Benita Bendon Campbell writes:

The dominant grocery chain in Denver – a subset of Kroger Foods – is called King Soopers. Their very popular market branch in the gayest neighborhood of our town is known (affectionately) as Queen Soopers. As you could have guessed.

Lovely. A few notes on Queen Soopers, then a re-play of some notes on queen as used by gay men.

The store, at 1155 E. 9th Ave. in the Capitol Hill gayborhood:

(#1)

The store merits a mention in the Cruising Gays city hookup guide.

Digression on this warning in the store:

(#2)

Never put children in your basket! That’s for your stuff, your junk, and your package.

On to queen. From a 12/19/15 posting “X queen”, about the gay partner-preference snowclonelet (and related snowclonelets):

What gets us to gay snowclonelets like this one is the use of queen for gay men, which I wrote about in a 6/27/14 posting. The connection is through the attribution of femininity to (some or all) gay men. From NOAD2, in its 6th sense for queen:

informal   a male homosexual, typically one regarded as ostentatiously effeminate

There’s a slur use here, but also a more neutral one, and even a gay-affirming in-your-face use (“I’m a big ol’ queen who likes to play rugby”). In any case, gay X queen uses have the neutral sense of queen; a rice queen, for example, can be as butch as you want, as unidentifiably gay as you want, so long as he’s in the market for an East Asian man.

The 2014 posting has a wonderful New Yorker cartoon by William Haefeli, with boyfriends testing out a mattress, one saying to the other, “I still say we should get a queen-sized mattress – despite the obvious jokes it will invite among the sales staff.”

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, but tomorrow is a real holiday: the Lunar New Year, ushering in the Year of the Monkey (next week we get a Valentine’s Sunday then for Americans on Monday, Presidents Day). A Canadian $15 silver coin for the occasion:

(#1)

Then, as reported yesterday by David Mack on BuzzFeed, a Chinese designer in San Francisco set out to honor the holiday with a piece of art, which didn’t come out quite as he intended:

(#2)

Mack’s story, “This Guy Accidentally Made A Filthy Poster For Chinese New Year”, about

Lehu Zhang, a Chinese graphic designer who lives and works in San Francisco.

A few days ago, Zhang found himself with some spare time and quickly knocked together a poster to celebrate the Lunar New Year on Monday, when the zodiac calendar will herald the “Year of the Monkey.”

“My design style is fairly minimalist,” Zhang told BuzzFeed News. “I decided to just use some basic shapes to create a monkey face. That was my intention. I was playing around with shapes and this thing just came up.”

The poster took an hour to make, and Zhang casually uploaded it to WeChat to see what friends thought of it.

Now, it’s very possible you might look at this and just see a monkey. However, it’s also equally possible you’re looking at this and seeing, well, please don’t make me say it.

The poster found its way on to Twitter where it soon went viral and was shared thousands of times by people with very dirty minds.

Zhang acknowledged that he can now see “some sexual things” in the work, but swears he didn’t intend that. “I’m not angry,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I’m just a little bit surprised, a little bit worried.”

Some people see the monkey right away and then can’t see the penis. Some people — I am one — never see the design as a monkey, even if we add eyes to what we see as testicles.

Zhang is not the only person to go astray with monkey designs. Here’s a logo for a kids’ party equipment
 firm in Yorkshire & Lancashire, which says of itself: “Cheeky Monkeys offer a wide range of party options including bouncy castles, themed airflow systems, soft play and face painting…”:

(#3)

Yes, just a monkey with a proverbial banana. But an unfortunately placed banana, given that bananas are one of the classic phallic symbols. In this case, the white bit could be seen either as an unusually pointy penis head or as a spray of semen.

On cheeky monkey. Wiktionary has an entry that conforms closely to my experience with this expression:

(Britain, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, idiomatic) An impudent person.

except that it needs a proviso on the order of “especially a young person — a metaphorical monkey — vis-a-vis an older person”, incorporating the first sense of cheeky from Green’s Dictionary of Slang: ‘impudent, esp. in the context of a younger person failing to respect their elder’. Green doesn’t mark this usage as British etc., because the adjective has some North American occurrences. Inexplicably to my mind, Green doesn’t have the longer expression cheeky monkey at all, though he does have an Australian counterpart, cheeky possum ‘an impudent (young) person’.

Note: this posting is about pickles (in the American sense: pickled cucumbers) and uses of the word pickle, especially in proper names; my main theme is that pickles and the word pickle tend to be intrinsically funny, inherently risible. I’ll be citing a whole bunch of uses, but I do not intend this posting to be a complete inventory of uses of the word, so if I don’t mention some example that you know or especially like, please add it in a comment, but don’t do this by accusing me of having failed or neglected to mention your example; that would just be gratuitously insulting.

It started with an entertaining piece by Winnie Hu in the NYT on the 15th: (on-line) “At United Pickle, Preserving the Standards of a Deli Staple”, (in print) “Family-Run Supplier Preserves Standards For a Briny Deli Staple”, beginning:

Not every cucumber has what it takes to be a pickle. As dozens of them tumbled from a steel hopper onto a conveyor belt in a Bronx factory, two workers enforced a strict pickle standard.

Bruised. Broken. Too curvy. Too short. Sorry, no exceptions.

The rejects — about one in 10 — were tossed into plastic bins, destined to become relish.

“You can’t just pickle any produce,” said Stephen Leibowitz, the self-described “chief pickle maven” of this operation, as he reached past the workers to personally pluck out an offending cucumber. “I can put in the best ingredients, and they still won’t turn out right.”

Mr. Leibowitz is the man to see if the pickles at your local deli, diner or burger joint have lost their crunch. Whether kosher dills, sours, half-sours or bread-and-butters, chances are they got their start on the production line at United Pickle, the largest family-owned supplier of pickles and pickled condiments in New York City.

Or as Mr. Leibowitz, 73, ever the pickle pitchman, put it, “If you’re in a pickle, call United Pickle.”

Kosher dill spears in preparation:

(#1)

Later in the piece:

United Pickle is one of the last of what were once scores of pickle companies in New York City that helped elevate a common deli staple into a culinary treat. United Pickle, which traces its roots to the 1890s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, is owned by Mr. Leibowitz and Marvin Weishaus, 61, the president of the company. Mr. Leibowitz and Mr. Weishaus, third- and fourth-generation pickle men, merged the traditions and the secret recipes of their families in 1979.

Today, United Pickle makes nearly 50 million pounds of pickles and pickled condiments a year for restaurants, stores and companies as far away as Dubai, Japan and South Korea. About three-quarters of that is produced at its Bronx headquarters, a 25,000-square-foot brick building in the Tremont neighborhood. The company, which has 50 full-time employees, also owns a seasonal processing plant in New Jersey and uses packing plants in California and Ohio.

I love the idea of third- and fourth-generation pickle men.

Brief background on pickles and pickling. Many foodstuffs can be pickled, that is, preserved in brine or vinegar, or both: there’s pickled herring, pickled meat, pickled eggs, pickled cauliflower, pickled peppers, pickled beets, and more, and of course pickled cucumbers (hereafter, just pickles). Pickles are especially common in northern and eastern Europe (roughly, the Germanic and Slavic lands). So we have a homey, everyday foodstuff, with (in the U.S. at least) strong Jewish associations (which opens them for Jewish humor), it’s highly phallic to boot, and it has an -ickle name (like fickle, prickle, trickle, stickle), allied to words in –iggle (giggle, wiggle, etc.) and words in -icker (snicker, knicker, etc.), which means that the word sounds rather silly, even if you don’t think about the referent. All of which makes pickles and their name likely objects of fun.

Earlier postings. I’ll take these up in chronological order.

9/4/06 on Language Log, “Barney Miller and the linguist” (link):

I remembered a guy on “Barney Miller” enraged by pickle ad copy along the lines of “crunch-crunch-crunchalicious”. This might or might not have happened, though the wonderfully fey “ko-ko-kosherific” (note portmanteau of kosher and terrific) pretty clearly did. And the language loony was identified as, oh dear, a LINGUIST.

(A reader found a description of the show: “A linguist vandalizes a billboard to protest improper grammar in advertising”.)

