carrot cake (which is, well, cake, but very flavorful and chewy and not terribly sweet, and it comes with a lovely cream cheese frosting, all of which suits my tastes). I found no way to honor the Marquis de Lafayette (born 9/6/1757), though here I’ll give my summary from the Lafayette section of my 9/7/19 posting “Big sexy prime birthday gay ice cream”:

A man of enormous physical courage who took up the family military career at the age of 13 and later pursued an extraordinary public career devoted to advocating for democracy and human rights in two countries [mine and his], and managed somehow to live to the age of 76.

Then on the day after came sweet messages from people apologizing for having missed the day itself. But as I said to one of these (an old friend, an admirable person, and one of the small core of my regular readers — so someone whose good words were especially important to me):

I’m inclined to view my birthday as a fairly large region in time, not just one day. The net congratulations largely achieve the purpose of maintaining and reinforcing relationships, and that doesn’t have to happen on just one day.

And from one of the Aging Life Care of California folk (who, among other things, take me to medical appointments, of which I have a great many), who recently began reading this blog. Full of apologies for having missed the actual day, which I countered with the Region Theory of Birthday Time (above), and then bearing a gift box of four Sprinkles muffins, from the company’s Palo Alto store (in Stanford Shopping Center). A box notably including

dark chocolate (Belgian dark chocolate cake with bittersweet chocolate frosting, in curls)

carrot (walnut-studded carrot cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting)

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language and food, Mascots, My life, Palo Alto, Rainbow, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

Three greetings for 9/6/22

September 6, 2022

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).

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Posted in Ambiguity, Art, Greetings, Holidays, Homosexuality, Humor, Language and plants, Language of sex, Mammoths, Music, My life, Penguins, Phallicity, Pragmatics, Signs and symbols, Slang | 2 Comments »

The vine and the fritter

September 4, 2022

Two notes from my life, one botanical, one gastronomical. The first has to do with the trellis, fencing, and wall plantings in my Palo Alto condo complex, which depend entirely on plants that are described in reference guides with the adjectives rampant and invasive and the verb smother. Originally, Chinese wisteria, Wisteria sinensis, and English ivy, Hedera helix. But then after the dry-rotted wooden arches in the complex were pulled down and replaced a while ago, new supertough vines were planted; my condo now has Dolichandra unguis-cati, cat’s-claw creeper, in front of it; and yesterday I noticed that some other condos have been planted with what appears to be Ipomoea indica, blue morning glory. Both of these newcomers are, omigod, contending — visibly and vigorously — with the ivy. (Yes, there will be pictures.)

Then, yesterday, in an Asian noodle mood, I decided to try the offerings from Tommy Thai (Thai and Cambodian food) in Mountain View (delivered by GrubHub). My first venture with the place, so I tried one noodle dish and one dish meant to go on rice (with a multidimensional range of options within those large categories), plus an appetizer that I hadn’t had before: Thai corn fritters (tod man khao pod). Which took me back, unexpectedly but satisfyingly, to my Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother’s corn fritters. (Only two photos here — one Thai, one Pa. Dutch. Invasive flowering vines are a lot more picturesque than little pancakes.)

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Posted in Language and food, Language and plants, My life | 4 Comments »

Bedroom eyes

September 2, 2022

(Below the fold, a hot guy flashing bedroom eyes in nothing but a white low-rise basic brief that leaves little to the imagination: a matter of taste.)

A Daily Jocks flash sale — their term — for the Labor Day weekend. Work it, thick Nipaman!

I post this here for Nipaman’s lean, muscular body (very much to my taste) and of course for his remarkable bedroom-eyes performance, but also as a playful release at the end of a 9/2 day that began with a 12:30 am automated message informing me that my adjunct appointment at Stanford (and my use of Stanford e-mail, library services, and more) would be terminated on 9/4 (actually, the library services — access to the OED! — had already been terminated on 9/1), setting in motion 8 hours of heart-pounding Woo(l)ly Mammoth Crisis Time, temporarily resolved by my department’s paying for a year of these services for me while the issue of my appointment by the dean is settled.

But now I am yours, Nipaman. Work your sex magic on me.

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Posted in Facial expression, Holidays, Language and the body, Movies and tv, My life, Underwear | 5 Comments »

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