https://arnoldzwicky.org
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(men’s bodies and sex between men, sometimes described in street language, so entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest) Two gay porn scenes in which the partners take evident pleasure in their sex, as shown by the exchange of broad smiles during their acts (of enthusiastic manual, oral, and anal sex); each is experiencing pleasure himself and the satisfaction of pleasuring someone else, and together they are sharing socio-pleasure, the enjoyment of the company of others. The two…
Briefly noted: today’s Zippy strip has our Pinhead rowing to a half-rhyme: Zippy is keen on spleen (‘bad temper; spite’ (NOAD)) and is happy to vent his in a half-rhyme. In particular, the feature rhyme of /strim/ with /splin/, m – n being the most common feature rhyme for consonants in English. On a lake, he could have displayed his hate (k – t).
Today’s adventure in analyzing the jokey allusions in my postings. The target allusion is the one boldfaced in this passage from my posting yesterday (5/13), “The pocket bulge”: [The DJX bulge booster] provides a soft but protective pocket in which a man’s package (of whatever size) can be unconstrained (hang free or peter out, as the slogan goes) I explained half of the joke in a comment about my raw materials for this posting: “Live Free or Die”, the official state motto of New Hampshire But…
From a symposium on “The Problem of Data in Linguistics”, Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1980, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (1980), pp. 598-604 598 “Internal” and “External” Evidence in Linguistics Arnold M. Zwicky The Ohio State University 1. Background It has become customary for linguists (especially generative lin- guists) to draw a distinction (initially rather unnatural for philoso- phers of science) between “internal” and…
Fresh news for male genitalia, in a Daily Jocks e-mail ad today (5/13): DJX Prime Enhancing Underwear: an instant bulge booster. Provides the illusion of great size, thereby addressing the American male obsession with genital size as an indicator of solid masculinity, power, and consequence (one big dick to rule them all, as the saying goes). Also provides a soft but protective pocket in which a man’s package (of whatever size) can be unconstrained (hang free or peter out, as the slogan goes).…
(tales of man-man sex, some of it in very plain street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest) A story from my times at the gay baths, this one not previously reported on. From 1980, at the Club Baths of Toronto, a night out during the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association in Toronto, at which I gave a paper (“Internal” and “External” Evidence in Linguistics) in a symposium on “The Problem of Data in Linguistics”, with this stable PSA URL. (This URL requires JSTOR…
Two cartoons from the May 2026 Funny Times, both with variants of familiar theme. Some Bizarro word play exploiting and extending on the similarity between names of diseases and names of flowers (commented on long ago by James Thurber); and a bob twist on Husband in Bed With Oh My God! (aka Honey, This is Not What It Looks Like). Bizarro fresh frontiers for disease names, /dájǝ/ division. The cartoon: (#1) The Wayno / Piraro cartoon of 10/27/25 (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the…
Yesterday’s dinner order (big enough for that meal and today’s lunch): the Meat Basket Salad from Tacos El Grullense #1, in Redwood City: (#1) The meat basket at El Grullense #1 (the Tacos El Grullense Grill in Redwood City is the first in a Bay Area family-owned chain of taquerias): beans, choice of meat (grilled chicken for me), rice, onions, cilantro, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole, cheese, and sour cream in a crispy tortilla basket Not what came first to my phallotropic —…
From Bethany “Bitty” Ramirez on Facebook on 5/8: I chopped the rhubarb But I did not chop the strawberry — (#1) Ramirez BR often writes (mouth-wateringly) about food and its preparation, but not lined out like this, and not with what looks like a reference to the song “I Shot the Sheriff” (in either of its two most famous recordings). Depending on your knowledge of popular music (which probably depends on your age), this is either an ostentatiously playful allusion — pretty much everybody of a…
(To the memory of Ann Daingerfield Zwicky, who was born Ann Walcutt Daingerfield on 5/9/1937. Her favorite flower was the Japanese iris and her least favorite holiday was (US) Mother’s Day, the second Sunday in May.) Found almost everywhere in today’s walk with my helper Isaac around a few blocks south of my house: a pretty plant growing in clumps, with narrow leaves, and at the tips of stalks, modest yellow (occasionally white) iris-like (but flat) flowers, with three petals and three sepals:…
