Archive for the ‘Myths’ Category

« Older Entries

Never-ending rock & roll

September 19, 2023

Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro is a Sisyphus cartoon — the Greek mythological king (punished by having to endlessly roll a rock uphill) made into in a cartoon meme (many examples listed on the Page on this blog on comic conventions) — and also an echo of rock & roll music as a continuing theme in Bizarro cartoons (most recently in my 9/16 posting “Original Rockers”, about AC/DC), these two elements joined in a pun on rock and roll:


(#1) A classically Greek Sisyphus (muscular, wearing only a Greek tunic), rolling his rock while musing on the end of rock & roll as the dominant form of popular music (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

Out of all this, two topics for a little more comment: the end of rock & roll (“so over this fad”); and cartoonist’s favored memes (for Wayno & Piraro, these include the Psychiatrist meme, in almost any form you can imagine; for Bob Eckstein (“bob”), these include the Sisyphus meme, with various things standing in as the rock and various characters standing in as the roller).

(more…)

Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Myths, Pop culture, Puns | 1 Comment »

An ideal male body

September 15, 2023

(16th-century public heroic statuary of male nudes, so there will be (small) penises, if that sort of thing worries you)

An ideal male body — or so Kenji Matsuoka pronounced it this morning:


(#1) Side view of [Italian] Oceano / [Latin] Oceanus by Giambologna (1576) at the Bargello National Museum, Florence: a simultaneous imagined depiction of Neptune, the Roman god of waters and oceans (whose Greek counterpart is Poseidon); and flattering tribute to the sculptor’s Medici patron — in a single beautiful male body

Giambologna’s largest marble; it once crowned a fountain in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, but in 1911 it was moved to the Bargello Museum.

KM no doubt chose this particular view of the statue because it shows Oceano’s / Neptune’s penis — a routine feature of public heroic statuary of male nudes (at some times in some places). This is the standard small penis of classical statuary, modestly situated in this work.

I’m assuming that the other elements of the sculpture (like Neptune’s signature creature, the dolphin) are assembled for their individual symbolic values, rather than (as in Michelangelo’s David) illustrating a larger story.

(more…)

Posted in Art, Language and the body, Masculinity, Myths | 1 Comment »

Annals of male art: embracing the statue

July 27, 2023

On Pinterest, this image of a man embracing a (male) statue:


Gay Pygmalion and the statue he loves

This from oatbug’s Tumblr account, where it’s dated 10/7/22, with the note:

reblogged from luvwish; originally from executed-deactivated20161004

But this last link is apparently now dead, so we don’t know who the ultimate creator of the image was, and what they had in mind. I post the image here because I find it moving (but then I’m a fool for same-sex affection of all sorts). And beautifully composed.

(more…)

Posted in Art, Homosexuality, Male art, Myths, Photography | Leave a Comment »

Prometheus and the eagle: the statue

July 25, 2023

Noticed in passing on Pinterest yesterday, this dramatic statue of Prometheus and the eagle, by German sculptor Reinhold Begas:


A male nude (unusual for Begas, whose specialty was monumental statues of public figures); I don’t know where it’s located

The eagle looks threateningly at the chained Prometheus, who shrinks back in terror, anticipating the eagle’s next feasting on his liver.

(more…)

Posted in Art, Male art, Myths | 4 Comments »

SUMC moments: Dutch treat

July 2, 2023

A complex follow-up to my 6/27/23 posting “SUMC moments: the apple juice”, where I wrote:

At one point in my most recent SUMC stay we had gotten to the place where I was about to be taken off NPO (see my previous posting “SUMC moments: NPO”) and given some modest real food, but the orders to do this had not yet been issued. The head nurse (about whom more in another posting [this very posting], which will take us to India and the northeast corner of South America) took pity on me and extracted — oh great pleasure! — a tiny box of apple juice for me [from the wonderfully named apple juice company Apple & Eve].

Meanwhile I stared at Sha’s name tag, which said her name was:

Shakoentala Jagroep

I stared, baffled, by the name, with its puzzling OE spellings, until I recognized her first name in this strange spelling. Why, I asked, was Shakuntala — a name of great weight in India — spelled in this fashion? She was startled and impressed by my pronunciation, which I pronounced in Sanskrit fashion, notably with the T and L quite different from an English rendition of the name. “You said it right!”, she exclaimed. And added, cryptically, “The Dutch Empire”, but was then called away on other duties.

