Archive for the ‘Rainbows’ Category

The rainbow made us gay, the penguins say

August 26, 2025

From Steven Levine on 8/19, this image from a Facebook group on thrift store finds, about a rectangle of needlepoint (probably intended to be a wall hanging) depicting penguins marching from left to right, through a rainbow, each emerging from the other side with its body, inside and out, in one of the colors of the gay pride flag; the rainbow makes them gay:


(#1) Steven of course thought of me, but appreciated that this would not be the time to be giving me penguiniana, so contented himself with letting me enjoy the strange spectacle

I’d never seen anything quite like it. Marching penguins, yes, of course. Penguins in the colors of the gay pride flag, of course. I’ve posted both. But the preposterous fantasy of penguins getting gay-transmuted by passing through a rainbow, absolutely not. And then to realize it not in drawing, painting, or trick photography, but in the unpretentious craft medium of needlepoint, where we expect earnest images (stylized birds) and slogans (BLESS THIS HOME), well, that’s wonderfully goofy.

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Headline news for penguins: tiny sweaters Down Under

February 11, 2024

A Facebook alert today from Michael Palmer, reposting from Nadeesha Sonali Fonseka > Stranger Things in Stunning World on 2/9:

Australia’s oldest man Alfie Dates (109) knits tiny sweaters for injured penguins!


Some Aussie penguins in tiny sweaters

The Penguin Books sweater is especially sweet. And there’s a Rainbow Flag sweater too, for the politically conscious penguin.

(Yes, this is today’s Not Dead Yet posting. I have fantasies of writing somewhat longer-form entries, but life’s been difficult.)

 

Rainbows

January 17, 2021

A Christmas gift from Aging Life Care of California, a Cozee Rainbow aromatherapy pack: the rainbow is a cloth outer cover for the pack itself, which contains clay beads and lavender oil (and can be heated in a microwave or chilled in a freezer). ALCCA chose the Cozee (from the Pink Sky company) for its rainbow and my gayness, but as it happens the rainbow in question is not the Gay Pride rainbow (with 6 bands of color), but Isaac Newton’s rainbow (with 7: the ROY G BIV rainbow).

The cover:

(#1)

And some ad copy:

(#2)

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Rewind the music, cover your bones with rainbow

September 20, 2017

Sunday’s (9/17) NYT Magazine poem (p. 22), “Remaking the Music Box” by Geoffrey Hilsabeck, selected and introduced by Terrance Hayes.

Illustration by R.O. Blechman (showing two ways of looking at a rainbow):

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The company darling

July 16, 2017

(Another underwear ad, with my caption. Steamy topic, but not, I think, over the line.)

(#1) The company darling

Eddie found the company’s
Dress code peculiar, but he
Loved wearing the silky blue
Hooded lounge robe and
Scanty briefs at his desk.

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Return of the Sam Gross balloon dog

September 10, 2016

In the latest New Yorker (September 12th), Sam Gross’s clown and his balloon dog return to the magazine:

(#1)

Oh no! Not the chair!

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Gay Pride

June 27, 2015

Passed on to me by Paul Foster from a Facebook source:

Rather more adult males than you’d expect in a pride of lions — but then these are gay lions, so they bond with pleasure.