2/4/13: “Annals of phallicity: or are you just happy to see me?” (link): the figure, “Is that an X in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me” (reporting on an erection), with X = gun, pistol, banana, but with other phallic-symbol words attested, including pickle

8/24/13: “Men and their pickles” (link): “never get Freudian with a man holding a pickle” (from a Law & Order episode); on the risibility of pickles (as phallic symbols); on a wonderful Firesign Theatre episode playing around with pickles; stroke one’s pickle ‘masturbate’ [similarly, suck s.o.’s pickle]

8/24/13: “pickles” (link): on the food; on cucumbers and cucumber pickles as phallic symbols; pickle kisser ‘gay man’ (i.e., ‘cocksucker’); tickle my pickle and The Tickled Pickle Massage Parlor (in Amsterdam)

4/1/14: “April 1” (link):

On April 1, 1970 NBC reportedly paid tribute to the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest by broadcasting a segment about a farm where pickles grew on trees. One of the only descriptions of this segment is found in The Pleasures of Deception by Norman Moss:

On April 1st, 1970, on the National Broadcasting Company’s Huntley-Brinkley programme, John Chancellor did an item on that year’s pickle crop, with film of a dill pickle tree. He said he was reporting from the Dimbleby Pickle Farm.

(tangentially related: 12/3/14: “just happy to see me” (link): a Mother Goose and Grimm with the “just happy” figure, in the caption: “No, I’m not just happy to see you, I’m a unicorn.”)

New stuff: pickles and the common noun pickle. In no particular order.

Item 1: On the bon appétit magazine site on 8/30/12, food writer Sam Dean on “Origin of the Phrase “In a Pickle””:

These days, the phrase “in a pickle” has an old-timey ring about it–the last time you heard it, it was probably referring to a baseball player trapped between two bases, and even that’s more commonly called a “rundown” by today’s commentators. But you know what it means: to be stuck in a difficult situation.

Dean runs through the OED on pickle ‘difficult situation’: (a) John Heywood 1562 poem, interpretation unclear; (b) Shakespeare, The Tempest, but “the usage seems to be closer to another common meaning of “pickled”: to be drunk, soused, sloshed, blotto, or whichever preferred term you use for alcoholic inebriation”; (c)  first solid use of in a pickle in current sense from Pepys’ diary on September 26, 1660. Dean goes on:

Apparently it’s a Yank thing to use “pickle” to mean “a pickled cucumber,” and the Brits use “pickle” to refer to what any American hot dog vendor would call “relish”: a sloppy sauce made of chopped-up, pickled vegetables [as in Branston pickle]. With that context in place, “in a pickle” as Pepys used it suddenly makes sense as a pretty direct metaphor. Like the veggies in the relish, if you’re in a pickle, you’re in a state of jumbled disarray.

Item 2: a 10/4/05 Achewood cartoon with “pickles on parade”:

(#2)

The idiom pickles on parade is a coining, possibly by Chris Onstad, or possibly something he picked up from someone else. It looks like a loose combination of in a pickle and rain on s.o.’s parade.

(On rain on s.o.’s parade, from the Oxford Dictionaries site: ‘prevent someone from enjoying an occasion or event; spoil someone’s plans’)

In Urban Dictionary:

pickles on parade
A bad situation to be in. An unfortunate ocurrence.
Ah, I see. Well this IS pickles on parade. For both of us, mind you.
by Mark Blue 9/13/07

(The (unattributed) quotation is from #2.)

Item 3. Literal pickles, literally on parade, in this playful  2/3/13 photographic composition by Peter Dunne “Pickles on Parade”

(#3)

We are pickles, and we’re here to say, pickles have to be eaten in a certain way. (My contribution, not Dunne’s.)

Item 4. “Hammer and Pickle: Jewish Humor in the Soviet Union”, the title of one or more 2015 talks by Sasha Senderoff, Asst. Prof. of Russian Studies and Jewish Studies at Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, reporting on his research on Soviet Jewish humor. A play on hammer and sickle. From NOAD2 on the original:

the symbols of the industrial worker and the peasant used as the emblem of the former Soviet Union and of international communism

Visual play on the emblem:

(#4)

And a more or less literal interpretation, from the S. Weasel site:

(#5)

Item 5. Senderoff’s stuff led me to the  Jewish Humor Central site (jewishhumorcentral.com), which is jam-packed with great stuff, including an interactive video of animated kosher dills. Still from the interactive video:

(#6)

You can watch the video (with an exuberant deli song) here. You’ll need to click on the pickles one by one to get to the song.

New stuff: pickle used in proper names. Again, in no particular order.

Item 1. The tv show Mr. Pickles. From Wikipedia:

Mr. Pickles is an animated television series created by Will Carsola & Dave Stewart for Adult Swim [a deeply X-rated network available for late-night watching only]. The series revolves around the Goodman family, namely their 6-year-old son named Tommy and the family’s border collie, the demonic Mr. Pickles. The series has been picked up for 10 quarter-hour episodes for its first season, which premiered on the network on September 21, 2014 [and was renewed for a second season]

In the small, old-fashioned world of Old Town that is slowly being taken over by the modern world, the Goodman family and their innocent 6-year-old [disabled] son Tommy obtain a border collie named Mr. Pickles. The two spend their days romping around Old Town on classic adventures — while unbeknownst to Tommy and the family (except for Tommy’s grandfather), Mr. Pickles’ secret evil streak drives him to slip away to kill, mutilate and hump his victims.

… The titular character of the series. He is the Goodman family’s pet border collie who loves to eat pickles (hence his name) which Tommy regularly feeds him. He also enjoys mutilating, killing, and humping as well as engaging in sexual debauchery. He possesses demonic powers, which allows him to control local animals to do his bidding. Despite his evil ways, he actually is quite protective of the impressionable young Tommy: protecting him from danger and will often kill those who might mean to do the boy harm (such as murdering a group of pedophiles or turning an unlicensed breast surgeon who gave Tommy breast implants into a multiple-breasted freak).

(Hat tip to Juan Gomez.The show’s logo:

(#7)

And the main cast:

(#8)

Note the 666 on the logo. The cast in #8, left to right: Tommy, Mr. Pickles (who’s forever sexually assaulting Tommy’s mother), the mother (voiced by Brooke Shields), Tommy’s grandfather (the only person to understand Mr. Pickles’ satanic nature), and Tommy’s father.

You can watch the pilot episode here. I warn you that it is not only X-rated and tasteless, but it goes well beyond simple tastelessness, into downright nastiness that I find very hard to take.

Item 2. The Mr. Pickles Sandwich Shops, which I’d been unaware of until yesterday (even though a number of them are located not far from where I live). Nothing extraordinary about the sandwiches, though many of them have interesting names. (I hope that the company is unaware of the tv series. A nasty resonance for the company.)

The individual franchises have websites with tons of photos of overstuffed sandwiches on them, none (so far as I can tell) identified. But here’s a photo of the Daly City location:

(#9)

From the menu on the company’s website, a descri[tion the its eponymous sandwich, The Mr. Pickle:

The Mr. Pickle (695 cal) sandwich is hot: Chicken Breast, Bacon, Avocado, Melted Monterey Jack

What some would call a California chicken sandwich (thanks to the avocado and the Monterey jack). Some other offerings:

Summer Love, Hang Loose, Tom Turkey, Manhattan (hot pastrami and melted Swiss – ok, pastrami, but certainly not kosher), Hot ‘T’, Chicken Ranch (with ranch dressing, but the echo of the Chicken Ranch brothel in Nevada might not be welcome — but maybe the idea was to sound “naughty”), Fast Eddy, Kickin’ Chicken (for the rhyme), Big Easy (chicken salad, Swiss, avocado – how is this New Orleanian?, not much like a po’boy, in any case) , Got Beef (play on the Got Milk? ad campaign, maybe combined with the Where’s the Beef? ad campaign?), Big Jake (allusion to the John Wayne Western movie)

The location map on the company’s website tells me that there are a huge number of franchises in the Bay Area, mostly in the East Bay, plus two on the Central Coast, and one in SoCal.

Item 3. Going back in time, to the Dick Van Dyke Show on tv. From the Wikipedia page on actor Morey Amsterdam’s character:

Maurice “Buddy” Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam) – an energetic and at times sarcastic “human joke machine”, one of the comedy writers. Amsterdam was recommended for the role by Rose Marie as soon as she had signed on to the series. Buddy is constantly making fun of Mel Cooley, the show’s producer, for being bald and dull. His character is loosely based on Mel Brooks, who also wrote for Your Show of Shows. He makes frequent jokes about his marriage to his wife Fiona Conway “Pickles” Sorrell. In several episodes, it is mentioned that Buddy is Jewish. He was identified by his birth name, Moishe Selig, when he had his belated bar mitzvah in “Buddy Sorrell – Man and Boy.” Buddy plays the cello and owns a large German Shepherd named Larry.

So I remember Buddy’s wife Pickles from way back. Don’t know why she was called Pickles — possibly just because it’s a silly name.

Item 4. A Bay Area institution, the Pickle Family Circus. The beginning of the Wikipedia page:

The Pickle Family Circus was a small circus founded in 1974 in San Francisco, California, USA. The circus formed an important part of the renewal of the American circus. They also influenced the creation of Cirque du Soleil in Montreal. Neither circus features animals or use the three-ring layout like the traditional circus.

After working with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Pickle Family Jugglers (founded by Peggy Snider, Larry Pisoni, and Cecil MacKinnon) decided to create the Pickle Family Circus. Their first show was in May 1975, in the gymnasium of John O’Connell School in San Francisco. After they received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1976, they went on their first tour, going to five cities in Northern California. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Circus performed on weekends in the San Francisco Bay area during Spring and Fall, and toured for 3 months in the summer, mostly in towns along Highway 101 in Northern California and Oregon. In these years, the Pickles operated with a business model that every show was a benefit, usually for a local community organization. The local sponsor sold advance tickets (getting a portion of the revenue), did publicity and site preparation, and ran a midway. The Circus returned to the same towns year after year, and these events became an important source of funding for the sponsors.

A poster from days long gone:

(#10)

The name was almost surely chosen for its silliness value.

My posting on breakfast cereals for kids and the way they are marketed focused on Kellogg’s Froot Loops, an extraordinarily sweet cereal in the shape of small rings (or loops), whose rhyming name was chosen to suggest, mendaciously, that the rings are made from fruit, or at least fruit juice — but in a spelling that avoids making such a claim explicitly; the spelling is not merely orthographically playful (as commercial names often are), but deliberately misleading.

Meanwhile, fruit loop came to have at least two slang senses, both distinctly North American and, apparently, neither current before (roughly) 1950: ‘a crazy or foolish person’; and, incorporating the slang slur fruit for a gay man, ‘locker loop’ (a feature of certain men’s shirts, also known slurringly as fag tag or fairy loop).

That discussion will lead tangentially to another informal use of fruit, in fruit machine, BrE corresponding to AmE slot machine.

fruit loop ‘a crazy’. This one takes off from the cereal. From NOAD2:

North American informal   A crazy or foolish person. Origin 1970s: from Froot Loops, trademark for a breakfast cereal.

In combination with an allusion to the slang adjective loopy. Again from NOAD2:

informal   crazy or silly: the author comes across as a bit loopy.

Not in the OED, but Green’s Dictionary of Slang has it (from Scot. loopy ‘cunning’) as orig. Naut. ‘eccentric, crazy’, with a first cite from 1921.

Locker loops and Ivy League shirts. On to some chapters in the history of men’s clothing that aren’t so easy to make out. A locker loop is a loop at the base of the yoke — a section of fabric in the upper part of the back behind the neck and over the shoulders (hang on, there will be pictures) — on an American dress shirt. The loop is intended to hang onto the lower piece of a coat hook in a locker, freeing that piece up for hanging other pieces of clothing on it:

(#1)

(Commenters on locker loops sometimes point out that it’s much better for shirts to hang on proper hangers — but many lockers can’t accommodate hangers.)

A home-sewn dress shirt with a locker loop on the back:

(#2)

I haven’t found a thing about when locker loops first appeared on men’s shirts.

But locker loops are part of a package that I’ll call the Ivy League shirt, since it seems to have appeared as standard dress for college men in the Ivy League (me included) in the 1950s, where it was dressy but also casual (not usually worn with a tie). The Ivy League shirt is a button-down collar (not spread collar) shirt made of Oxford cloth, prototypically blue, with a box pleat and a locker loop on the back:

(#3)

The shirt went along with chinos (jeans were not yet acceptable parts of the costume) and brown loafers. After all these years, the costume remains as standard casual business dress in many settings; I see men so dressed all over the place here in Silicon Valley (except that the shirts and pants are now permanent-press, which they certainly weren’t then).

Note 1: Oxford cloth. From Wikipedia:

Oxford is a type of woven dress shirt fabric [originally in cotton], employed to make a particular casual-to-formal cloth in Oxford shirts. The Oxford weave has a basketweave structure and a lustrous aspect making it a popular fabric for a dress shirt.

Note 2: button-down collars. From Wikipedia:

Button-down collars [vs. spread collars] have points fastened down by buttons on the front of the shirt [with a third button on the back of the collar]. Introduced by Brooks Brothers in 1896, they were patterned after the shirts of polo players and were used exclusively on sports shirts until the 1950s in America.

And so we get the Ivy League shirt of my young adulthood, which then diffused to adolescents (on a path I know little about), where they still carried class associations — possibly the result of mothers buying Ivy League shirts for their sons in middle school and high school, as “nice” and “classy”. (The shirt in #2 seems to have been sewn by a mother for her son. The locker loop is its only Ivy-League feature: it’s not Oxford cloth, not button-down, not blue, and it lacks the box pleats.)

(I used to have a pile of Ivy League shirts. The dress shirts in my closet now are not Oxford cloth and have neither box pleats nor locker loops.)

For the next development, the class associations of Ivy League shirts seem to have been important: they were apparently seen by many kids as “snooty” and “fancy”, not “regular-guy” wear, hence potentially as faggy. This resulted in a kind of adolescent gay-denial assault (starting in the 1950s but continuing at least into the 1990s) on the most peculiar feature of the shirts, their locker loops. Boys “taught a lesson to” other boys by ripping the loops off, and tried to protect themselves from accusations of homosexuality by cutting them off on their own clothes — actions that seem to have distressed quite a few mothers.

The linguistic assault on locker loops. From a poster to Straight Dope in 2006:

Back in the 70″s in high school we gleefully tore off the cloth loops from the yoke of guys’ dress shirts. They were impolitely called fruit loops.

Another poster recalled the name from the 50s and 60s. From still another:

In high school in the late 90’s, several young teens (mostly male) referred to them as “fag tags”, which would basically be the same intent as fruit loop.

Still another: “We called ’em fag tags in the ’60s as well” and still another: “Southeastern Massachusetts, 1960s, fairy loops”.

So, a pile-up of sexuality insults: fruit, fairy, fag. Fag I’ve looked at before on this blog, at some length, and (more briefly) fairy as well, but I think fruit is new here (not that it’s not long familiar to me). More on it shortly. But first a note about timing: what do Froot Loops and homophobic fruit loops have to do with one another?

The short answer would appear to be: at least in the early days, nothing at all: the cereal name (which is entirely explicable as a combination of a modified spelling for fruit and the rhyming loops ‘rings, circles’) appeared in 1962, and early reports of homophobic fruit loops go back to the 1950s. Unfortunately, people’s recollections of what they said at certain times in the past are famously unreliable; they need to be backed up by actual attestations (in their cultural context).

In this case, I’m inclined to believe that the homophobic label is an indeendent innovation of a rhyming expression combining the existing slur fruit with loop referring to the object by virtue of its appearance and possibly building on locker loop. (Compare homophobic fag tag.) But then its use would eventually be facilitated and reinforced by the cereal name.

The slur fruit. An overview from Wikipedia:

Fruit and fruitcake, as well as many variations, are slang or even sexual slang terms which have various origins but modern usage tend to primarily refer to gay men and sometimes other LGBT people. Usually used as pejoratives, the terms have also been re-appropriated as insider terms of endearment within LGBT communities. Many modern pop culture references within the gay nightlife like “Fruit Machine” and “Fruit Packers” have been appropriated for reclaiming usage, similar to queer and dyke.

… In Polari [orig. 19th century British gay slang], fruit means queen, which at the time and still today is a term for gay men and can be used positively or negatively depending on the speaker, usage and intent.

Several origins of the word fruit being used to describe gay men are possible, and most stem from the linguistic concepts of insulting a man by comparing him to or calling him a woman [especially via the sense ‘prostitute’].

(Contrast nutty as a fruitcake ‘really crazy’, which has fruitcake in it because fruicakes contain nuts (as well as fruits).)

OED2 takes a different view, based on criminal usage. It has fruit, glossed as ‘a dupe, an ‘easy mark’ (from 1895 on) and from it, possibly, ‘a male homosexual’ as slang (orig. U.S.), attested from 1935, in a dictionary of underworld and prison slang, with other cites from 1957, 1970, and 1971.

Gambling machines. Now for something truly tangential. From Wikipedia:

A slot machine (American English), informally fruit machine (British English), puggy (Scottish English slang), the slots (Canadian and American English), poker machine (or pokies in slang) (Australian English and New Zealand English) or simply slot (American English), is a casino gambling machine with three or more reels which spin when a button is pushed. Slot machines are also known as one-armed bandits because they were originally operated by one lever on the side of the machine as opposed to a button on the front panel, and because of their ability to leave the gamer impoverished. Many modern machines are still equipped with a legacy lever in addition to the button. A gambler strategically operating multiple machines in order to draw the highest possible profits is called a multi-armed bandit.