Spurred by Max Vasilatos’s show-n-tell at the most recent (5/3) soc.motss get-together on Zoom, some material on the S&M graphic artist REX, assembled from material in his Wikipedia entry; the summary paragraph: REX (1943 – March 2024) was an American visual artist and illustrator closely associated with gay fetish art of 1970s and 1980s New York and San Francisco. He avoided photographs and did not discuss his personal life. His drawings influenced gay culture through graphics made for…
(much talk of men’s bodyparts and some of man-on-man sex, much of it in street language, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest) Background: from Benjamin Dreyer on Facebook yesterday (5/7), about assless: — BD: My gosh, I’m in the dictionary. (#1) From Merriam-Webster online And my comment: — AZ: why do I find no citations (anywhere I can see) of hyperbolic bodypart assless ‘having minimal buttocks’, esp. in assless Irishman (used ruefully by some Irish American men I know)? The…
Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtin in the Point / Counterpoint segment on Saturday Night Live: Jane would make some serious point, only to be dismissed by Dan with a response beginning “Jane, you ignorant slut” This posting is about not knowing, about ignorance — but not about the ignorance of “Jane, you ignorant slut” (call this ignorant, sense a), instead the ignorance of my helper Isaac, who turned out to be ignorant of the Great Depression (call this ignorant, sense b); well, he’s Fijian and more…
Three plants — all old favorites of mine — that have recently caught my helper Isaac’s attention on our walks around downtown Palo Alto: two because of their striking foliage and flowers, one because its multitude of yellow flowers seem to thrive everywhere, even in the most unlikely wastelands. Then the first two have remarkable — and, alas, similar — names: acanthus, agapanthus. While all three have odd common names: bear’s breeches / britches, lily of the Nile (not a lily, and from South…
Awaiting the delivery of 4 Turkish hand towels (for use in bathroom and bedroom), to supplement my old 15 x 27″ stock, in white and yellow, as they gradually fray and shred and get retired as rags or trash. My helper Isaac asked how old they were, and was astounded to be told that Jacques and I bought them 40 years ago. The new ones: Slightly larger (16 x 28″), in a color labeled silver grey Lexical matters. Turkish hand towel. First, hand towels are bigger than wash cloths / face cloths (12 x…
Yesterday’s installment was on blood pressure (fabulous again today) and potassium level (requiring blood tests, so who knows?). Today, it’s flaking skin and diarrhea. The first is something of a mystery; the second turns out to be another tricky exercise in getting medication at just the right level. Flaking skin. Had xerosis / xeroderma — the fancy name for the symptom — for more than a year, skin that flaked off in small patches, on my arms and legs (and nowhere else) leaving a snowfall of…
A calendrical reminder, from my 5/4/24 posting on this blog: today is (at least) three holidays, one deadly serious, two entertaining. … Four Dead in Ohio Day (remembering the 1970 Kent State shootings), Star Wars Day [May the Force be with you], and (in the US, where May 4th is 5/4) Dave Brubeck Day (for the 5/4 time signature in music [celebrated in Brubeck’s album Take Five]) Whassup? Every so often, a friend who, inexplicably, has not been following my postings attentively on a daily basis…
Explorations of the channels on my Comcast cable subscription led me to a big block of “music choice” channels in the very high numbers, where I (with my basic cable subscription) don’t normally venture. And there I found channel 942, “classical masterpieces”, offering what ordinary Americans think of as “classical music” (of the serious variety, not the soupy stuff intended for elevators or supermarkets). Some experience with 942 suggests that it’s very heavily biased towards orchestral music…
In this cartoon from the latest (5/4/26) New Yorker, Ms. Duck and Ms. Rabbit mourn their versatile paramour, Mr. Shimmer the duck-rabbit (or rabbit-duck); see my 8/24/25 posting “Shimmer is both a floor wax AND a dessert topping”, and reflect on versatile gay men, who are bottoms or tops, depending on how you approach them: (#1) The widows weep for their bi-stable beloved; meanwhile, the famous illusion that lies at the very center of their world turns out to be a lifelong preoccupation of the…
Resting yesterday alongside 819 Ramona St. on an afternoon walk, my helper Isaac and I noted once again that the building started life as Palo Alto’s first Black church. Black meaning African American, one of a number of uses for the racioethnic designator BLACK. As it happens, Isaac, from Fiji, is a Polynesian black person, with BLACK used to refer to people from the Polynesian islands (Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, etc.) with dark skin, curly hair, and broad facial features. It then occurred to me to…
