Toys | Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Archive for the ‘Toys’ Category

The bearded cartoonist, post-simectomy

January 17, 2023

It begins with a Facebook posting by Bob Eckstein on 1/12:

BE: The Daily Cartoonist just ran this piece … and that is Sam Gross on the cover on the right:

(#1) The BE cartoon: a bearded fellow — I take him to be a cartoonist (since this is in The Daily Cartoonist) — in a hospital bed, post-simectory

Note simectory ‘the surgical removal of a simian’ — in this case not an actual simian, but the simulacrum of a monkey: a one-man-band-monkey toy. I hadn’t realized that such toys are still being made, but it seems that they are (classically they are wind-up metal — “tin” — toys, but now they appear to be battery-operated plastic, and considerably more durable than the vintage versions; I speak with recollected sorrow over the short life of my very own monkey-band toy, roughly 75 years ago).

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Posted in Art, Cartoonists, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Toys, Writers, Writing | 1 Comment »

Elfshelfisms

December 22, 2022

Two especially satisfying examples of the elfshelfism, a riddle form presented visually:

(#1) Image: a cute furry mammal clinging to a bone. Punchline: lemur on a femur. (note: like elf and shelf, lemur and femur are (perfect) rhymes; unlike elf and shelf, however, they’re rare and remarkable nouns)

(#2) Image: a buxom woman reclining provocatively on a pile of Mexican food. Punchline: Dolly [Parton] on a tamale. (note: for most American speakers, Dolly and tamale are perfect rhymes, but for a substantial minority of American speakers, and for many others, they’re half-rhymes)

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Posted in Books, Formulaic language, Holidays, Jokes, Language and animals, Language and food, Phonetics, Phonology, Rhyme, Riddles, Toys | 5 Comments »

Plush life

September 11, 2022

(Penis plush and dildos too, in detail, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

Breaking News for Penises: you can now purchase adorable soft-plush penis-simulacrum stuffed toys. Some for you to cuddle with. One that is, delightfully, a second-order simulacrum: a stuffed-toy simulacrum of a dildo, the dildo being a sex-toy simulacrum of a penis — and, even better, this one is a stuffed squeaky toy for dogs. Eventually, there will be a photo of Fido gently mouthing Peter Woofington, a gigantic plush play-dick in warm but unlikely flesh tones. With goofy crossed eyes.

As a bonus, you get two fabulous recordings of Billy Strayhorn’s jazz standard “Lush Life”: Ella Fitzgerald singing the words, John Coltrane transforming the music. Plus my confession that when I came across Peter I somehow missed the canine connection entirely and so fell to speculating about the anal life expectancy of a plush dick and to some alarm at the idea of taking into my body a dildo that squeaked (presumably with pleasure, but still).

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and animals, Language of sex, Language play, Logos, Music, Phallicity, Puns, Signs and symbols, Toys | Leave a Comment »

The phallozoo

January 13, 2022

(Obviously not to the taste of the sexually modest.)

Very brief note. At least for the moment, my phallozoo collection — a menagerie of plastic models of creatures, real and fabulous, with phallic bodyparts realized as simulacra of penises — is complete.

The menagerie is housed in two locations in my bedroom.

On a dresser by the window, in the Woolly Mammoth house (which holds a once-“animaltronic” hulk with a dark brown rubber-like plastic skin; and a somewhat smaller and more fanciful stuffed toy with a purple, blue, and yellow cloth skin — creatures I call Butch and Fey): Fey and Butch each have in their shadow an elephant with phallus as trunk and now also a similarly phallic woolly mammoth (illustrated below, #1, in gold); and in the space between Fey and Butch, three phallus-necked brontosauruses disport themselves.

Meanwhile, on a shelf on my desk, amidst an assortment of memorabilia and miscellaneous phalliana, an assortment of phallic Tyrannosaurus rexes of many sizes and colors lord it over a pair of gorillas, a pair of rhinos, a pair of a pair of camels, and a pair of flying dragons (all similarly phallic, of various sizes and colors), plus two yellow banana-dicks and, now, a green dicky turtle (illustrated below, #2).

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Posted in Phallicity, Toys | 1 Comment »

Dioramas of Phallusia

December 12, 2021

More gay home decor, this time from the three penis-oriented dioramas in my bedroom, two of them incorporating recently acquired play figures with prominent dicks in places not provided in nature — see my 12/10 posting “Enhanced phallicity” — so far, doubly phallic tyrannosauruses, brontosauruses, elephants, and bananas.

Advance warning: simulacra of penises, in considerable abundance. Most of them frankly silly, but they’re indisputably phalloid, and so not to everyone’s taste. Eventually there will also be some references to sex between men.

Further warning. The photos were shot with a minimally adequate camera (in my venerable iPad), in my unsteady hands, and in the drastically poor lighting of my bedroom, so the wretched images can do no more than give you a feel for the dioramas.

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Posted in Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Language and animals, Metaphor, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Toys | 2 Comments »

Superhero action

October 31, 2021

(Male genitals and sexual acts discussed in street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest)

In my 9/15/21 posting “Items of gay decor”, the section on The ritual of the action figures displays the Action Three — Leather Carlos, Tom of Finland’s Rebel, and Army Tyson (all of them hyperbolically homomasculine articulated toy figures variously labeled as dolls or action figures) — in the company of their woolly mammoths, under the blazing sun in one corner of my bedroom

And now, having contemplated (in my 10/28/21 posting “His fathers’ powers”) the complex lives of the superheroes (especially Aquaman, his husband Plastic Man, and the superhero son of their mating — superheroes have come a long way since the days of my childhood with Superman), I invited three D.C. Comics superheroes to join the Action Three, to serve as their power guides: Batman for Tyson, Superman for the Rebel, and the Flash for Carlos. It was time for some Superhero action.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Slang, Toys | Leave a Comment »

Items of gay decor

September 15, 2021

(References to penises but no depictions of them , even (alas) on plastic action figures. On the other hand, there’s a neon pink dildo, so readers might want to exercise their judgment.)

My neon pink DJX Trough jockstrap (in size L) has arrived from the antipodes (the company is in Australia, but the jock was shipped from New Zealand) and been installed in its place as an item of decor in my living room. Meanwhile, my new Lollicock neon pink dildo has come to rest on the desk in my bedroom; it has become a Desk Dildo. And I am finally releasing a portrait of three gay action figures and their three companion mammoths, engaged in a ritual celebration under the blazing bedroom sun (on what I still think of as Jacques’s dresser, even though it’s the one I use in daily life — the dresser on which J once erected a small shrine to Mark Wahlberg in his (Marky Mark’s, not J’s) Calvins).

Anyway, it’s all dick-heavy (on the scene and even in reminiscence), though there are no discernible actual dicks.

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Posted in Clothing, Mammoths, Phallicity, Toys, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Cure Bear

January 19, 2021

Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, which can be understood only if you know about two (hugely distant) bits of popular culture:

(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)

That’s The Cure + Care Bear = Cure Bear: linguistically, a portmanteau; visually, a composite of Robert Smith of the band The Cure and one of the Care Bear toys.

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Music, Portmanteaus, Toys, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »

Three comforting presents

October 21, 2020

In very difficult times — my list of physical afflictions has expanded considerably (you don’t really want to hear the details), leaving me little time in the day to write postings on my blog — friends and family have given me presents to comfort me. Three recently (with an advance notice of a fourth to come in the mail in a surprise package).

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Posted in Language and animals, Language and food, My life, Rainbow, Toys | 1 Comment »