Slot machines include a currency detector that validates the money inserted to play. The machine pays off based on patterns of symbols visible on the front of the machine when it stops. Modern computer technology has resulted in variations on the slot machine concept. Slot machines are the most popular gambling method in casinos and constitute about 70 percent of the average US casino’s income.

Very common symbols on slot machines are in fact fruits, which is where the British slang comes from:

(#4)

(No payoff, since the three symbols don’t match.)

Following on my posting earlier today on “Dubious commercial names” (about Hand Job Nails & Spa on Castro St. in San Fracisco, whose name might be dubious but was transparently intended as a winking double entendre), two Facebook comments with other commercial names that are sexually suggestive:

from Mike McKinley: I have a niece who does “Brazilans.” I told her she should open a salon and call it “The Muff Dive.”

from Christopher Walker: Years ago I clipped a brief item from the newspaper that the Secretary of State in Illinois had refused incorporation papers to a prospective business to be called the Eat It Raw Discotheque

And then back to three earlier postings on this blog with dubious commercial names, ranging from the flagrantly transgressive to the winkingly suggestive to the possibly innocent in intent.

Brazilians. We start with the notion of the Bikini wax (let me just say OUCH OUCH here). From Wikipedia:

Bikini waxing is the epilation of a woman’s pubic hair in and around the pubic region by the use of wax. While the practice is mainly associated with women, men remove pubic hair at times. A bikini line delineates the part of a woman’s pubic area which would normally be covered by the bottom part of a swimsuit. It generally refers to any pubic hair visible beyond the boundaries of a swimsuit.

With certain styles of women’s swimwear, pubic hair may become visible around the crotch area of a swimsuit. Visible pubic hair is widely culturally disapproved and considered embarrassing, and so is at times removed. However, some people also remove pubic hair that is not exposed, for aesthetic, personal hygiene, cultural, fashion or other reasons.

American waxing is the removal of only the pubic hair that is exposed by a swimsuit, depending on the style of the swimsuit.

French waxing leaves a vertical strip in front (sometimes called a landing strip or a Playboy strip), two to three finger-widths long just above the vulva, and 4 cm (1 1⁄2 in) wide.

Brazilian waxing is the removal of all hair in the pelvic area, front and back, while sometimes leaving a thin strip of hair on the mons pubis

So Mike McK. suggests the name The Muff Dive for a salon specializing in Brazilians (that is, Brazilian bikini waxes). On the one hand, there’s the sexual slang  muff diving ‘cunnilingus’. On the other hand, there’s the non-sexual slang dive ‘disreputable nightclub or bar’.

Eat It Raw. Maybe it didn’t fly in Illinois, but it soars in Florida:

Here we have the snowclonelet composite raw bar, a place that serves a selection of plates of raw, rather than cooked, food (especially bivalves: oysters, clams, mussels, scallops).

[Digression: snowclonelets of the form X bar are covered in a 10/18/14 posting, which lists a number of subtypes; raw bar fits into type d, characterized by the type of food served (usually not involving the serving of alcohol): sushi bar, tapas bar, snack bar.]

That gives us literal eat it raw (eat food that is raw rather than cooked). But then there’s the sexual slang eat me ‘fellate me, suck my dick’; eat it ‘peform fellatio, suck dick’ — which can be amplified, made even cruder, with raw used as an adverbial. Which is what the Illinois officials rose up against it.

Earlier history on this blog

from 12/6/10, “Possibly unfortunate names”:  three possibly unfortunate names: Plumed Serpent for a gay bar; Pink Taco for a restaurant; and Tube Steak for a hot-dog stand

from 12/7/10, “More notable business names”: Fat Cock Coffee in Austin TX … and Pussy Cafe in Chile (… (my informant:) “The Americans called it Café Coño”)

from 9/14/12, “Another notable business name”: Glory Hole Doughnuts in Toronto

Today’s Dilbert has the pointy-headed boss talking to Dilbert about listening to his gut instincts:

The covert punch line is prefigured in the first panel, with the word analysis. Then in the third panel, Dilbert (recognizing that his boss’s gut instinct can’t literally be telling him anything, since it can’t literally speak) slyly suggests, via his question, that his boss’s gut is figuratively speaking through an orifice closer than his mouth, namely his anus — that is, that the boss is, as we say in vulgar slang, talking out of his ass.

The vulgar slang talk out of one’s ass has two related senses, both referring to non-veracious speech short of outright lying or dissembling, roughly ‘say foolish things, talk nonsense’ and ‘exaggerate one’s achievements or knowledge of a subject; bluff, boast’ — both akin to the verb bullshit (also with anal associations).

(On sexual vocabulary and its uses, but not in street language.)

Back a few days, in my sexy-playful posting “Magnitude boys” (underwear with captions), the Rocky character calls out (to two other men), “Move over boys, Daddy needs nookie!” What he wants is sexual intercourse, but he’s saying this playfully. He could have used much earthier and more direct phrasing (and he could also have been more specific about what role he wanted to take in intercourse), but he chose instead to use the lighthearted, even sweet, word nookie (variant spellings nooky, nookey, nookee).

Three things about the word: its range of meanings (narrowly focused on sexual matters); its etymology (disputed and unclear, but culturally fascinating); and its penumbra of associations, which makes it sound “cute”, so much so that it can be used (albeit still with sexual overtones) in the name of an Australian brand of clothing for hip young women, Nookie Nation (with its cheeky mascot, the Nookie Girl).

One: meanings. The very condensed version, from OED3 (Dec. 2003):

Orig. uncertain.  slang (orig. U.S.).  1. A woman considered as a sexual object. Usu. considered offensive. [1928 on]. 2. Sexual intercourse. [1930 on]

These two senses appear at virtually the same time, and in fact Green’s Dictionary of Slang dates them both back to 1928, but with a suggestion that the ‘sexual intercourse’ sense might be considerably older. In any case, the two senses are closely tied: the sexual act and (in conventional heterosexual usage) the person in the patient (rather than agent) role in that act, treated as defined entirely by performing that role.

The expansion of this account in Green:

1 (orig. US) sexual intercourse [first regular cite 1928]

2 (orig. US) (also piece of nookie) a woman seen as no more than an object of possible seduction [first cite 1928]

3 (orig. US) the vagina [first cite 1968]

4 (US gay) the anus [the only cite is from The Queens’ Vernacular (1972) by the pseudonymous “Bruce Rodgers”]

Though senses 1-3 are marked as originally U.S., they have clearly spread throughout the English-speaking world.

Sense 3 is a metonymy, but with an extension from whole (the entire woman) to part (her vagina), the opposite direction from the most usual extension in these matters, seen in (for example) the development of cunt, from part (the vagina) to whole (a woman considered as a sexual object, a woman viewed derisively or as worthless).

Sense 4 is a very common metaphorical extension of sexual vocabulary — from applying to women to applying to gay men, in this case with the anus seen as the counterpart of the vagina.

Two: etymology. The OED leaves things at “uncertain”, but Green is willing to speculate, listing two main possibilities —

? nug v. or Du. sl. neuken, to fuck

— but adding (for its sense 1) a possible precedent in a 1868 quote with “John Nugi” or “Johnnie Nookee”, deriving this from Japanese carnal practices with women.

For nug, Green has:

[dial. nog, to jog with the elbow, to strike [from Latin]] to fondle, to indulge in sexual foreplay, to have sexual intercourse. [first cite c1505]

To these, the Wikipedia summary of uses for nookie adds (alas, without citing any source):

British Army slang for vagina, from Arabic niki

The British Army slang is entirely plausible, but the Arabic etymology is almost surely spurious; it was probably inserted by a Wikipedia writer who had come across an Arabic word transliterated as niki or nikki that also had a sexual meaning (perhaps ‘fuck’). But /nUki/ is only somewhat similar phonetically to the Arabic word, and accidental similarities between words in different languages are surprisingly common.

All of these etymological speculations lack a trail of citations in their sociocultural contexts that would make them plausible. Etymology is hard, requiring a broad knowledge of texts and a broad cultural background needed to understand those texts in their social setttings, and such knowledge is notoriously hard to come by for slang vocabulary. Latin, Dutch, Japanese, Arabic, whatever — no one has yet come even close to nailing down an actual history for nookie; apparently we know virtually nothing about its history before 1928.