Later, I got to ask her what part of the Dutch Empire, guessing Indonesia, surely the biggest piece. But no: little Suriname, in the northeast corner of South America.

I will track through this history below, but first a digressive note about one of the evils of the Dutch in Indonesia.

(more…)

Posted in Dutch, Language and medicine, My life, Myths | 4 Comments »

The Harpy Celaeno

May 16, 2023

Today’s surprise art lesson, this remarkable sculpture that came into my view first thing this morning:


(#1) The Harpy Celaeno by Mary Pownall (1862 – 1937) (photo: Glasgow Life Museums)

(more…)

Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Myths, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

All the world is new again

May 1, 2023

🐇 🐇 🐇 for the first of May — not only beginning a new month, but also (among other things) celebrating the rebirth of life, and embracing the raw carnality of the season. This is the immediate follow-up to yesterday’s Walpurgis Eve, as described in my posting “Lord, preserve us from the witches”.

From my 5/1/20 posting “Trois lapins pour le premier mai”, about the 1st of May:

by some cultural reckonings the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere and also (in some countries) International Workers Day, so: dance around the maypole, set bonfires for Beltane or Walpurgis, prepare for outdoor bo(i)nking (rabbits again!), break out the lilies of the valley (muguets pour le premier mai), cue the choruses of L’Internationale, and march in solidarity with the workers. (Feel free to choose from this menu, as your taste inclines and your schedule allows.)

The posting muses on, among other things, rabbits, Botticelli’s Three Graces from Primavera, and reworkings of the threesome theme.

(more…)

Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and the body, Myths, Phallicity, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

Two winged men

April 20, 2023

Something of a present to me from Vadim Temkin: two of his recent digital artworks; he writes:

When I was doing these winged men, a warrior angel and Icarus, I was thinking of you.

Thinking of me because I have a thing for winged men (often posted about on this blog).

So here they are, cropped for WordPress modesty.

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Myths | 1 Comment »

The divine phallus

April 2, 2023

… in marble and bronze: a continuation of yesterday’s “Two bronze Orpheuses”, which began with the fate of Michelangelo’s marble David in Florida, where high school students must be shielded from viewing the statue’s penis. Australian cartoonist Cathy Wilcox’s savage take on that situation:


(#1) Wilcox’s “American Obscenity” cartoon (from the Sydney Morning Herald)

From here, even disregarding the American obsessive prudery about the human body, the topic goes off in many different directions. I’ll ramble through these in no particular order, starting with a digression on Wilcox, who’s new to this blog.

(more…)

Posted in Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Myths, Phallicity, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

Happy P Day, Mr. President

February 20, 2023

(men’s bodies and sex between men, illustrated just a bit shy of a X-rating and described in vivid detail in street language — tons of F for P day —  so entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)

It’s Presidents / President’s / Presidents’ Day — P Day, for short — in my country, and suppliers of gay porn flicks have mounted P Day sales of their wares. Their ads sometimes display an image from such a flick, ornamented with patriotic symbols (American flags, stars, plenty of red, white, and blue); the image itself usually has nothing whatsoever to do with P Day, but is an illustration of the deeply satisfying fantasy sex a man-desiring man can get off to by watching one of the flicks on sale. Often the sale ads are just gigantic displays of the covers of the merchandise, so you can search for what might work for you by scanning the titles and cover photos.

Two images from this year’s crop of P Day sale ads. One, from the Falcon company, shows an image of Flying Cowboy, an image in which a grateful citizen thanks his President by serving as the receptive partner in this acrobatic approach to anal intercourse. (The emotional landscape of the actual act is very different from this: the President is working hard to provide pleasure for his constituent.)

The other image is just one of the many covers in the Gay Empire ad for its P Day sale — a cover for a costume flick about pedication among the Norsemen.

This is the end of the careful talk in this posting. Below the horizontal line, and then the fold, is where the wild things have sex.

(more…)

Posted in Acting, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language of sex, Movies and tv, Music, Myths | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries