Flags | Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Archive for the ‘Flags’ Category

Four presents

December 26, 2018

Small but entertaining little gifts for my Christmas, from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, Opal Armstrong Zwicky, Kim Darnell, and Maggie Ainsworth-Darnell — plus an excellent dim sum lunch at Tai Pan in Palo Alto for all of us, from Paul Armstrong.

Then: an out@in rainbow t-shirt from LinkedIn (where Kim works); a little plush wooly (spelling by the Douglas Cuddle Toy Co.) mammoth; a tote bag with an otter drawing by the artist rubyetc; and a bit of nearly indescribable Japanese kawaii that involves a little self-watering ceramic penguin that grows wild strawberry plants (Fragaria vesca) on its back, as here:

(#1) Chuppon self-watering animals and their plants: the Sea Friends dolphin/clover, penguin/wild strawberry, seal/basil, polar bear/mint

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Posted in Art, Flags, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and animals, Language and plants, Linguistics in the comics, Logos, Mammoths, Penguins, Rainbow clothing, Signs and symbols, Toys | Leave a Comment »

Waving your flag

September 16, 2018

(Hunky male model in skimpy underwear and swimwear, comments on male bodies, but nothing X-rated — though not to everyone’s taste.)

It starts with the Daily Jocks ad on the 14th for its Underwear Club, featuring two shots of a Jor model I’ll call Carlos: in a tricolor “athletic brief” (red, white, blue, top to bottom) in the style called Navy; and in a differently arranged tricolor thong (blue, white, red, top to bottom) in the style called Frankie (perhaps to suggest France, whose flag is blue, white, red, left to right).

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Posted in Flags, Gender and sexuality, Rainbow clothing, Signs and symbols, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Morning names: Hai Karate, Dirk Diggler

August 18, 2018

(The Dirk Diggler section has some plain talk about men’s bodies — penises here, penises there, penises everywhere — so some readers might want to skip that section.)

Yesterday morning, the cheap men’s aftershave of the 1960s, Hai Karate, with an ad campaign that’s hard to forget (nerdy guys karate-chopping away hot models who were irrestistibly drawn to them by the powerful fumes of their Hai Karate). And then this morning, at the tail of an elaborate character-rich dream, the dream me discovered he was actually the son of Dirk Diggler, the supremely porn-named porn star character in two movies (the mockumentary The Dirk Diggler Story and the dramatic narrative film Boogie Nights).

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Posted in Flags, Gender and sexuality, Japanese, Language in advertising, Morning names, Names, Shirtlessness | Leave a Comment »

Swiss National Day! (with a query)

August 1, 2018

Today, August 1st, is the National Day of Switzerland, a day to fly the big square flag:

(#1)

On the flag and on the holiday, to come. But first, a query to readers. I ask that you respond only to this e-mail address: arnold.zwicky@gmail.com (so that I don’t have to try to collate responses sent to seven or eight different places). And I ask that you read the query and guve your immediate reaction to it (without looking things up or consulting other people or musing about what the “right” answer would be). Below the fold:

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Posted in Flags, Holidays, Switzerland and Swiss things | Leave a Comment »

Pride space flags

June 13, 2018

More Pride flags, all transformed versions of existing X Pride flags, for various values of X having to do with gender or sexuality. Transformed by Laurie Raye by superimposing images of the starry sky on them. So the now-standard six-stripe Pride flag becomes:

(#1)

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Posted in Flags, Gender and sexuality, Signs and symbols | 1 Comment »

The Calvin Klein pentachromatic neon rainbow

June 13, 2018

CK special for Pride Month:

(#1)

(#2) Pride Trunks

In five neon colors: pink, yellow, lime green, aquamarine, dark blue.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Color, Flags, Homosexuality, Signs and symbols, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Waving the flag

December 1, 2017

Earlier today, in “Maple Donuts, coffee shops, and unapologetic identities”, besides those three things I looked at the American flag and what it might mean to those who fly it: for some, it’s a symbol of reflexive patriotism, tied to “pro-gun, pro-life, pro-military, pro-God, and pro-conservative” stances; for some, it represents a history of racial oppression and exclusion; for some, it evokes the sacrifices of those who have fought on the American side in wars; for some, it’s the visual equivalent of the slogan E pluribus unum; for some, it suggests the threats of a police state; and on and on. There’s a physical form (the stars and stripes, in particular colors, arranged in a particular way), and then there are many meanings, sometimes combined, sometimes in contention.

That’s the way of symbols. What a symbol means to someone depends on their experience with it, their experience of how it has been used.

Just so with the lgbt pride flag.

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Posted in Classification and labeling, Flags, Gender and sexuality, Signs and symbols | 1 Comment »

Maple Donuts, coffee shops, and unapologetic identities

December 1, 2017

It starts with a Zippy strip from July 1st, featuring the Maple Donuts shop on Historic Lincoln Highway in York PA (and, incredibly, it will end with singings of the Negro National Anthem; in between, there will be firearms):

(#1) Maple Donuts, featured a number of times in Zippy strips

It might not be an accident that the strip appeared a few days before America’s great patriotic holiday, Independence Day / the Fourth of July. To see why, we need to look at the actual Maple Donuts store.

That will take us, on the one hand, to the adjoining coffee shop; and, on the other hand, to proud, unapologetic assertions of identities.

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Posted in Apologies, Categorization and Labeling, Diners, Flags, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and food, Music, Names, Race and ethnicity, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »