Archive for the ‘Signs and symbols’ Category
September 8, 2023
About my friend (and former caregiver) León Hernández Alvarez (hereafter, LH) and the tattoos covering his left arm, from wrist to shoulder, reflecting his deep sympathy with the symbolic culture of Japan. Here’s LH in a face shot that will serve as an introduction to his text (as I edited it for compactness) taking us on a tour of the ink, along with seven photos he took to accompany the text (as I cleaned them up for presentation here):
(#1) LH showing off the arm (and the muscles he’s developed at the gym)
After most sections of LH’s text (which I’ve boldfaced), there’s some background material about the things depicted in the tattoos, with some photos from real life.
I hope to post separately about LH, including some about his personal qualities, but here I offer four important pieces of biographical data: LH is in his early 40s, he’s Mexican (here on a work visa), he has an MBA and a previous history working in business in Mexico, and (like me) he’s gay.
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Posted in Architecture, Art, Japanese, Language and animals, Language and culture, Language and society, Language and the body, Signs and symbols | 5 Comments »
September 5, 2023
From cartoonist Bob Eckstein’s The Bob newsletter of 9/5 “Back to School BONUS EDITION”, in a section on “The Worst NFL Logos” (published in Run Your Pool), about the original Buffalo Bills logo:
The original Buffalo buffalo
The old water buffalo was so unassuming, so unexpected, you thought, watch out! What are they up to? It was the only sports logo with the outline of genitals. With the understated white dot for an eye, I contend it was sport’s funniest logo … ever. We lost that.
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Posted in Language and animals, Language and sports, Language and the body, Logos, Phallicity, Signs and symbols | 2 Comments »
August 21, 2023
NGN: Not Genitally Nude, used for sculpture in which male genitals are not displayed — but just barely, usually in ways that call attention to the genitals. Surprisingly common in monumental and memorial statuary of earnest intent, and therefore easily found in the Washington / Baltimore area, which is pretty much blanketed by sculpture of this sort.
Today’s example — brought to my attention by Jeff Shaumeyer — is located in the very heart of memorial-historic D.C. It’s also a seriously crowded work of art, with eight different figures arrayed around it: the Battle of Gettysburg victor General George Meade as the central figure on the front, a winged male figure of War as the rear centerpiece, and six other allegorical figures in between these two. Detail of the Meade side:
(#1) Photo from Wikipedia
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Posted in Art, Language and the body, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
August 19, 2023
I wrote on Facebook a little while ago:
Just heard on a tv public service announcement from Santa Clara County: … Watch for walkers and vipers. (Ah, that must have been: bikers. Fortunately, vipers are sparse in the county.)
Follow-up: there seem to be plenty of Dodge Vipers in the county, also Pit Viper Sunglasses. And we have the Silicon Valley Vipers quadball team. According to the US Quadball site: “quadball is a mixed gender contact sport with a unique mix of elements from rugby, dodgeball, and tag”. (Until 2022 it was known as quidditch. Yes, that quidditch. Players must have a broomstick between their legs at all times. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.)
Logo of the Silicon Valley Vipers quadball team
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Posted in Books, Errors, Language and animals, Language and sports, Logos, Mishearings | 2 Comments »
August 19, 2023
(It’s Tom of Finland, with man-on-man sex, and — not shown, but plainly inferrable — penises of monumental size, all discussed in street language, so massively not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
Well, that’s the straightforward reading of the page for August in my 2023 Tom of Finland calendar. And certainly White Guy is sliding his absurdly thick cock deeply into Black Guy’s ass, but a look at BG’s posture and facial expression suggests that if he had enough control of himself to speak, he’d be proclaiming something like “Damn, that’s fiiiine!”
So maybe WG is doing BG, and enjoying it, but he’s not fucking BG harshly and pitilessly, like an eagle taking a rabbit. Maybe he’s mostly doing it for BG, giving BG the fuck that he wants, even serving him, out of brotherly affection. Doing him a solid.
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Posted in Art, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Male art, Masculinity, Phallicity, Pornography, Smell | Leave a Comment »
August 9, 2023
(Intimate talk about male bodies, mostly mine, in plain terms, though not so racy as to ban kids — but I will freely use the vernacular noun and verb piss, nouns dick and balls. In any case, some people will find the topic of crotch odor unsavory.)
I’d hoped to be able to post about meat dreams and crotch pong on the same day — just for the sound of the two off-color compounds together, but meat dreams took a lot longer than I’d expected (I somehow ended up in the 16th century), so crotch pong had to wait a day. So it goes.
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Posted in Alliteration, Assonance, Clothing, Compounds, Dialects, Language and the body, Language of sex, My life, Signs and symbols, Slang, Smell, Taboo language and slurs, Underwear | 1 Comment »
August 5, 2023
Georgia Morgan (now retired from linguistics in Brattleboro VT, where she creates and sells amazing jewelry) on Facebook on 8/3:
— GM: I will be at the Brattleboro Area Farmers’ Market this Saturday in the Rosie’s Wonders booth. Bringing these, and lots more …
(#1) Including this peapod pendant
— AZ: Love the peapod. I would wear that (except that I can no longer manage any kind of jewelry with my poor disabled hands)
— GM > AZ: If you ever want one, I do make pendants with an adjustable sliding closure that just go on over your head
— AZ > GM: Georgia, if you can do that for the peapod, I want one.
And it has been done. Georgia is working on the pendant; the check is in the mail. It’s my birthday present to myself; I have a prime birthday, my 83rd (I still can’t quite believe that I have somehow managed to live this long) in a month from now, 9/6.
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Posted in Art, Compounds, It's Just Stuff, Language and food, Language and the body, My life, Signs and symbols, Spelling | Leave a Comment »
August 3, 2023
From Steven Levine, reporting from Amsterdam, on Facebook this morning:
If you have time to learn only one Dutch word, I’d say wildplassen makes an excellent candidate.
(#1) Du wildplassen ‘wild pissing’, with Du wild in the sense ‘free, loose’ (yes, it also has the sense ‘savage, fierce’, and that adds to the excellence of the signage)
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Posted in Dutch, Euphemism, Language and the body, Pictographs, Signage, Signs and symbols, Taboo language and slurs | 4 Comments »