Some cultural history. Once in the language as slang, nookie has been put to all sorts of cultural work. The Wikipedia summary piece gives a number of these uses:

Two straightforwardly sexual uses in songs:

“Nookie”, a 1999 song by Limp Bizkit

“Nookie”, a 2004 song by Jacki-O, also known as “Pussy (Real Good)”

Plus, in another song:

“Nookie Wood,” a song by John Cale from his 2012 album, Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood; the reference seems to be to the noun nook, especially as a place of seclusion or safety.

NOAD2: a corner or recess, especially one offering seclusion or security: the nook beside the fire. ORIGIN Middle English (denoting a corner or fragment): of unknown origin

Also, further afield:

Nookie Bear, a puppet handled by British ventriloquist Roger De Courcey

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Roger De Courcey (born 10 December 1944 in London, England) is a British ventriloquist, best known for performing with Nookie Bear. (Wikipedia link)

And the Nittany [National Penn] Bank Nookie Monster, mascot of the minor-league baseball team State College Spikes (in State College PA):

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(The Nookie Monster  in #2 is clearly based on the Muppet Cookie Monster; the origins of De Courcey’s Nookie Bear are less clear to me.)

So much for items cited by Wikipedia. Now we go to Australia, noting first that nookie ‘sexual activity, intercourse’ appears in the Australian Slang Dictionary on-line; the word found its way to Oz a while ago, and it still has its sexual tinge, but now it’s “cute” and kicky. First, the Café Nookie, whose on-line ad says, somewhat racily:

NOOKIE: GET SOME. 268 Cleveland St, Surry Hills NSW 2010 Australia. We’re a shoebox-sized, hole-in-the-wall café that does it better than others more than twice our size! We serve insanely great coffee, cakes, sandwiches and pastries. Attitude at no extra charge.

And then there’s Nookie Nation:

(#3)

Their head office is at 16-22 Dick St. (they seem to be proud of this address), Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia. From their site:

Cheeky, wearable and effortlessly cool, the Nookie brand reflects the kind of wanderlust girl you want to be. Bright prints, structural designs and flattering forms enhance the Nookie girl’s natural beauty and style charisma.

Once you live the Nookie lifestyle, there’s no turning back. It means long summer nights, laughing and dancing until your sides hurt, looking and feeling good, and living life in the moment.

Born out of a desire for a head turning yet effortlessly sexy clothing label that could go from beach to bar and back again, Nookie is the creative result of Australian Fashion Designer Nikita Sernack who created the label in 2005. Nikita’s strong direction and understanding of the Nookie girl – thanks to being the ultimate one herself – has seen the brand go from strength-to-strength and hit highs such as showing at multiple Australian Fashion Weeks, being worn by aspirational local and international celebrities and models as well as the creation of super popular swim label, Nookie Beach.

You could be a Nookie girl on Nookie Beach!

Three: the cloud of associations. A variety of elements contribute to the “feel” of the word nookie, prime amongst them the hypocoristic suffix /i/. From Michael Quinion’s affixes site:

–y² Also –ie and –ee. Forming affectionate or pet names, or nouns that imply smallness. [Scots –ie, used in names but of uncertain origin, taken over in Middle English.]

The ending appears in affectionate versions of people’s names (Johnny, Sandy, Tommy), in names for objects or people associated with childhood (dolly, kitty, tummy), in familiar terms of address (ducky, sonny, lovey), or affectionate names for objects (hanky, telly for television in British usage).

The –ie and –y [spellings] exist in parallel in modern English and it is often a matter of taste which is used. As both endings have plurals in –ies (frillies, kiddies, sweeties) there is a tendency for the –ie ending to be taken as the usual singular form, especially in newer creations (Brummie, a person from Birmingham, druggie, a drug-taker, veggie, a vegetarian [or a vegetable]). However, some older words usually take –y: baby, daddy, granny, mummy. Reflecting its Scots origin, certain words associated with Scotland usually take the –ie ending: beastie, laddie, lassie, caddie (in the golfing term; caddy when it is a container of tea).

Common (rather than proper) nouns in /i/ rhyming with nookie: bookie, cookie, hookey, rookie. Except for bookie, not a bad neighborhood to be in.

And then nookie is phonetically very similar — differing only in the feature of voicing — to the very American noun of childhood noogie. From NOAD2:

Amer. informal a hard poke or grind with the knuckles, especially on a person’s head. ORIGIN 1970s: perhaps a diminutive of knuckle.

And finally, there’s the connection to the noun nook (as above), with its vaginal associations and simultaneously its connotations of safety and security.

All of this makes nookie “feel” sweetly racy or racily sweet, in a way that just doesn’t work for cunt (for ‘vagina’) or fuck(ing) (for ‘sexual intercourse’). I mean: cookies, playing hookey, book nooks, kiddies, duckies, etc. So Nookie Monster merely suggests Cookie Monster (with maybe a bit of sexual play), and not a vagina dentata.

The story of the address term bro in relatively recent years begins with its use by black men to black men, roughly (but not exactly) like the widely used American buddy — a term of male affiliation. It then spread into the wider culture, serving as a mark of male solidarity. This is what I called in a 4/12/16 posting “good”, positive, bro. But male solidarity tends to come with a dark side: rejection of anything perceived as feminine, played out as sturdy misogyny and homo-hatred in general; and the elevation of boys’ clubs (formed for whatever reasons) to boys-only clubs, aggressively hostile to women and to men perceived as inferior. When these guys use bro to address (or refer to) one another, then we’ve got what I called “bad”, negative, bro.

Regular use of bad bro between men in groups, for instance by fraternity boys and so-called brogrammers, has led to a steady pejoration of the term for people outside those male groups; bro is now a tainted term for many people, calling up unpleasant images of aggressive masculinity.

A brief review of these matters on this blog, then two recent entries in the conversation. And a cartoon too!

from 3/25/12, “On the bro- watch”: reference to bro as a “frat-house moniker”; brogrammers as asserting aggressive masculinity (with aggressive misogyny as a concomitant; boys’ clubs become boys-only clubs, even when physical displays of masculinity are not at issue [as in the case of programming])

from 3/27/12, “more bro”: broga – yoga for men: “Another chapter in the great book of protecting men from the taint of femininity”

from 4/12/16, “On the brocabulary watch: brocialist”: “bad”, negative bro, with misogynist connotations, as opposed to “good”, positive bro, connoting male bonding.

And now a recent Facebook comment from Aric Olnes, on the last of these postings:

In skiing, bad bros are called BroBrahs, but Michael [Thomas, Aric’s husband] likes to turn it around to BraBro for more impact. The most common utterance from BroBrahs on the slopes is a casual “Sorry, dude” shortly after they cut you off causing you to fall down.

The alternative – BraBro – plays on the emasculating nature of visualizing a guy in a bra.

And then from Brian Kane on Facebook, a reference to a douchbro (a transparently derisive portmanteau of douchebag and bro), which led me to the character Douche Bag in an ALT. cartoon by Dennis Caron, the “Gay Taste” strip of 4/17/13 with  (recurring) characters Cadence and Douche Bro:

From Caron’s website:

Denis Caron is the creator of Corvink, an art centered brand revolving around his art, comics, and designs. He was born on April 10th 1985, in Van Nuys, California and graduated with a degree in Psychology in 2007 at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

… L.A.W.L.S. (sometimes written LAWLS) is an acronym for “Large Air Whales Like Silence,” the title of the webcomic created by Denis Caron in 2010. L.A.W.L.S. started as a single comic, intending to be a Gag-a-Day, with a very loose story. Eventually, however, it became a rather complex and more investing story which no longer allowed Denis to write random jokes about other things that interested him. As a result, L.A.W.L.S. was split … into 3 individual parts: L.A.W.L.S. [Story Mode], the original storyline; ALT., a spin off about the main characters in regular day scenarios: dating, playing video games, getting coffee, etc; and Words of Interest, a comic about leaning fancy words.

Today’s Zippy brings modern comics fans back to 1955 and good old-fashioned Super Duck:

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The contrast here is between the conventions and content of American comics in their classic period and those of more recent years, where innovative formats, topics. and narrative organizations are common.

Griffy (from a seat at his telescope in the Griffith Observatory in L.A.) tosses Super Duck at the superhero fanboys, to astound them with the conventions of the classic days.

Bonus later: if Super Duck, why not Super Dick? Why not, indeed — in any number of senses.

Background note 1. In cartoons, ducks are almost always figures of fun, while superheroes command respect, so a superhero duck is intrinsically silly (compare the cartoon character Underdog).

Background note 2 (linguistic). The element super is complex. It certainly does function as an adjective, as in this NOAD2 entry:

adjective informal  very good or pleasant; excellent: Julie was a super girl | [as exclamation]: You’re both coming in? Super!

