Two excellent things about the spotted snow skink

February 8, 2023

Carinascincus ocellatus, the spotted (or ocellated) snow (or cool-) skink is very small and inconspicuous and hangs out on an out-of-the-way island — Tasmania, way down south — but offers two excellent things for us to enjoy:

— the name spotted snow skink, an /s/-alliterative double trochee (SW SW) that lends itself to satisfying repetition as a found mantra

— the occasional individual that’s sexually discordant — of one sex anatomically (and reproductively), but the other sex genetically (for these skinks, anatomically male but genetically female); the change in anatomical sex during incubation (for these skinks, associated with temperature then) is attested in some oviparous (egg-laying) fish, amphibians, and reptiles, but not, until recently, in a viviparous (live-bearing) creature. Most lizards are oviparous, but Carinascincus ocellatus is viviparous, so it’s a new frontier in sexual discordance.

There turns out to be quite a lot to say about this little creature; bear with me as I wander, pretty much aimlessly, over a large intellectual landscape.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and animals, Poetic form | 2 Comments »

More on the social lives of Ruff Dudes

February 8, 2023

(all about men’s bodies and sex between men, in street language, so entirely not for kids and the sexually modest)

The social lives of Ruff Dudes, including fashion choices and sexual practices. Specifically, on Fuck Me socks and fuck machines. In the fulfillment of a promissory note from my 10/21/22 posting “Neon jocks”.

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Posted in Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language of sex, Masculinity, Parody | Leave a Comment »

The tiger and his boytoy

February 8, 2023

… on the psychiatrist’s couch, in a 7/12/11 cartoon by Canadian cartoonist (illustrator, graphic novelist, and children’s book author) Dave Whamond:


(#1) A cartoon about cartoon characters (from Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson), with a character reversal — the tiger Hobbes is real, and the boy Calvin is his stuffed toy, though Hobbes fantasizes that the boy is real

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Posted in Cartoonists, Comic conventions, Etymology, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

The faces of a baker’s dozen fcleffings

February 7, 2023

(solidly about men’s bodies and man-on-man sex, in street language, so entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)

For the background, I return to two postings on this blog from July 2022:

— from 7/3/22, “Smiles of the summer days”, about a sexual encounter between Cocky Boys Levi Karter and Blake Mitchell that exemplifies a common trope of gay male porn combining a facial component — two faces pleasurably engaged with one another (in what I’ll call facial coupling) — and a groin-buttocks component — a back-on-front sit-fuck (what I’ll call a lap fuck, aka Reverse Cowboy):


(#1) 1 ONE-SIDED interaction: R[eceptive] Levi Carter, I[nsertive] Blake Mitchell)

— from 7/5/22,  “The reverse of me”, about gay pornstar Zach Astor, with X-rated images in an AZBlogX posting of 7/5/22, “Zach Astor”: ZA engaged in such an encounter with Tannor Reed:


(#2) 2 ONE-SIDED interaction: I Zach Astor, R Tannor Reed

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Posted in Facial expressions, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex | 2 Comments »

The boys of summer

February 6, 2023

Return with me now to (what was by one reckoning) the beginning of summer, seven months ago, when I started a complex posting on the boys of summer. Now it’s chilly winter / spring in Palo Alto (night-time lows around 40 F.) and it pleases me to contemplate warmer times.

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Posted in Art, Books, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and sports, Language and the body, Male art, Movies and tv, Music | 3 Comments »

Don’t call me a “creative”

February 5, 2023

Today’s (2/5/23) Doonesbury strip  shows us artist J.J. Caucus and her husband Zeke Brenner in her studio, with J.J. fuming about being labeled a creative:


(#1) “I’m a noun, not an adjective!” But then Zeke shifts the ground from be a creative to be creative, noting (in effect) that be creative denotes a characteristic, not an identity, so “less pressure”

J.J.’s complaint is about the nouning of the adj. creative, yielding a C[ount] noun creative that apparently just means ‘creative person’, but she’s more than a creative person, she’s a professional creator, an artist. As it turns out, the C noun creative is a great deal more specific that ‘creative person’ — and in its established usage it refers to a type of professional in the advertising industry, so in fact doesn’t apply to J.J. at all. Gripe on, J.J.!