rabbit rabbit rabbit to inaugurate the month of May — Mayday celebrating labor, spring (new growth, rebirth, fertility), and romance, in a variety of ways (parades, dancing, maypoles, bonfires, public displays of affection) From Hana Filip on Facebook this morning: May 1: Workers’ Labo(u)r Day (international) and the day of (romantic) love celebration (a kind of Valentine Day on May 1 in the Czech Republic). Two seemingly incompatible ideas. Karel Čapek sees a connection between the two: “It is…
(plenty of references to a wide rage of sexual practices, mostly between men (though not in street language), so dubious for kids and not for the sexually modest) A e-mail ad today for a new t-shirt from the Peachy Kings shop: the SIR mesh football jersey ($40), with this pitch: Yes SIR… we’ve got the top for you! Our new SIR mesh jersey will let everyone know who’s the boss! This top will get you all the attention this summer with its slinky sleeves, peek-a-boo mesh and slight-crop. SIR now…
tiger tiger tiger for ultimate April (the rabbits rush in tomorrow, bearing muguets pour le premier mai), with my response to a posting on Facebook by John McIntyre yesterday Hail! Bright Jeremiah, hail! fill ev’ry heart! With love of thee and thy celestial art — adapted from Nicholas Brady’s text for Henry Purcell’s “Hail! Bright Cecilia” (Z.328) JMcI’s posting yesterday was a bright performance of a Baroque gem: Uwe Komischke, Trompete und Thorsten Pech, Orgel spielen ein Highlight der…
On this day (penultimate April) in history, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train arrived in Cleveland OH, following his assassination on 4/14/1865. As described by Tim Evanson on FB today: The coffins of President Abraham Lincoln and his son Willie [who had died in the White House, of typhoid fever, on 2/20/1862] were under military guard at all times aboard the funeral train. The train consisted of nine cars. The second-to-last car was “United States”, the hearse car containing the…
I had somehow missed this Wikipedia page until I stumbled on it this morning: Zwicky is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Arnold Zwicky (born 1940), American linguist Fay Zwicky (1933–2017), Australian poet and academic Fritz Zwicky [1898-1974], astrophysicist who proposed dark matter Jan Zwicky (born 1955), Canadian poet Rolf Zwicky (born 1957), Swiss sailor Tommy Zwicky, Danish journalist and television presenter You will see that I come first — because the list…
(about a family of vulgar slang expressions, so streams of raunchy talk about sex: totally not for kids or the sexually modest) With apologies to the Rodgers and Hammerstein of Carousel, notes on to bust a nut ‘to ejaculate, orgasm’ and its kin, among them the verbs bust, nut, dick, and ball (plus all those bodypart nouns). Setting the scene. From my 5/21/20 posting “Bro Buddies”, an excerpt from a description of a gay porn flick from Falcon: when you need to bust a nut, log on and tune into…
Playing on my Apple Music when I woke this morning (4/27): the trio and chorus “They shall be as happy as they’re fair” from Act V of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, Z. 629, with its forward-driving syncopations accompanying the repeated “happy, happy”. A wild wedding song to start the day: They shall be as happy, happy, as they’re fair, Love shall fill all the places of care; And ev’ry time the Sun shall display his rising light, It shall be to them a new Wedding day, And when he sets a new…
(about sexual acts, especially between men, and also about excrement as an accompaniment to sexual acts, all described in vulgar street language, so this posting is massively unsuitable for kids or the sexually modest) Two messy situations. Anal intercourse sometimes involves the mess of excrement — feces, inadverent (oops!) or intentional (yes!) — and American gay usage has supplied vocabulary for both situations (now extended to women, as well as men, as receptive partners in anal…
(lots of discussion of men’s bodies in street language and similar references to sex between men, so not for kids r the sexually modest) Stylish? Or in costume? There can be a fine line here, often crossed flagrantly — in my opinion, at any rate — in high-fashion shows. And then also in the far reaches of premium underwear for men, especially from the raunchily named Breedwell company — whose name includes the sexual verb breed ‘pedicate a man bareback (without a condom) to orgasm’.…
Yesterday’s (4/24) Zippy strip has our Pinhead singing the praises of everyday stationery supplies, in particular the cylinders (now usually made of plastic) used to convey rolled-up sheets of material with printing or designs on them: the telescoping plastic mailing tube: Zippy chants for the TPMT Four words of decreasing length (in number of syllables), in two phrases: — the adjectival modifiers telescoping ‘which telescopes’ and plastic ‘which is made of plastic’ (4 + 2 syllables) — and the…
