tantrum

August 30, 2020

Today’s morning name. So obviously Latin, a 2nd-declension neuter noun. But apparently not; instead it’s a mystery.

OED2 on tantrum:

Etymology: Origin unascertained.
colloquial.
An outburst or display of petulance or ill-temper; a fit of passion. Frequently in plural. Now often spec. a fit of bad temper in a young child.
[1st cite: 1714 E. Verney Let. 30 Oct. in M. M. Verney Verney Lett. (1930) II. xxi. 18 Our lady has had some of her tanterums as Vapors comeing out etc. Then: 1754 S. Foote Knights  ii. 41 None of your Fleers!..Your Tantrums! You are grown too head-strong and robust for me.]

fleers? From NOAD:

verb fleer: [no object] literary laugh impudently or jeeringly: he fleered at us. noun archaic an impudent or jeering look or speech. ORIGIN late Middle English: probably of Scandinavian origin and related to Norwegian and Swedish dialect flira ‘to grin’

Etymology occasionally throws up mysteries like this one. If someone now wants to search collections of texts from the period, they might find some clues as to its source. It’s even possible that the noun doesn’t have an ordinary etymology, but was a mock-Latin invention. Whatever; ya gotta know the territory.

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Take me, please

August 29, 2020

(All about men’s bodies and mansex, described in street language, so utterly inappropriate for kids or the sexually modest. As usual, I have more general points to make about sex, gender, and sexuality, but there’s no getting around the flagrant raunchiness of the content.)

An e-mail ad yesterday for a Daily Jocks sale, promoting their DJX fetishwear, specifically their very handsome harnesses and jockstraps, that comes as close to being flat-out gay porn as possible. A beautifully (but not extravagantly) muscled male body, lying prone on the silky sheets of a bed — simultaneously tough and high-masculine and also sumptuously queer — with his knees drawn up to offer his very muscular male buttocks for sex.

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Posted in Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language of sex, My life | 4 Comments »

Daniel Goddard

August 28, 2020

Tim Evanson on Facebook today observed that Daniel Goddard (born 8/28/71) is now 49. Happy birthday, Daniel.

Goddard was the star of the the Beastmaster tv series, which has provided me with many cheap-pleasurable hours of viewing, in which his very attractive shirtlessness played a significant part (though his physical acting, his smiles, the excellent supporting cast, and the entertainingly preposterous plots were significant contributions).


(#1) The characters Tao (played by Jackson Raine) and Dar (Goddard): well, yes, Goddard’s admirable torso and arm muscles (not to mention his sweaty body and surprisingy erect nipples), but it’s also a depiction of supportive male friendship, and that’s important

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Posted in Actors, Movies and tv, Shirtlessness | 2 Comments »

Hola Queridx

August 28, 2020

Back on 3/4 on Facebook, from Peruvian linguist Ernesto Cuba, with a photo of him

[Cuba phrase] con mi queridx Iván Villanueva Jordán, traductor queer … lingüistica marica


(#1) Ernesto (right) with his Peruvian student Iván (who’s studied drag queens in Lima)

(Google at the time didn’t try to translate queridx but translated lingüistica marica as ‘faggot linguistics’)

Cuba’s queridx posting led me to discover Dario Cocimano’s song “Hola Queridx” from his 2018 Digno album —

(#2)

— and so to query Cuba about the linguistic usages involved.

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Posted in Language and race, Linguists, Music, Spanish, Spelling, Taboo language and slurs, Variation | Leave a Comment »

A song for our times

August 27, 2020

They Might Be Giants, “Your Racist Friend”, with the refrain:

This is where the party ends
I can’t stand here listening to you
And your racist friend
I know politics bore you
But I feel like a hypocrite talking to you
And your racist friend

You can experience a live performance of the song here — in Houston on 4/1/16 (the sound quality isn’t great, but you can appreciate their energy).

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John Klamik

August 27, 2020

About the gay erotic artist and cartoonist John Klamik, so there wil be references to men’s bodies and mansex, though the hardcore images are off in a posting on AZBlogX. But the topic will obviously not suit every reader.

(This is also a posting from way back in my posting queue, drawing mostly on material collected in 2016.)

The impetus comes from my 4/28/16 posting on this blog, “Gay comics in the 21st century”, with a comment from Billy Britt mentioning Klamik and Tom of Finland.

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Posted in Gay porn, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 1 Comment »

The Connecticut mystery structure

August 27, 2020

A Zippy sequence that began back on 8/3 in this strip (reported on in a section of my 8/3 posting “The art of everyday objects”):


(#1) The premise is that this little house just appeared one day in Bill Griffith’s Connecticut neighborhood, provoking some bafflement as to its origin and function (note: in Bill Griffith’s neighborhood, not in the Dingburg area where the cartoon character Griffy is to be found)

That posting argued that the sliding door with a Z on it is just a standard Z-series barn door.

There followed three strips in which the door slowly opens, revealing someone inside — in fact, Zippy, presenting himself as a real person (like BG (Bill Griffith) rather than Griffy). Then a sequence of 8 increasingly surrealistic strips turning on issues of fiction and reality. Finally, two strips in which it turns out that Zippy is running a farm stand of the mind from that little shed.

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Pop culture, Puns | Leave a Comment »

Paukenmesse

August 26, 2020

Writing about a Haydn Arietta with variations (in my 8/16/20 posting “Name that tune”) brought a powerful musical memory flooding back to me, so powerful that I was moved to tears of joy: Haydn again, but now the Kyrie movement from his Paukenmesse (with its dramatic use of tympani).

The movement has a pattern common to a great many of Haydn’s symphonic movements: an initial slow introduction, then opening up into the main theme — in this case a songlike joyous “Kyrie Eleison”, which bursts out like a suddenly rising sun. Listen to the movement here, in an especially emotional performance conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

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Little brown birds

August 26, 2020

It starts with a wonderful photo by Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky (on Facebook on the 23rd) of a local bird, pretty much the apotheosis of the Little Brown Bird, all brown and nondescript as it flutters around. Until you catch it in (very momentary) repose and get to examine the remarkable details of its plumage:


(#1) The California Towhee (Melozine crissalis)

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Posted in Language and animals | 2 Comments »

Creature log in the smoke times

August 25, 2020

On the temperature front, we’re into a period of highs in the 80-85F range, which is merely hot, not drastically hot. The air quality index is down to 127, merely Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (like me); it was noticeably worse in the morning. The lightning strikes that lit up the night sky seem to have stopped for the moment, at least here. There haven’t been power outages here, and no ash is falling from the sky. So all of this counts as locally, and possibly temporarily, improved, and I judge that to be a blessing, even though it still hurts for me to breathe.

Meanwhile, my creatures — the birds and squirrels — are back to merely feeding, instead of eating ravenously as if the world were coming to an end. I now have two transparent bird feeders attached to the big windows by my work table; the birds that eat from feeders quickly became familiar with the new one, and they now come to the two of them about equally.

Thanks to Kim Darnell and to Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, I’m now stocked up on a large assortment of foods for wild creatures (details to come), and I’m increasingly intrigued by the complexities of squirrel behavior — also challenged by the task of keeping the squirrels happy (they provide me with a giant circus of activity to watch) but out of the way of the birds.

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Posted in Language and animals, Language and plants, My life | Leave a Comment »

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