Pin-up boys

(On gender and sexuality.)

From Franzo Law via Facebook, a pointer to this wonderful Men-Ups! site by Rion Sabean, offering

A restructuring of the ways in which males are presented in popular media, applying traditional pinup poses that are reserved for the female form, while still presenting the models in ‘masculine’ clothing [and engaged in stereotypically masculine activities].

One example:

  (#1)

A skateboarder, his chest pushed out in front (as if displaying breasts), his butt pushed out in back (another sexual display), lips slightly pursued in a moué, and a saucy expression on his face.

The 12-inch pianist

Today’s Scenes From a Multiverse:

Size doesn’t matter. Or: Size matters. In any case, an allusion to an old joke.

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.

Scouts in Bondage

Scouts in Bondage: And Other Violations of Literary Propriety, edited by Michael Bell (“bookseller of Lewes, East Sussex”), a 2006 edition of an earlier limited edition entitled Telling Tales: a little book of entertaining book covers, most of them featuring titles with unintended double entendres.

Celeriphilia

This over-the-top item has come to me from several sources recently:

Just packed with sexual suggestion, playing the phallicity of celery stalks for all it’s worth.

Your future in academia

Passed on by Kathryn Campbell-Kibler on Facebook, this PHD Comics of the 19th:

Jorge Cham’s strips are usually wry but sweet-natured, as here. Beleagured grad students are the protagonists.

In this case, you’re invited to imagine other possible Secret Plans.

 

Astonishing NYT volte-face

In the Internet Tendency issue of McSweeney’s (on the 24th), Sarah Rosenshine’s “The New York Times announces an editorial policy change”, which begins:

The New York Times has been a steadfast beacon of truthful reporting since printing began in 1851. Our slogan, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” applies well even to this day, though our definition of “fitness” has evolved as decades have progressed. It is with this in mind that we are making an important announcement. In a medium that not only prides itself on conciseness, but is rooted in it, it is absurd to waste entire strings of words and even sentences avoiding a particular word. We’re going to print it now. It’s “fuck.”

Ah, how long we’ve waited for this day, when the Gray Lady picks up some color!

Not yet polychromatic, though. See:

P.S. The monosyllabic vulgarity for a woman’s genitals is still completely off limits.

Well, you have to draw the line somewhere.

No word on the monosyllabic vulgarity for feces, etc.

(Hat tip to Ben Zimmer.)

 

toad

Today’s Bizarro:

A (phonologically perfect) pun on toad (the creature) and towed (PST/PSP of the verb tow, as in the parking sign VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED), put together via the image of a wicked witch turning a parking violator (possibly a prince) into a toad.

Take my wife

I recently came across a reference to the Henny Youngman “take my wife” joke, which turns on the ambiguity of that phrase, with two very different uses of take, one of them very restricted in its syntax and discourse function, the other free in both respects.

Repurposed comics

While searching through the Zippy archives (in connection with this posting), I came across a series of strips in February 2007 that repurposed either the text or the graphics of another cartoon by combining it with Zippy material. Here are five with other texts but Zippy visuals and one with the reverse, in the fashion of Woody Allen’s movie What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, but in the comics medium.