wank

Another follow-up to my posting on gay sex toys, this time on masturbation adjuncts (lubes and condoms, in particular), with a digression on the noun and verb wank.

[TMI Warning: The following posting contains information, opinion, or reflection that some readers might find uncomfortably or unwelcomely personal, private, or intimate in topic or content: too much information, as the saying goes. As a general observation, I’m willing to go almost anywhere in my postings, including some places that some readers don’t want to go.]

Emily Flake

Having posted one Emily Flake cartoon (on decimate, here), I thought to check out some of her other work. (That’s her real name, by the way.) Mostly focused on situations rather than language, but here are three varied examples of interest to me.

Coming back to life

[TMI Warning: The following posting contains information, opinion, or reflection that some readers might find uncomfortably or unwelcomely personal, private, or intimate in topic or content: too much information, as the saying goes. As a general observation, I’m willing to go almost anywhere in my postings, including some places that some readers don’t want to go.]

A series of postings on coping with medical conditions and the treatments for them: (1) on the disruptions they cause in the usual patterns of life; (2) on the side consequences of the condition and the treatments; and (3) on existing conditions that continue to need attention while you cope with the very pressing one. Plus a more specific piece of (1), on sex and disability. Several of these postings will talk about sex in plain terms, with personal details, so if that bothers you, tread carefully in what you choose to read.

For me right now, the pressing condition is crippling osteoarthritis, the treatment is complete replacement of my right hip. Yesterday it was three weeks since I came home from the hospital, and things have been moving very smoothly since then. I’m walking at least 6 blocks a day, doing assorted exercises (and a lot of housework), and generally feeling great. Yesterday I picked up a four-legged cane, or quad cane as the things seem to be called in the assistive literature, so I now lope around indoors with my interrogative friend:

On the intimate front, however, the big news is that my dick is back to life (meaning, really, that my mind is back in its familiar groove of affording me a satisfying sex life, from keen desire on to happy endings). It was like a switch flipped four days ago and we went back to business at the old location, after months of hiatus (serious crippling pain is tremendously anerotic).

And on bears…

Following on my twink posting, a bear comic:

This is a take-off on Bill Keane’s The Family Circus cartoon, adapted for gay men by reference to bears. (Plus a use of the X magnet snowclonelet.)

A gesture towards bear-twink equity.

(Hat tip to Chris Ambidge.)

The twinkmeister

In the world of male photography, there have been several specialists in young (especially boyish-looking) males, viewed homoerotically: Mel Roberts (here) and Bob Mizer, with posed but artless-seeming shots, and most especially Howard Roffman, who’s still flourishing at his craft. I think of Roffman as the twinkmeister, for his focus on the type of young man known in gay slang as twinks.

OUT in Linguistics

The old OUT in Linguistics mailing list seems to have died, so I’ve created a Facebook group for this purpose:

The group is open to lesbian, gay, bisexual, dyke, queer, homosexual, trans, etc. linguists and their friends. The only requirement is that you be willing to be out to everyone on the list as lgbt(-friendly); it’s sort of like wearing a pink triangle.

It’s a “closed” group: anyone can see the group, but only members can post and see the postings.

I’m in charge of adding people to the group; mail to me at zwicky@stanford.edu.

(Yes, you need to have a Facebook account.)

 

 

Trendsetting

In today’s print NYT Science Times, a piece by Douglas Quenqua entitled “They’re, Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve”, about young women as trendsetters in linguistic change. Featuring a sizable cast of experts, starting with Stanford’s Penny Eckert.

The two main points:

Girls and women in their teens and 20s deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang, [linguists] say, adding that young women use these embellishments in much more sophisticated ways than people tend to realize.

And, at the end, two points. One, that a bit of linguistic stuff — vocal fry, uptalk, and the discourse particle like are the three examples the article focuses on — is just a resource, which can be used in many different ways by different groups of speakers (that is, there’s no intrinsic meaning to a resource — as I’ve taken to saying, it’s “just stuff” — but only meanings as expressed by particular groups of speakers and meanings as interpreted by others). And two, that the meanings for speakers and hearers can be seriously at variance:

“language changes very fast,” said Dr. Eckert of Stanford, and most people — particularly adults — who try to divine the meaning of new forms used by young women are “almost sure to get it wrong.”

“What may sound excessively ‘girly’ to me may sound smart, authoritative and strong to my students,” she said.

fag food

The story starts with a Facebook posting from Ned Deily, who’s currently in Rome:

Fagolosi is a product name, for breadsticks made by the Grissin Bon company of Reggio Emilio. Phallic, and with fag in the name. Gay food. (On gay spaghetti, see here.)

Annals of anatomical vocabulary

In the November Details, in a feature on “America’s New Male Body Obsession”, an item on”D’Angelo’s Anatomy Lesson”:

Devil’s horns. Jesus crease. Groin dip. Thunder road. Dick cleavage. All euphemisms for a well defined inguinal ligament, a piece of anatomy we might not have considered had it not been for D’Angelo’s 2000 music video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”.

More bottoms

A follow-up to active bottoms (here), on the Big Boy Fashion site:

(Hat tip to Jeff Shaumeyer on Facebook.)