-licious sex

It began with the porn flick Twinkalicious (a 5-hour compilation of scenes featuring twink sex, that is, sex between twinks). The front cover of the DVD (showing a twink sucking cock) and the back cover (a montage of twinks in heat) can be viewed in the posting “Twinkalicious porn” on AZBlogX (where such images are allowed). The word twinkalicious has two parts, the twink part (with a piece of sexuality slang) and the -licious part (related in some way to delicious). I’ll comment on both parts. But first, some other combinations of these two parts.

Adulthood

Today’s Scenes From a Multiverse:

 

In everyday dealings, we tend to judge the stages of life by physical and behavioral signs, and the categorization is somewhat fuzzy, but for legal and administrative purposes, crisp categorizations are necessary, and chronological age provides the basis for them — however irrational it might seem to label someone as a child one day and an adult the next.

In this case, Jon Rosenberg is remarking not only on that irrationality, but also (as his comments on the strip make clear) on the bizarreness of treating gay adults (however adult is defined) as unsafe or untrustworthy in a way that gay kids are not. (I note further that the onset of puberty comes well before the age of 18.)

 

Define “garbage”

Yesterday’s Dilbert, in which Dilbert confronts his pointy-headed boss:

I’m sorry to say that gamification (a verbing in -ify from the noun game) is not some twisted invention of Scott Adams’s. And then there’s the question of what counts as garbage.

X or not?

A few days ago, an intense Benno Thoma postcard from Max Vasilatos (in an envelope), with the note: “This could probably go in the regular mail, but I’m taking no chances.” The issue is whether the image counts as X-rated or not; Max and I fairly often puzzle over the categorization of images, sometimes for the purpose of mailing and sometimes for the purpose of posting in certain places on the net (like this blog). The line isn’t clear.

First, the case at hand. Then, some general discussion.

Gay greens: the Big Two

In my Columbus OH household, the residents had a name for a particular category of foodstuffs, especially as salad ingredients: gay greens, taking in, for instance: arugula (or rocket), radicchio, watercress, mâche (or corn salad), fennel, (curly) endive, Belgian endive, flat (or Italian) parsley, and basil (especially the fancy varieties). (Sprouts of all kinds are hippie greens.) The association with queers comes primarily from these being fashionable foodstuffs, connected in many people’s minds with fancy cooking, adventurous dining, and foodie enthusiasm — activities that are also associated with gay men. Plus the widespread attitude that green salads are “unmanly” food: Real Men eat red meat, not green salads.

(The association of these foodstuffs with queers will no doubt come as a surprise to many Italian-Americans, not to mention actual Italians, who are accustomed to them as everyday ingredients.)

Today I’ll look at the Big Two of the gay greens, arugula and radicchio (noting that I am very fond of them both).

Synthetic compounds and back-formation: go-go truth-telling

Once I start looking at synthetic compounds and back-formation, new examples pop up all over the place. Two today: the synthetic compounds truth-teller (and truth-telling) and  go-go dancer (and go-go dancing) — from which, the verbs to truth-tell and to go-go dance.

pinnies

In my e-mail a little while ago, a Princeton University Store ad offering Princeton pinnies — one illustrated here:

The text:

The weather is finally starting to warm up and we have the perfect lightweight summer staple for Tigers everywhere – the Princeton pinnie! With a nice loose fit and 2-ply mesh these are sure to keep you cool in all senses of the word! Did we mention, they’re all REVERSIBLE and available in several different styles?!

The term pinnie for such a garment was new to me. But it’s been around for a while, though primarily in British usage.

Calendars: Boy Next Door, Philip Fusco

(A little bit of language stuff, but mostly about male photography and homoeroticsm.)

As Mr. April was replaced by Mr. May in my Boy Next Door calendar (photography by David Arnot), I reflected once again on the inappropriateness of the label boy for the men in this line of calendars. And then, looking for net images of the calendar, I stumbled on the underwear model Philip Fusco, who like Daniel Garofali in an earlier posting, specializes in what I’ve called cock tease shots.

Abutilon and its relatives

Caught sight of in a neighbor’s (walled) front garden: bits of a pretty vining abutilon, in bloom for a good part of the year. Much like this variety (Firefly):

  (#1)

And for several years, just around the corner (on the northwest corner of Emerson and Forest in Palo Alto) there used to be a big concrete planter with a sweet upright abutilon growing in it — until the shrub was vandalized to death, and then the planter as well, alas. The color of this one was much like the plant in (#1); here’s a gorgeous deep red variety (Nabob):

  (#2)

Coming up: discussion of abutilon and the mallow family to which it belongs. Marshmallows and gumbo will eventually appear.

Stone fruits, nuts, and berries

Posting about flowering pear trees reminded me of some complexities in the classification of fruits. Putting aside the well-known divergence between the use of the word fruit in botany and its use in cooking and dining contexts, I’ll look at some more specific cases, in particular stone fruit(s). Again, there’s a divergence between the technical terminology of botany and ordinary language — a result of botanists having taken over ordinary vocabulary and employed it as technical vocabulary in specialized senses.