Archive for the ‘Flags’ Category
September 11, 2026
[I started this posting a few days ago, but was balked from moving ahead by bad juju in both Facebook and WordPress. The curses magically lifted on 9/9. So I’m back on task now, but it’s 9/11 (25th anniversary) and apparently I’m going to be weeping non-stop all day, while I plug away at my work. Life lurches on]
Yet another birthday present for me, small but touching: two small enamel lapel pins: one in the form of a flag, one a plain rectangle (both are just an inch across):
(#1) The flag pin
(#2) The rectangle pin
Both of them from the program director Manalee Shukla here at Avant (a friend I’ve posted about several times, because we share a pleasure in the culture of her native land, India, and because she appreciates my injecting a note of gay spice into the Avant experience (meanwhile, I’ve warned her that her two bicultural kids are about to finish a transformation into entirely American boys; I have plenty of sociolinguistic stories from personal experience as well as the literature — all that professional preparation turns out to be genuinely useful in daily life).
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Posted in Clothing, Events and occasions, Flags, Gifts, Homosexuality, Logos, Moral worlds, My life, Penguins, Quotations, Rainbow clothing, Signs and symbols, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
July 2, 2026
My dinner for June 27 was delivered by a courier bubbling over in delight about the coming Fourth of July, which he identified as my national day (adding that he was Peruvian and his national days came at the end of July — surprising details below). I suppressed my complex reservations about American Independence Day (some of which I will unload later) and chose not to add that we were at the eve of one of my people’s celebratory days — Stonewall Day, June 28 (the tank top I was wearing had a rainbow flag on it) — though I did point to my gym shorts, whose white cross on red is in fact the Swiss flag, adding that Swiss national day was coming in August (August 1, to be precise). I didn’t develop the theme of my absurd pride in the remnants of Swissness that cling to me, most especially the egalitarian, aristocrat-free ideals the federation has espoused since the original alliance was formed in 1291, over 7 centuries ago; there is nothing like it in all of Europe.
After he left, I checked out the Fiestas Patrias peruanas, or Peruvian National Holidays, which officially are celebrations of Peru’s independence from the Spanish Empire (Wikipedia entry here), but in fact have become an entire holiday season, in character very much like the secular Christmas season (at, however, the end of July). It sounds delightful.
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Posted in Flags, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Music, My life, Race and ethnicity, Signs and symbols, Switzerland and Swiss things | Leave a Comment »
February 19, 2025
Unus pro omnibus
Omnes pro uno
This display came by me on my Facebook feed this morning; as a grandson of Switzerland I found it offensive (and, by the way, inaccurate):
(#1) From the Holy Roman Empire Association, the coats of arms of “European Kingdoms, Duchies and Principalities in 1519”
Switzerland is a confederation, with no ruler — not king nor duke nor prince — and has been (with occasional hiccups) since its founding in 1291. Like the Friends / Quakers, it is (in principle) radically egalitarian, as am I personally (though I concede that every person, and every human institution, is imperfect, flawed; but that’s a core principle of radical egalitarianism).
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Posted in Address terms, Flags, History, Language and class, Language and religion, Signs and symbols, Switzerland and Swiss things, Titles | Leave a Comment »
December 1, 2024
🐇 🐇 🐇 three rabbits to inaugurate the month of December; for the occasion, an assortment of non-holiday-related topics — though I have to point out that Saturnalia will be upon us in a couple of weeks, so get your ass in gear for the occasion — that have come by me recently: a rabbit stew for your pleasure
rabbit stew. From Wikipedia, some bare facts:
Rabbit stew, also referred to as hare stew when hare is used, is a stew prepared using rabbit meat as a main ingredient. Stuffat tal-Fenek, a variation of rabbit stew, is the national dish of Malta. Other traditional regional preparations of the dish exist, such as coniglio all’ischitana on the island of Ischia, German Hasenpfeffer and jugged hare in Great Britain and France. Hare stew dates back to at least the 14th century … Rabbit stew is a traditional dish of the Algonquin people and is also a part of the cuisine of the Greek islands. Hare stew was commercially manufactured and canned circa the early 1900s in western France and eastern Germany.
Rabbit stews are characteristically rich and flavorful. Yes, even the British jugged hare.
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Posted in Color, Flags, Furnishings and tools, Holidays, Language and animals, Language and food, My life | Leave a Comment »
September 16, 2024
Presents from Max Vasilatos a couple days ago: a little brass dragon figurine (the dragon is my Chinese astrological animal), a box of Max-designed flower notecards (prominently including some pansies; I’m a well-known pansy), and Silver Bob, a Max-crafted face now joining his brother Wooden Bob, who’s lived at my place for about 30 years now, but provoking a certain amount of fraternal dispute in the Bob family about their respective merits and characters.
I will elaborate (but with few pictures, since I haven’t yet rediscovered how to upload pictures from my little camera to my computer; my life is currently way overfull).
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Posted in Art, Flags, Gender and sexuality, Language and animals, Language and food, Language and plants, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
July 7, 2024
(Talk about men’s genitals, so not to everyone’s taste; it’s coming up fast, so if you want to avert your eyes, do it now)
For the 4th of July, welcoming us to the swimming pool, he’s projecting amiable niceness while exhibiting his attractive swimmer’s body, utterly naked, with that patriotic beach ball nestled against his thick pornstar penis. Which is amiably hanging straight down, as unobtrusively as possible for such a hefty professional tool, but still one of the focal points of the composition (alas, fuzzed out for WordPress modesty). He’s working his porn-actor skills to hawk Gay Room’s 4th of July 50%-off sale on their many videos. And he’s a sweet thing to see at the beginning of a hot summer day, even if it’s just in the day’s Hunt eZine mailing (for Falcon | NakedSword studios):
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Posted in Flags, Gay porn, Holidays, Language and the body, Toys | Leave a Comment »
June 14, 2024
First, it’s Pride month, so that runs through the 14th through 16th (today through Sunday), the days I’m focused on in this posting. Then: today is Flag Day; tomorrow is what I have wryly proposed as Flagging Day (for displaying your identities and tastes); and Sunday is five special days in one: three date-specific occasions, plus two floating-date events (some of these five are of personal significance to me, others of broader interest).
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Posted in Flags, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language of sex, Masculinity, My life, Rainbow, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
June 8, 2024
Briefly noted. Passed on by Evan Randall Smith on 6/6 on Facebook, this Liz Climo celebration of Pride month, featuring her congenial cartoon animals:
(#1) The color sequence — white, pink, light blue; brown, black; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple — reproduces the bands of the Progress Pride flag
(There’s a Page on this blog on my postings about Climo’s work.)
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Posted in Color, Flags, Gender and sexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Rainbow | Leave a Comment »
March 17, 2024
(Part of this posting will dive right into gay porn for the day, with street-talk musings on man-on-man sex that’s totally off-limits for kids and the sexually modest; I’ll hold this part off until the end, so if you need to you can bail out then)
☘️ ☘️ ☘️ It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and in my e-mail: two Bob Eckstein cartoons for the day (on turning and wearing green for the day); and a Falcon Studios sale on gay porn, made holiday-appropriate by the mere addition of a shamrock, but which opens the topic of gay porn with actual St. Patrick’s day themes.
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Posted in Clothing, Color, Costumes, Facial expressions, Flags, Gay porn, Hats, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language and food, Language and plants, Language and religion, Language and the body, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Point of view, Signs and symbols | 2 Comments »