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Posted in Beheading, Context, Conversion, Nouning, Pragmatics, Style and register | Leave a Comment »

On the power of music

February 4, 2023

It begins with Rainbow (SH 344) in Palo Alto CA (where I live now) and ends with Gospel Trumpet (SH 99) in Exeter Township, Berks County PA (the county I grew up in), about 2500 miles away, and it’s about the power of music.

Moving from a California low-slung open-plan church complex (UUCPA: the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto), in a 6/5/22 singing celebrating 50 years of Sacred Harp singing in Palo Alto, which I was able to take part in face to face (and to supply recollections of how I got into shapenote singing, in Columbus OH, and how I became part of Sacred Harp groups in the Bay Area). With Rainbow, an ecstatic hymn of praise.

And then to one of the regular Sacred Harp singings at the Exeter Friends Meeting House, a small stone meeting house built by Pennsylvania Quakers in the 18th century — in January 2019, when a singing of Gospel Trumpet (loud, raw, powerful) was captured on videotape.

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Posted in Language and religion, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »

Narcisyphus

February 4, 2023

A Mark Anderson Andertoon (brought to my attention by several Facebook posters) with an excellent portmanteau: Narcisyphus = Narcissus + Sisyphus:


(#1) Anderson’s selfie cartoon #7599 (he has a whole series of them); there’s a Page on Andertoons on this blog

Narcissus. Narcissism — usually through reflections, in water or in a mirror, but here through taking a picture of yourself. Sisyphus — a whole cartoon meme here. Not the first time Narcissus and Sisyphus have been joined in a cartoon, but not so elegantly, in a single panel.

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Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Myths, Portmanteaus | Leave a Comment »

Talker of the Town

February 3, 2023

This is about the writer Michael Schulman, the current artist of the New Yorker‘s Talk of the Town pieces — a “miscellany of brief pieces — frequently humorous, whimsical or eccentric vignettes of life in New York — written in a breezily light style, although latterly the section often begins with a serious commentary” (Wikipedia). The great Talker of the Town was Lillian Ross, who wrote hundreds, but over a long career that began in 1945. Schulman has been at it only since 2006, but he’s already done over a hundred Talks; he engages with people easily and has mastered the combination of empathy and wry detachment that the form calls for, so we can probably just give him the laurel wreath now and anticipate the pleasure of Talks still to come.


(#1) The New Yorker’s PR shot of Schulman; note the sweet half-smile (he’s smiling in most of his photos), the informal dress, and the light facial scruff (a constant of his presentation of self)

Schulman caught my attention recently with a New Yorker piece about the career of Angela Lansbury that I reproduced on this blog so that I could reference it in my posting “Angela goes to dance camp”. Then in the most recent New Yorker (the 2/6/23 issue), with an extraordinary piece “What Became of the Oscar Streaker?” (“Ballad of the Oscar Streaker” in print).

My often fanciful gaydar pinged on the photo in #1 and the tone of his writing, so I went to his personal website. With fabulous, entertaining, and touching results.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Writers | 1 Comment »

Angela goes to dance camp

February 2, 2023

(It’s the morning of Groundhog Day 2023. American families: do you know where your marmots are?)

The late Angela Lansbury, starring in a glitzy television production as the introduction to the 1973 Academy Awards show: a 7-minute extravagant celebration (in three parts) of show business glamor.

Now, the Academy Awards shows are already spectacles of Hollywood’s rapturous self-congratulation, always teetering on the edge of self-parody, but for a while in the 1970s and 1980s, the brakes on spectacle were off, and we got Oscar openers that could, just barely, be read as fabulously glamorous, but were always open to being interpreted as camp — earnest, usually unintended, but definitely camp.

Sometimes, as in 1973, surely intended.

In any case, the star vehicle for the 1973 opener was Angela Lansbury.


(#1) AL’s 1973 Oscars apotheosis: Star Descending a Staircase, packing into a few moments a whole fabulous universe of allusions to stage musicals, extravagant choreography, movies, stylized glamor, carnival, and flagrant camp

I’ll start with a brief 2016 review of the show, go on to some chat between Aaron Broadwell and me last October on the show as profoundly gay, and take it from there, with a special tribute to AL as one of the great character actors of all time.

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Posted in Acting, Actors, Dance, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Movies and tv | 3 Comments »

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