Archive for the ‘Signs and symbols’ Category
August 19, 2025
In human beings, the mouth is the only bodypart that comes equipped with teeth. Well, there are fables of the fearsome vagina dentata and even — top men, beware! — of the occasional anus dentatus. Now the wonderful world of prehistoric nature brings us a penis dentatus. Or so we learn from the latest WIRED.
From WIRED Science, “An Ancient Penis Worm With Rings of Sharp Teeth Has Been Discovered in the Grand Canyon: The 500-million-year-old fossil, containing a species named in honor of the krayt dragons in Star Wars, is a much larger ancestor of phallic marine worms that can be found on the seabed today” by Marta Abba on 8/19/25:
Penis worms are marine creatures with a distinctly phallic appearance. There are more than 20 known species living across the world’s oceans today, as well as a number of extinct ones, like this new discovery. The researcher who made the find was searching for fossils in the Grand Canyon and named the species Kraytdraco spectatus in honor of the huge burrowing krayt dragons that appear in the Star Wars universe. Details of the discovery were published in the journal Science Advances.
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Posted in Compounds, Language and animals, Language and the body, Language of sex, Phallicity, Semantics of compounds, Subsectivity, Vaginality | 6 Comments »
August 17, 2025
On Facebook yesterday, Aric Olnes, with a floral message brought to us by the letter M (he does a daily alphabetic floral message):
(1) Aric: Matchlessly magniloquent Michaelmas modifies miserable moping motivating meliorative mindfulness
Tim Evanson then messed around with it in a minor way:
Miss Marple is always admiring the Michaelmas daisies just before a murder, it seems
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Posted in Alliteration, Language and plants, Language play, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
July 19, 2025
Today’s Zippy strip:
(#1) I choose to understand hot dog in this context as a sexual metaphor, so I’m both enchanted and appalled by the idea of a world of talking hot dogs, all in conversations with one another (I am famously fond of penises, but still); meanwhile, Yocco’s was a feature of the sociocultural landscape of my childhood (in an area of Pennsylvania Dutch country much influenced by Philadelphia both linguistically and culinarily), though I early on cleaved to Nathan’s hot dogs (Coney Island wasn’t all that far away), as I still do
My own metaphorical hot dog (mhd for short) is highly expressive, but (blessedly) not at all chatty. Though if my mhd could speak, it would have something of a (now old-fashioned) Philadelphia accent — with back notes of Pennsylvania Dutch English and a significant overlay of NYC Yinglish.
My mhd, like Yocco’s hot dog, has a crown (technically, a glans penis), but it has no discernible facial features, and certainly no mustache, that would be kinky.
Now, about Yocco’s.
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Posted in Language and food, Language of advertising, Linguistics in the comics, My life, Phallicity | Leave a Comment »
July 7, 2025
The message from my fellow QUESTer — another Queer University Employee At Stanford — Ryan Tamares, on a postcard mailed to me on 6/19, in the middle of Pride Month:
Happy Pride !
Pride always ! !
— RESIST —
The holiday moment has passed, but now we’re in a world where we have to actively resist, on a daily basis, against the brownshirts and blackshirts serving our overlords. And join with the drag queens and thrown-away club kids who, in one of our foundation tales, fought back against the cops who came to ruin their lives, and ours.
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Posted in Art, Biology, Categorization and Labeling, Events and occasions, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language of sex, My life, Rainbow, Signs and symbols, Stanford, Trade names | Leave a Comment »
July 5, 2025
From yesterday (for me, a long 4th of July work day, 6 am to 6 pm) on my Facebook page (somewhat edited):
In going through stuff in my closets, I came across a t-shirt (one that fits me, so I put it on) that has a logo on the front: a (portrait) rectangle with horizontal stripes of the rainbow flag in it and the word IN in white letters superimposed on the rainbow stripes. The back of the shirt identifies it as from out@in, which is presumably some sort of gay organization, but I don’t recognize the name or remember how I came to have the shirt.
My attempts to search for the organization and the logo came to nought, as did my attempts to scan the t-shirt logo into my scanning printer, so I appealed to readers to supply me with information about the organization and with a copy of the logo. (Given the precarity of my current life, I did not take well to people who, instead of giving me the information I sought, explained to me how I should have done the searches.)
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Posted in Academic life, Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Logos, My life, Names, Rainbow, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
June 21, 2025
An occasional poem (in free verse) for my friend Sharon on her recent birthday, wrapped up in the calendar, the female body, and plants and their sexual symbolisms, with photos. The poem first, then remarks on its form, then a bit of background information.
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Posted in Art, Events and occasions, Gender and sexuality, Language and plants, Language and the body, Language of sex, Names, Phallicity, Poetry, Signs and symbols, Taxonomic vs. common, Tongue twisters, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »
May 25, 2025
(A good bit that’s totally unsuitable, in subject matter and language, for kids and the sexually modest)
This posting started out on 5/21 as two separate postings, each about extraordinary size, about a thing that caused viewers (me included, in each case) to marvel at its size.
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Posted in Art, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and plants, Language and the body, Language of sex, Mathematics, My life, Phallicity, Vaginality | Leave a Comment »
May 7, 2025
Today’s Bizarro is a Psychiatrist cartoon done with common kitchen appliances: a tea kettle and a coffee percolator sit on a couch in couples therapy, with a toaster therapist:
(#1) Wayno’s title, “Mutual Irritation Society”, takes appliancehood for granted and focuses on the relationship issues (the annoying noises the two partners make); if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page
The cartoon identifies the percolator as male (presumably on the basis of its phallicity); if we stick to symbolic values, then the mammillary kettle is female (though it could be that the kettle is a pocket bear — a smaller, more compact man-oriented man who’s burly and hairy; the world of gender and sexuality is huge and diverse, full of surprises).
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Posted in Comic conventions, Furnishings and tools, Gender and sexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Mammillarity, Phallicity | 1 Comment »
