Two remarkable performances by Jesse Jackson

February 22, 2026

I come to celebrate two television performances by Jesse Jackson (who died a few days ago) that have made my day: one that totally broke me up in laughter and one that made me weep with his regard for and buoying up of the least among us, little children.

The thumbnail history. As background about Jackson as a political force, from Wikipedia:

Jesse Louis Jackson (né Burns; 10/8/1941 to 2/17/2026) was an American civil rights activist, LGBTQ rights activist, politician, and ordained Baptist minister. A protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bevel during the civil rights movement, he became one of the most prominent civil rights leaders of the late 20th and early 21st centuries and an ardent and early supporter of LGBTQ rights. From 1991 to 1997, he served as a shadow delegate and shadow senator for the District of Columbia.

Now: Jackson reading Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” on Saturday Night Live in 1991 as a passionate and devout reading from the pulpit; and Jackson in a 1972 appearance on the children’s tv program Sesame Street, exhorting a gaggle of Rainbow Coalition kids in the liberatory chant “I am somebody”. Laugh with me, weep with me.

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Posted in Language and politics, Language and race, Movies and tv, Nonsense | Leave a Comment »

New frontiers in porn for gay men

February 22, 2026

(Once more into man-on-man sex described in street language; kind of silly, and actually rather sweet, but way too raunchy for kids or the sexually modest)

In my e-mail this morning (2/22), a gay porn sale ad from ASGmax: for Almost Real (part 1), In the Name of Science, featuring Nico Coopa and Ryder Owens, from the studio Next Door Films, released on 2/14/26. The video tells the tale of a “synthetic intimate robot” — not an AI creation, but a character played by an actual porn performer, which somewhat takes the edge off the kinkiness of getting a blow job from a robot or the unpleasant prospect of getting fucked by one. (The only machines I want up my ass are anal probes and dildoes that are entirely under my control — nothing with any sort of mind of its own.), The whole ad, in all its details, but with the dicks fuzzed out for WordPress modesty (I will, however, describe them):

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Posted in AI, Gay porn, Language and the body, Language of sex | Leave a Comment »

Catamite’s delight

February 21, 2026

(This posting is all about man-on-man anal sex, with photos, in the plainest of street language (F-bombs will fall like snow), so it is utterly out of bounds for kids and the sexually modest; entertaining in its own grossly raunchy way, but spectacularly NSFW)

I’l ease into things, starting with some background about the noun catamite, taking off with NOAD‘s entry:

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Posted in Gay porn, Language and the body, Language of sex | 2 Comments »

Hallucinations (and delusions)

February 19, 2026

A note from my recent stay in Stanford Hospital: into the emergency room on Friday 1/30 in the afternoon, returning home late in the afternoon on Thursday 2/5. Not about the afflictions that brought me there, but about an odd experience during the long time waiting on a gurney in a very small room in the emergency department while tests were made and a hospital room sought. I had company all through the day: my daughter Elizabeth and grandchild Opal, who patiently enjoyed a card game together and played some interesting music softly for me.

Hallucination: the curtain. This tiny room had a curtain that could be drawn to make it private from the hallway outside: a pleasant beige color with somewhat glossy horizontal strips of a slightly darker tint.

But for me it was, startlingly, much more than that: what I saw inside those strips was the (unfortunately illegible) text of a substantial article that I was writing to post on this blog. I was entirely aware that this material was a hallucination, visible to me but not to Elizabeth or Opal, though I described it for them. Fascinating, in no way disturbing. But I was unable to dismiss or erase the text from my visual field — it persisted for more than an hour, with no way for me to un-see it. And then I was moved to a different room, with a different kind of curtain, so no more hallucination.

This sort of cognizant hallucination — my ad hoc label for hallucination (in this case, visual) with full awareness on the part of the experiencer — is, apparently, not unusual, though not much seems to be known about the triggers for it. They are common in the moments when people are dropping off to sleep and, especially, when they are wakening.

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Posted in Language and medicine, My life | 1 Comment »

He donned a suit in the snowstorm

February 19, 2026

From Ben Yagoda on Facebook today (2/19):

[about] today’s Philadelphia Inquirer investigation of Philly Managing Director Adam “No Show Jones” Thiel, who was away from the office for nearly five months last year, including time in the military reserve and (presumably) running his consulting firm, from which he reported income of more than $300,000. (That’s in addition to his city salary of $316,000.)

… The Inquirer article … shows continued morphing of the verb don from meaning ‘put on’ (don we now our gay apparel) to meaning ‘wear’. The newspaper reports: “Ahead of a snowstorm in January 2024, Thiel stood with [Mayor] Parker during a news conference about preparations. He donned a suit while snowflakes fell, and he reassured the city that the administration was ready for the service disruptions that bad weather can bring”.

