Archive for the ‘Toys’ Category
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 »
May 4, 2018
(Cheap, meaningless mansex. Not for everyone.)
From Roger Klorese today, a commercial sign from his posting past (thanks to timehop, which provides photos from your history):
(#1)
The (innocent) reference is to making your own stuffed toy, but then there’s a sexual verb stuff ‘screw, fuck’ and furry available to refer to (gay) bears (as well as to people in the furry subculture), and when you have people standing in line for the event, it sounds like a gangbang. Let’s all screw JoeBear!
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Posted in Double entendres, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language of sex, Rainbow, Toys | 6 Comments »
November 21, 2017
Three news bulletins for penguins on the 19th, and now, as we sink into the commercial Christmas season (which in the US began the day after Halloween but is conventionally inaugurated by Black Friday, the day after US Thanksgiving, this Friday), a combination of penguin news and holiday news: the 2014 John Lewis Christmas commercial, featuring a young boy, Sam, and his pet penguin, Monty:
(#1) You can watch the advert here
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Posted in Holidays, Language in advertising, Movies and tv, Penguins, Toys | Leave a Comment »
September 28, 2017
From Bonnie and Ed Campbell, on the occasion of my cataract surgery yesterday, something for me to enjoy looking at: an animated greeting card from the Jacquie Lawson company, with kaleidoscopic autumnal images. A screen capture from it:
(#1) Leaves, berries, and acorns (in 6-part symmetry)
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, My life, Technology, Toys | Leave a Comment »
September 9, 2017
Back on the 6th, in “Birthday notes”:
From Benita Bendon Campbell (and Ed Campbell) a Jacquie Lawson animated card of Indian runner ducks in the rain, ending with a duck and a rainbow. In medias res: [image #1]
To come, in a separate posting, on Indian runner ducks and Indian (or scarlet) runner beans, which are not at all the same thing.
And then to add to those, India(n) rubber ducks, which aren’t ducks, though they are duck-simulacra (runner ducks are ducks, and runner beans are beans — that is, bean plants).
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Posted in Compounds, Language and animals, Language and plants, Parsing, Rainbow clothing, Subsectivity, Toys | Leave a Comment »
August 11, 2017
(The underwear and men’s bodies thing again, plus gaydolls and some homoerotic art. Outrageous enough that it won’t be to everyone’s taste.)
Daily Jocks sale on the 8th offering the Barcode Berlin Thermo Brief in white (it also comes in black), with a caption of mine:
(#1) 83% Cotton 17% Polyester. US$25. Model not included.
Billy the Berlin
Barboy
Works the room in his
Barcode Berlin
Pouch-panel
Briefs.
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Posted in Art, Captions, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language in advertising, Signs and symbols, Toys, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
February 18, 2017
Short, very common words tend to have a great many senses — more exactly, in such cases there tend to be a great many homophonous lexical items from the same historical source (thanks to semantic shifts and syntactic changes). So, in its main entry for the verb get, NOAD2 has 32 subentries (and then there are lots of idiomatic phrases with get and phrasal verbs with get). And we, um, get things like this scene in a recent One Big Happy:
(#1)
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Posted in Ambiguity, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Toys | Leave a Comment »
March 25, 2015
Chatted yesterday with Ned Deily about Erector sets and Meccano, and he mentioned Girder and Panel construction toys, which I hadn’t heard of but which he had enjoyed as a kid; they came along a bit late for me, though I had played with earlier construction toys: Meccano, Tinkertoy, Erector, and Lego.
I’ll start with Girder and Panel and then go back to the beginning.
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Posted in Names, Play, Toys | Leave a Comment »
