My grandchild Opal Eleanor Armstrong Zwicky was born 3/4/04, so they’re 21 years old today, 3/4/25 — the final legal hurdle to adulthood in my country — and, wonderful coincidence, today is Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, the last day of Carnival, etc.), so we should be tossing them a string of opals. I suggest something along these lines:
(#1) A blue Australian opal necklace (with an electroformed copper chain), jewelry by Anaika from Etsy (US$50)
Appearing at my door a little while back, on a hot day, an enthusiastic young woman who turned out to be soliciting support for a political candidate, the first one to declare for a seat on Palo Alto’s City Council. As sometimes happens in this little city (of about 50,000 residents), she wasn’t a campaign worker, but the candidate, Katie Causey, working door to door in the neighborhood (which turns out to be literally where she lives — just about a block and a half from my place). KC’s headshot for publicity purposes:
KC, born and raised in Palo Alto, going to local schools through Paly High; BA from George Washington Univ. in DC, in Women’s Studies (but she took a linguistics course, so she was actually impressed by my being a linguistics professor)
Right at the beginning, she asked about the rainbow flag hanging from my patio door; I pointed to the clothing I was wearing — a tank top with a rainbow heart on it, bold rainbow shorts — saying, “Hey it’s Pride Month!” and clearly establishing myself as proudly queer. And she countered by announcing that one of her platform planks was establishing a Palo Alto Pride celebration. Then we were off in a breathless exchange of life histories and opinions.
Well, I am constitutionally an enthusiast, like KC, and enthusiasts tend to amp each other up. Also, she was selling herself and her program — from one of her announcements: “I’m a bi, zillennial, urbanist, and former tenant organizer who believes yes in my backyard, & I’m running for Palo Alto City Council” (wow, a crunchy-granola manifesto!) — while I was a desperately lonely old guy who longs for face-to-face conversation and will go on forever if you encourage me at all. Only the heat of the day brought our exchange to an end.
Now, a bit more about KC. And her generation, Zillennial, on the cusp of Millennial and Gen Z. And her platform. And her status as a crunchy-granola person.
(Well, deeply raunchy, but in its own way, also profoundly silly. Still, not for kids or the sexually modest. These people have no modesty, and they sell things many of you have never imagined.)
No, sir, not a shred of decency, not at holiday time in the world of homocommerce, where no raunchy pun, no matter how outrageous, is out of bounds. How to sell gay sex toys in the dead of winter? Have a sale for the Winter Hole-stice! I give you the Fort Troff Winter Hole-stice Event, advertised in my e-mail this morning:
From Josh Brown on Facebook yesterday, passing on an ad he’d gotten:
(#1) [JB:] Now THIS is targeted-Facebook-algorithm-marketing that I can get behind. My kingdom for a caftan!
A brief note on this intense item from the Daily Jocks DJX sale announced in e-mail this morning:
This might be semiotic overkill, with two gay gay gay messages each of which would have been clear on its own: hot pink socks, socks with Rainbow Flag bands — piercing, man, piercing
Well, they’re on sale (for $13), along with a bunch of other stuff from Daily Jocks. It’s high summer in my hemisphere, high winter in DJ’s hemisphere, off-season for Pride in both.
(Well, yes, I have given up on wearing socks, as just too difficult and painful to put on. But I can still assess clothing that I wouldn’t wear myself, so I can say that, in a sock-friendly universe, I would certainly consider buying the plain white version of these Rainbow Flag socks, also on sale for $13.)
A brief amusement for Pride Month, from Aric Olnes on Facebook yesterday (SF Pride, which I missed by being really sick):
Aric says: Happy 🏳️🌈 Pride 2023: Sending you a picture of our dear SF go-go Dancer Emerson to celebrate. Rainbow 🌈 undies!!
With, yes, a doubly phallic gun: basic gun phallicity, plus that gigantic penis simulacrum on top.
Yes, the undie colors are odd, but you really came for the ass, and the briefs are but window dressing.
The Zippy strip of 7/27/22:
(#1) At the Pig ‘N Whistle Diner in Brighton MA, immersed in the Team X snowclonelet
Two things here: the Team X snowclonelet; and Pig ‘N Whistle as the name of an eating establishment. Let’s dive right in with Team X, and look at Pig ‘N Whistle afterwards.
Yesterday, the posting “Watch this space”. I’m still away meeting a writing deadline, and I have a medical appointment too. So this posting is another Mary, Queen of Scots notice that I am Not Dead Yet. Meanwhile, I offer you, as entertainment and for Gay History Month, a recent Daily Jocks ad featuring a rainbow bandana worn as a sexual-advertisement hanky (on the right, or receptive / subordinate, side):
(#1) Take me, I’m yours
(OED3 (June 2022) takes bandana to be the primary spelling; OED2 had bandanna, and for a long time that was my orthographic practice. But it’s clear that bandana is now far and away the most common spelling.)
Plus its use as an actual bandana (here in a unusual, but pectorally satisfying, barechested deployment):
(#2) I pulled my harpoon from my sparkling rainbow bandana…
In related developments (not illustrated here): rainbow bandanas as headbands and as dog bandanas.
Meanwhile, none of my sources on the meaning of colors for gay hankies says a thing about rainbow bandanas. Of the six colors in the Pride rainbow (R O Y G B P), only three seem to have been used with any frequency as hanky colors:
R for fisting; Y for watersports, light B for oral sex, dark B for anal sex
(Some sources on the other three say: O for anything (on left) / nothing (on right), G for hustling, P for piercing. Completely out of my experience, though I have seen black for S&M, and heard of brown for scat. You would have thought that one of the characteristically gay-signaling colors, like pink, lavender, or purple, would have been pressed into service to convey (generally) servicing a penis — wanting mine serviced (on left) / wanting to service one (on right) — but no. The elaborated hanky code is, or was, more an exercise of imagination than a practical scheme of communication.)
So announced Gwendolyn Alden Dean on Facebook yesterday, as she modeled her astonishing new Teva Rainbow Pride platform sandals (black straps, rainbow soles):
(#1) The platforms are 2.5ʺ in the back, and those stripes are separate laminated layers, not just dye jobs; these particular sandals are “all-gender”; meanwhile, I note that Gwendolyn has definitely shapely feet (something I notice because no one would ever say such a thing about my feet; I’ll spare you the details)
Yet another cartoon meme, the Eye Chart, with an instance in today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, set in the fictive city of Metropolis:
(#1) It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s Superman (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
Yes, it’s also an instance of the “It’s a bird” meme. Memes tend to travel together, like elephants, or municipal buses.