For those of us who still hew to the old meaning, that’s quite a visual image.

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Posted in Lexical semantics, Style and register | 1 Comment »

Anarthrousness in the comic strips

February 16, 2026

The Pearls Before Swine strip by Stephan Pastis, for 1/9/26:


A difference between British English and American English over constructions with the definite article (arthrous) or without it (anarthrous) — putting aside British Bob’s touching belief in the primacy of BrE over AmE

(There is a Page on this blog with links to postings on Language Log and this blog on arthrousness)

Now for some scholarly observations on BrE vs. AmE practices in arthrousness with various prepositional objects, among them hospital and university. Here I take you to Lynne Murphy’s blog “Separated by a Common Language: Observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the US” — in her posting “(the) menopause, (the) flu, (the) hospital” from 4/17/2007:

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Posted in Articles, Dialects, Language and medicine, Linguistics in the comics, Variation | 2 Comments »

You know it’s good, because it’s free

February 13, 2026

A step into greater complexity in my blog posting, after re-entry in two brief postings yesterday: “Zichichi” (here) and “Calvin Tompkins (here): two separate subjects, united by being cleverly stitched together in The Bob newsletters (from writer and cartoonist Bob Eckstein), about the 2026 Winter Olympics on television, with this cartoon from 2/7:


(Toon) The Bob at the Winter Olympics; BE says “The bob is here”, with this tag about the Olympics on tv:

You know it’s good, because it’s free

This is subject 1, the excellent tag, which I would like to apply to this very blog of mine: you know it’s good because it’s free (and I have gone to some trouble to make it so; applaud here for me)

Meanwhile, Toon is BE’s wiener dog race version of the Olympics, in which the racing dogs are in hotdog buns, observed by an array of condiment bottles. On Facebook on 2/8:

BE: “I’m I’m watching the Puppy Bowl. It’s not the same. Gambling has ruined it, even though I’m admittedly part of the problem.

BE’s eccentric Puppy Bowl is subject 2, and it has nothing to do with the the tag.

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Posted in Formulaic language, Language and animals, Language and sports, Linguistics in the comics, Slogans | Leave a Comment »

Calvin Tompkins

February 12, 2026

A note about a moving diary of unsparing self-reflection by the American writer Calvin Tomkins as he struggles through the year to the age of 100: in print in the New Yorker issue of 12/22/25: “Centenarian: A diary of a hundredth year”.

Tomkins (born 12/17/1925, graduated from Princeton in 1948; I am 9/6/1940 and Princeton 1962 — merely stumbling through towards the age of 86, but we swim similarly against the chill tides of decline and loss) has been a writer for the magazine since 1958. Casuals, interview pieces, and so on, but preeminently as the magazine’s art critic.

His piece is characteristically direct and spare, traversing a wrenching jagged route through his life, without drama or pleading. His story obviously speaks to my condition, but more generally serves as a model of how to deal with nasty, messy mortality with grace and humanity. And, if you can bear it, should be read along with Tatiana Schlossberg’s remarkable “A Battle with my Blood”, in print in the 12/8/25 issue of the New Yorker under the head “A Further Shore”, about her last days as a 34-year-old woman dying of leukemia.

 

 

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Zichichi

February 12, 2026

This is a brief return to posting on my blog, an experiment in re-learning how to use my computer, after a couple of months in a vale of great sicknesses (about which, more eventually); I am seriously damaged, but plucky.

This is in memory of the excellent Antonino Zichichi, who died on 2/9. First of all, for having a wonderful Z name, even more entertaining than Zwicky. For his groundbreaking research in nuclear physics. And for a lifetime devoted to causes benefitting the common good.

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Posted in Death notices, Names, Physics | 2 Comments »

Bad times, go away

December 26, 2025

A brief note to tell you I’m still alive, but in great misery, and doing the minimum just to get through the days. I’m sleeping about 16 hours a day, in 1-hour naps, mostly sitting up in a chair. Much of the time when I’m awake, my hands are shaking so badly I can’t do much of anything, but then that passes away and for a while I can at least type in messages — great tissues of typos, which I then labor to correct. My current state is a considerable improvement from the disasters of 12/23 through 25; I was finally able to eat my Christmas dinner for lunch today, and it was a pleasure, but I’m a long way from getting back to my pre-Yuletide level of mere chronic sickness.

I will do my best to report on what’s happened and is happening, but you have to appreciate how difficult it is to endure all this while describing it and trying to make some sense of it.

The good news is that my neighborhood experienced neither overwhelming floods nor tornados.

 

Posted in My life | 2 Comments »

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