As is usual for Adj in an Adj + N composite, the N gets the primary accent. In superhero itself, however, and in named superheroes like Superman, Superwoman, Superboy, etc., including Super Duck, the primary accent is on the element super, as is standard for N + N compounds (like héro dùck, versus heròic dúck).

In general, the element super- as an affix (rather than a separate word) has secondary accent when attached to an Adj (it’s accented like the degree modifier very), but primary accent when attached to a N (or V). These uses are mingled together in Michael Quinion’s lists on his Affixes site (I have underlined words with bases that are clearly Adjs)

super- Above, over, or beyond; great or large; of a higher kind. [Latin super, above, beyond.] Though a number of words have been imported from Latin with this prefix already attached, most have been formed in English, particularly because it has become a popular way of forming superlatives in recent decades.

The most common sense refers to something having greater influence, capability or power than another of its kind, or exhibiting some quality to a greater degree: superabundant, superbug, supercharger, supercomputer, superconductor, supercool, superfluid, superglue, superhero, superman, supermodel, superpower, superstar, superwoman.

Other examples suggest something extra large of its kind: supercontinent, supermarket, superstore, supertanker. Some imply a position or status above or beyond another: superstructure, supersonic, supernatural, superscript, superstratum, supertitles. In systematic classifications of the living world, it indicates a higher level, as in superfamily, superclass, and superorder. In chemistry, it is occasionally used to suggest an element is in greater proportion than usual: superoxide.

Super Duck. From Wikipedia:

Super Duck was a comic book character created in 1943 for what was then MLJ Comics (now Archie Comics) by staff artist Al Fagaly (1909–1963).

His first appearance came in Jolly Jingles #10 (Summer, 1943). As his name implied, Super Duck (nicknamed “Supe”) was a parody of Superman, even down to a red and blue costume. He got his powers from a prescription for vitamins, much in the manner of Hourman, the Blue Beetle and others. He soon switched to a green and red suit, presumably to avoid legal action, but his time as a superhero was short, and by Jolly Jingles #16 (the last issue) his stories became more conventional, in the Carl Barks mode. By this time (late 1944) he had gotten his own book, fully titled Super Duck, the Cockeyed Wonder and his most familiar attire: a black shirt, red lederhosen and often an Alpine hat.

Supe now had a temperamental girlfriend Uwanna, a rival Dapper, a bratty nephew Fauntleroy (sometimes called Fluke or Faunt, sometimes identified as his younger brother), and a burly derelict friend named Mushnoggin.

Lots of changes over time. Here’s Supe (still in red and blue, and engaging in heroic exploits) in Jolly Jingles #10:

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And here in Super Duck #67, in black shirt and red lederhosen, doing conventional comic-strip gags:

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Bonus: Super Dick. Three relevant (all informal or slang) senses of dick here:  ‘penis’; a phallic pejorative (Ben Zimmer’s term), a slur roughly equivalent to dickhead ‘a stupid, irritating, or ridiculous person’ (NOAD2); and ‘private detective, private eye’.

(On the phallic pejorative, from my 11/30/10 LLog posting “Retitling Strunk & White” (as Correct Your Friends Like a Dick), about dick as a phallic pejorative (cf. prick, tool, weenie): “a term for the penis extended metonymically for pejorative reference to the bearer of the penis, and (then, in some cases for some speakers) to generalized pejorative reference, regardless of sex.”)

That’s the dick part of Super Dick. Then there’s the super part, connoting size, power, ability, etc. (see Quinion above). These components can combine in various ways. In no particular order, with no claim to exhaustiveness:

(1) There are plenty of references to men with super-dicks, really magnificent penises.

(2) The Superdickery website, described here:

Dickery: noun   The state of being a dick

Superdickery is a website that was created to support the central thesis that the character of Superman is, in fact, a dick. Its scope has expanded over the years, and is now a site devoted to the cataloging and displaying of bizarre and amusing images throughout the history of comic books, fan artwork of questionable content, and the barely intelligible thoughts of its author [Mike Miksch].

(3) People have created any number of Super Dick cartoon characters: a superhero penis seems to be an irresistible idea. Here’s one from the NewGrounds site by Rennis5:

(#4)

This one has a human head. Other creations are more clearly penises in superhero costumes.

(4) On to a combination of ‘penis’ and ‘private eye’, in a 1971 X-rated comedy film:

(#5)

From Wikipedia:

Cry Uncle! (also American Oddballs and Superdick [Super Dick]) is a 1971 film in the Troma library. It is directed by John G. Avildsen and stars Allen Garfield. The story, based on the Michael Brett novel Lie a Little, Die a Little, follows the misadventures of a slobbish private detective who is hired by a millionaire to investigate a murder. The movie features one of Paul Sorvino’s first screen performances, and an early appearance from TV star Debbie Morgan. Avildsen directed this film six years prior to his Oscar-winning project Rocky.

The film features a great deal of nudity, sex, drug use, and an explicit act of necrophilia.

(5) Finally, a bilingual phallic food example:

(#6)

Super Dickmann’s is the name of this particular candy (chocolate covered marshmallow with a soft wafer base), made by the Storck company, which also makes Werther’s Original caramels and hard candies, Haribo bears, and many other candies. Now Dickmann can just be a proper name, but as a common noun it’s a compound literally translatable as ‘big man’ (with dick ‘thick, big, bulky’). I don’t think it’s stretching things to see the candies not just as men, but also as penises. They are prall ‘plump’ and also knackig ‘crispy, crunchy’. Bite them.

Unearthed in today’s clearing out of material piled up in a cabinet, two New Yorker cartoons: a Sam Gross (published in the 9/4/95 issue) in which a penguin achieves flight, a Charles Barsotti (published in the 8/12/96 issue) in which squirrels question whether they are in fact flying squirrels (there are tree squirrels, ground squirrels, flying squirrels, and questioning squirrels — TGFQ):

(#1)

(#2)

If you try harder, you might succeed; and if you give it a try, you might discover your identity.

Background: I was clearing out (amog other things) huge piles of materials for making collages — mostly clippings from various sources, or the sources themselves, not yet processed; and mostly, but far from entirely, XXX-rated images (these sorted into dozens of categories, of varying degrees of salaciousness, from men kissing to very specific man-on-man sexual acts). My hands are no longer capable of making collages, so, sadly,. amost all this stuff  has become instant paper-recycling. Boxes of it.

But in there were a few usable things, like #1 and #2 above (cartoons by artists already represented on this blog) and a very large assortment of collages (both originals and copies). Plus some items to give away, including some X-rated stuff I’ll offer here shortly.

More Gross. I’ll use this occasion to post two more Gross cartoons not already on this blog. A grotesque frog food cartoon I remember vividly, although it seems not to have actually been published (though it’s in the magazine’s files), and a cartoon that manages to combine two cartoon memes:

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(#4)

The Wikipedia article cagily avoids the frogs’ legs vs. frog’s legs issue by using the equally available plain N + N compound frog legs, and then it says:

Frog legs are one of the better-known delicacies of French and Chinese cuisine. The legs of edible frogs are also consumed in other parts of the world, including Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, northern Italy, the Alentejo region of Portugal, Spain, Albania, Slovenia, the northwest Greece and the Southern regions of the United States. As of 2014, the world’s largest exporter of frogs is Indonesia, also a large consumer. In such regions as Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean, many frogs are still caught wild.

Frog legs are rich in protein, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A, and potassium. They are often said to taste like chicken because of their mild flavor, with a texture most similar to chicken wings.

Of course, once you’ve harvested the legs for food, the rest of the creature is just animal waste. No paraplegic frogs in little wheelchairs, as in #5, from the magazine in .

Then, in #4 (from the magazine in 5/20/13)  we get the stock cartoon vultures waiting for newly dead prey to harvest, and the soon-to-appear prey, the stock cartoon lemmings racing off a cliff.

More Barsotti. Two more cartoons from him as well: one obviously linguistic, one (from the magazine on 6/18/12) a wordless cartoon (a Barsotti specialty, in the magazine on 1/19/95) that’s funny as it stands but might be understood :

(#5)

(#6)

In #5 the haughty dog — a greyhound, I think — uses the regal one in talking to the humble mutt.

And then in #6 we have an entertaining situation: the character on the right is a potato, about to confront the character on the left, a kitchen utensil we are meant to recognize as a potato masher lurking around the corner, ready to jump the potato (with mashing in mind).

