(Mostly on artifactual phallicity.)
From Steven Levine on Facebook, found on eBay, a pair of
DEPRESSION GLASS SALT & PEPPER SHAKERS-PINK GLASS WITH PLASTIC TOP
(#1)
Steven’s comment:
It must have been a more innocent era. These are described as “a peachy shade of pink”. Um, yeah sure.
Today’s Zippy:
Zippy’s been reading the texts on food products, finding deep messages there.
Love the idea of “advanced socioeconomic degrees in … Manwich & Beefaroni Symbology”.
Found on the net, this story from the New York Daily News:
The new building for the People’s Daily newspaper, the official paper of China’s Communist Party, raises eyebrows and sparks lowbrow humor.
The building:
Add this to the long list of unintendedly phallic objects.
(About phallicity rather than language.)
From Chris Ambidge, in Trawna, this entertaining movie poster:
Guns as phallic symbols come up again and again on this blog and AZBlogX.
From Victor Steinbok, this B.C. cartoon (from 4/16/13) by Johnny Hart:
This is intended to be a portmanteau both verbally and visually. Verbally, Mercedes-Benz overlapping with benzene. Visually, a combination of the symbol for the Mercedes-Benz company and a simplified version of the carbon ring structure for benzene.
A follow-up to my posting on sex/gender symbols, taking up some further cases in which the borders between male and female are erased, and how these situations have been represented graphically.
From Kim Darnell on Facebook, a story from a year ago (4/17/12) about the adoption of a gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish, with this handsome accompanying graphic:
(#1)
The graphic has three interlinked components: The “female symbol” (or “mirror of Venus”), a circle (representing a body) with a cross below it (♀ in biological literature); the “male symbol” (or “spear of Mars”), a circle with an arrow at the upper right (♂ in biological literature); and a plain circle in the center, representing a body unspecified as to sex. Turning to grammatical gender rather than biological sex, the mirror of Venus represents feminine gender (as in the Swedish pronoun hon ‘she’), the spear of Mars the masculine gender (as in the Swedish pronoun han ‘he), and the plain circle the new gender-neutral 3sg Swedish pronoun hen).
A complexity here is that this symbol is sometimes taken to be a transgender symbol, the central circle represeting someone who in some sense is *both* female and male. And for this purpose there are a number of competing symbols.
Passed on by Chris Ambidge, four street signs. First, the Supremes on the street:
Then a sign warning that stick figures might be crossing the road:
A warning that penguins might be crossing:
And, inevitably I suppose, a kiwi warning sign:
(Some language content here, but mostly about my life.)
Valentine’s Day, the holiday of love, has become associated with chocolates (one of the foods of love), as well as flowers (especially red roses, the flowers of passionate love). February 14th is also my daughter’s birthday. This year, inspired by the realization that I have come to live in the Chocolate Gulch of Palo Alto, I decided (for the first time) to do chocolates for Elizabeth. It’s a nice story.