This is the interpretation the New Yorker files get — and almost surely the one Barsotti intended (alas, we can’t ask him, since he’s died) — because the magazine’s note on the cartoon refers to the potato as male. But now try thinking of the potato as female, and note that the noun masher is in the air. From NOAD2:

N. Amer. informal a man who makes unwelcome sexual advances, often in public places andypically to women he does not know. [late 19th cent.: probably a derivative of slang mash ‘attract sexually,’ perhaps from Romany masherava ‘allure.’]

Ok, it’s a stretch. But then works of art, even pop-culture miniatures like cartoons, can resonate with meanings their creators did not consciously intend.

… as Baron Rees-Mogg of Hinton Blewitt was to be properly addressed (from 1988 until his death in 2012). Before that, he was just William Rees-Mogg, of The Times:

  (#1)

From Wikipedia, some snapshots from a life:

William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg (14 July 1928 – 29 December 2012) was an English journalist and public servant. He served as editor of The Times (1967–81), chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, and vice-chairman of the BBC.

… He criticised, in a 1967 editorial entitled “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”, the severity of the custodial sentence for Mick Jagger on a drugs offence.

… Having been High Sheriff of Somerset from 1978 to 1979, he was made a life peer in 1988 as Baron Rees-Mogg of Hinton Blewett in the County of Avon [and so was then properly addressed as The Right Honourable The Lord Rees-Mogg]

… Writing in The Times in 2001, Rees-Mogg, who had a house in Somerset, described himself as “a country person who spends most of his time in London”, and attempted to define the characteristics of a “country person”… By [that time] his liberal attitude to drugs policy had led to his being mocked as “Mogadon Man” by Private Eye. [Mogadon is a trade name for the hypnotic drug nitrazepam] The magazine later referred to him as “Mystic Mogg” (a pun on “Mystic Meg”, a tabloid astrologer) because of the perception that his economic and political predictions were ultimately found to be inaccurate.

Rees-Mogg was a Roman Catholic, with five children (including a daughter who writes novels under the name Emma Craigie and two children active in Conservative politics).

(Private Eye continues to report seriously on official misconduct of all kinds and to produce over-the-top satire of public figures, though it no longer has the prominent place in British consciousness it once did.)

Mogadon Man and Mystic Mogg are entertaining plays on Rees-Mogg’s name, but in my mind he was always the Cat Man of Fleet Street: William Rees-Moggie.

American readers might not recognize the noun moggie. From NOAD2:

Brit. informal a cat, especially one that does not have a pedigree or is otherwise unremarkable. I have three other cats (two moggies and one Bengal/Tonkinese cross). ORIGIN late 17th cent.: variant of Maggie, pet form of the given name Margaret.

(The name Maggie brings with a crowd of associations: Maggie Thatcher, Maggie the Cat from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Stephen Crane’s Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, the fine actor (Dame) Maggie Smith, the 2015 post-apocalyptic horror drama film Maggie (with Arnold Schwarzenegger!), Maggie Gyllenhaal, the linguist Maggie Tallerman, Maggi noodles, the Three Magi, a possible sister Maggie to Molly (“Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-O!”) Malone in Dublin’s fair city, …)

Back on moggie, Mark Liberman’s 3/13/16 Language Log posting “Cat phonetics” has a nice section on the word. And then there’s the cartoon The Moggie Brothers. The 2004 announcement on the Moggies site:

Introducing a brand new cartoon strip called The Moggie Brothers by cartoonist Paul Wilcox from Nottingham, United Kingdom.

It’s about two streetwise cats, and their hilarious world where anything goes.

They haven’t been given names yet, but you can tell them apart, one has a white tummy. From time to time they will be joined by some of their friends from the block where they live.

  (#2)

The 1975 quotation (in Green’s Dictionary of Slang) is from a (British working-class) policeman, who “levelled a finger at” a man and made this accusation. My interest here is in the address term sunshine, which has become familiar to me though British (occasionally Canadian) police procedural tv shows, where the cops (or private detectives) often use this form of address, aggressively, to male suspects. From the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (ed. Tom Dalzell & Terry Victor, 2015), p. 2192:

used as a form of address, often patronizing with an underlying note of disapproval or threat UK, 1972

A (very natural) extension of literal sunshine to ‘cheerfulness, happiness’ has been around for some time, as has the extension to someone who exhibits or elicits cheerfulness or happiness, in both referential and vocative uses. Then, the address term sunshine (like any other) can be used sarcastically, aggressively, or truculently, but the conventionalization of such uses specifically in British (and not American) English, for use to men by men, especially by official authorities, is yet a further development, one that I hadn’t experienced until I got into modern police procedurals, in books and on tv.

Green’s has sunshine (also sunbeam, sundown) ‘a general form of address’, e.g. Oi! sunshine!, with cites from 1953 and 1961, both apparently simple address uses, then a truculent 1965 cite. Then we get the quote in the title above, followed by cites from 1983, 1984, 1999, and 2005, all of which seem to be truculent, including several sarcastic ones from police; all the cites seem to be British.

The New Partridge has two cites (1984 and 2000), both from British tv shows or books based on them (Minder and Lock, Stock …).

And from recent tv, on the Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries S5 E8 (2012), after a baseball game:

You’re under arrest, You won’t  be hitting many hits from behind bars, sunshine.

Just a few older, more straightforward uses — not sarcastic, aggressive, or truculent. First, the referential Poss + sunshine, especially my sunshine (roughly ‘the light of my life’), made famous in the song “You Are My Sunshine”. From Wikipedia:

“You Are My Sunshine” is a popular song recorded by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell and first recorded in 1939. It has been declared one of the state songs of Louisiana because of its association with Davis, a country music singer and former governor of the state.

The song has been covered numerous times — so often, in fact, that it is “one of the most commercially programmed numbers in American popular music.” The song, originally country music, has “virtually lost” its original country music identity, and “represent[s] both the national flowering of country music and its eventual absorption into the mainstream of American popular culture.” In 1941, it was covered by Gene Autry, Bing Crosby, Mississippi John Hurt and Lawrence Welk. In subsequent years, it was covered by Nat King Cole (1955), The Marcels, (1961), Ray Charles, Ike and Tina Turner, The Rivingtons (1962), Frank Turner, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, Brian Wilson, Mouse and the Traps, Jamey Johnson, Low, Andy Williams, and Johnny and the Hurricanes, amongst many others.

(When I was a child, it was my mother’s favorite song.)

You can watch Johnny Cash and June Carter perform the song here.

And then there’s the metaphorical vocative sunshine, as in the goofy Europop love song “Good Morning Sunshine” (some writers are sparing with commas), which you can watch here. By Danish-Norwegian band Aqua, from their debut album, Aquarium (1997).

Quite some distance from these sweet examples to British coppers trying to sweat the truth out of male malefactors with the aid of vocative sunshine.

(Some coarse sexual slang, so it might not be to everyone’s taste.)

From the August issue (pp. 37-39) of The Advocate, “Speaking Lavender” by Chadwick Moore, about Bill Leap and the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conferences (Lav Lgs 23 in February 2016 at American University, Washington DC; Lav Lgs 24 in April 2017 at the University of Nottingham (UK)), with the subtitle: “From Regency England to 1920s Harlem to Miss Piggy, gay vernacular has given voice to homosexual identity and desire in a hostile world. It still does.” and a section on Polari (and its scholar and champiom Paul Baker). Eventually the story leads us to the campy queens Julian and Sandy, and from there by sound associations to the remarkable entertainment (also campy) Façade, uniting the playful poetry of Edith Sitwell and the music of William Walton, notably in the “Valse” / “Waltz” movement beginning “Daisy and Lily”.

But first a brief digression on another piece in the August Advocate:  p. 40, Armond White’s movie column on The Maltese Falcon: “Upon the 75th anniversary of The Maltese Falcon’s release, it’s time to look at the gay myths contained in the Hollywood perennial”, concluding that “Gayness is more than subtext in The Maltese Falcon; it’s what energizes the film’s high erotic current.”

Then, from Wikipedia:

Polari (or alternatively Parlare, Parlary, Palare, Palarie, Palari; from Italian parlare, “to talk”) is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, merchant navy sailors, criminals, prostitutes, and the gay subculture. There is some debate about its origins, but it can be traced back to at least the nineteenth century and possibly the sixteenth century. There is a long-standing connection with Punch and Judy street puppet performers who traditionally used Polari to converse.

Polari is a mixture of Romance (Italian or Mediterranean Lingua Franca), Romani, London slang, backslang, rhyming slang, sailor slang, and thieves’ cant. Later it expanded to contain words from the Yiddish language and from 1960s drug subculture slang. It was a constantly developing form of language, with a small core lexicon of about 20 words, including: bona (good), ajax (nearby), eek (face), cod (bad, in the sense of tacky or vile), naff (bad, in the sense of drab or dull, though borrowed into mainstream British English with the sense of the aforementioned cod), lattie (room, house, flat, i.e. room to let), nanti (not, no), omi (man), palone (woman), riah (hair), zhoosh or tjuz (smarten up, stylize), TBH (‘to be had’, sexually accessible), trade (sex), and vada (see), and over 500 other lesser-known words.

… Polari was used in London fishmarkets, the theatre, fairgrounds and circuses, hence the many borrowings from Romani. As many homosexual men worked in theatrical entertainment it was also used among the gay subculture, at a time when homosexual activity was illegal, to disguise homosexuals from hostile outsiders and undercover policemen. It was also used extensively in the British Merchant Navy, where many gay men joined ocean liners and cruise ships as waiters, stewards and entertainers. On one hand, it would be used as a means of cover to allow gay subjects to be discussed aloud without being understood; on the other hand, it was also used by some, particularly the most visibly camp and effeminate, as a further way of asserting their identity.

… Polari was popularised in the 1960s on the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne starring Kenneth Horne. Camp Polari-speaking characters Julian and Sandy were played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams.

(The Wikipedia piece has a pretty good sampling of Polari items.)

A book of stuff from the show:

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Paul Baker’s books: Fantabulosa: The Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang (2002), Polari – The Lost Language of Gay Men (2003):

(#2)

That’s Julian and Sandy. Now back many years to the Sitwell/Walton Façade, covered in some detail in a 1/15/15 posting of mine, and its “Valse” / “Waltz” movement, which begins:

Daisy and Lily,
Lazy and silly,
Walk by the shore of the wan grassy sea—
Talking once more ‘neath a swan-bosomed tree.

And then it gets wilder, as the waves of words break on the shore of that sea.

In any case,  “Julian and Sandy” led me, by sound associations, to “Daisy and Lily”, and I was moved to do a Polari burlesque of Sitwell’s words:

Julian and Sandy,
Campy and randy,
Mince to the cottage with the horny polones—
Palare once more, to plate the hot omies

The boldfaced items  are those that have been suggested as coming to general gay slang from Polari (camp, mince, cottage) or are straightforwardly Polari (the rest).

The first group, with glosses of the Polari: camp ‘effeminate’, mince ‘walk affectedly’, cottage ‘public lavatory used for sex’ — cf. chicken ‘young man’, trade ‘sex, sex partner’, troll ‘walk about (esp. looking for trade)’. (The origins in Polari are not always clear.)

The second group, again with glosses: horny polone ‘effeminate gay man’ (with polone [rhymes with baloney] ‘woman; queen’), palare ‘talk’, plate ‘fellate, blow, suck off’, omi ‘man’.

Well, yes, I ended up settling for a half rhyme: polonies / omies. A small sacrifice.

Zippy has recently run through a series of five strips on these characters, with capsule biographies: Harry “The Hipster” Gibson (9/19), proto-beatnik Lord Buckley (9/20), jazz dj Symphony Sid (9/21), radio monologuist Gene Shepherd (9/22), and beatniks in general (9/23). The series:

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The last is a ramble through stereotypes of beat talk. Like, Nowheresville, man.

The one of a kind, way before his time, guy in this set was Lord Buckley. You can listen here to a recording of Buckley doing “The Nazz”, a remarkable recounting of the life of Christ.

Television report. From The Mysteries of Laura, S1 E20 (5/7/15), “The Mystery of the Crooked Clubber”:

So, he’s not our killer, he’s not on the getaway squad, he’s just some jackhole throwing himself off skyscrapers in midtown.

The item jackhole was new to me, but instantly recognizable as derogatory slang, doubtless a portmanteau involving derogatory (and strongly taboo) asshole and either derogatory (and mildly taboo) jackoff or merely derogatory jackass. Neither jackhole nor the alternative avoidance term jerkhole is in either of the compendious slang dictionaries (Lighter and Green), but in this case, Urban Dictionary provides real gold for jackhole:

(by ke6isf 11/26/03) Portmanteau of “Jackass” and “Asshole”. Originated as a name by radio personalities Kevin and Bean (from KROQ-FM in Los Angeles) as a way of calling somebody a nasty name without actually breaking FCC edicts against foul language.

How to call someone an asshole without uttering the word.

In recent sporting news, from the Financial Times on the 4th, a story by Primrose Riordan on

a minor scandal in Malaysia, where Australians have been arrested for wearing Malaysian flag-themed budgie smugglers to the Formula One grand prix.

Nine Australians stripped down to their underwear at the event in Kuala Lumpur and drank alcohol out of shoes after Australian Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo, who won the race, drank champagne from his boot in celebration.

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Caption: Nine Australian revellers at Malaysia’s Formula 1 racing circuit have been jailed after stripping down to reveal underpants themed on Malaysia’s national flag. Photo credit: New Straits Times Press/Osman Adnan

On budgie smugglers, from Urban Dictionary:

(by Mr.Sorter 4/27/06) Australian slang term for men’s tight-fitting Speedo-style swimwear. The ‘lump in the front’ apparently resembles a budgie when it is stuffed down the front of someone’s shorts. Ah, those crazy Aussies!!

In discussing his film “Revolver” on BBC’s Radio 5Live, Guy Ritchie said that Ray Liotta’s ‘Mr. Macha’ character, who parades around wearing only budgie smugglers for much of the film – was ‘an impressive sight’.

And from The Wild Reed Blog in 2011, in “Boardies, Budgie Smugglers and Euro-Togs. . . A Brief Survey of Aussie Male Swimwear”:

For my non-Australian readers the following illustration by John Hunter humorously shows what a “budgie” or budgerigar is, and why such a colourful little bird gets caught up in the whole “boardies versus Speedos” debate.

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(On this blog on 10/15/14, “No stinkin’ budgies”, there’s a note on budgie, informal for budgerigar the bird (popular as a pet).)

Note: the Financial Times piece identifies the garments in #1 as “underwear”, but my understanding is that they’re swimwear (Australian swimmers). In any case, there’s a real question as to whether the garments count as publicly indecent in a racing venue in Malaysia. They certainly count as publicly disrespectful, even insulting, to Malaysia — because of the Malaysian flag on them. From the Financial Times piece:

The head of the racetrack where the event was held – Sepang International Circuit (SIC) chief executive officer Datuk Razlan Razali – said action should be taken against the young men.

“This shows a huge lack of respect to us as Malaysians; this is stupid behaviour from foreigners who have no sense of cultural sensitivity and respect.

“They deserve to be locked up, investigated and taken action against. It embarrasses their own country as well, it gives Australians a bad name,” Mr Razlan told the New Straits Times.

The young men eventually apologized for their youthful folly and seem to have been allowed to return to Australia.

But back to budgie smugglers. The term, in a variant spelling, has been promoted to a trade name, for the, er, cheeky firm Budgy Smugglers. From their entertaining website:

Budgy Smugglers are the pair of swimmers you always wanted but never had the chance to buy. If you have no idea what we’re talking about, don’t worry, you’re not alone. All you need to know is that budgy smuggler is Australian for blokes swimwear

A lot of people ask us why we are “budgy smuggler”, not “budgie smuggler”? We really wish we had a good answer. Two of our favourite explanations are the impressive sounding, “it has to do with trademark law, you wouldn’t understand it”, and the mysterious sounding “we’re not detail people, we are concept people”.

The sad fact is, we only realised the incorrect spelling after it was too late to change back again. So budgy smuggler should have been budgie smuggler. But you know what, however you spell it, you’ll still look great in a pair of smugglers.

All budgy smugglers are 100% Australian made in our factory in Sydney with the top quality Australian Made fabric. We understand when it comes to smuggling your budgy there can be no compromise on quality.

Budgy Smuggler is family owned and run by a few 20 something year olds who aspire to never have a traditional desk job.

The company was founded in a back yard and we are stoked that people from all around the world are discovering the joy of smuggling!

Visit the Budgy Shop today to start packing your package in a pair of Budgy Smugglers.

Elsewhere the swimsuits are described as “classic speedo-style swimwear”, with the tradename Speedo genericized to refer to any men’s brief, tight (and consequently sexually revealing) swimming trunks.

On actual Speedos, from Wikipedia:

Speedo International Ltd. is a manufacturer and distributor of swimwear and swim-related accessories based in Nottingham, England. Founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1914, the industry-leading company is now a subsidiary of the British Pentland Group. Today, the Speedo brand can be found on products ranging from swimsuits and goggles to wrist watches and MP3 players. The Speedo brand is manufactured for and marketed in North America as Speedo USA by PVH under an exclusive perpetual licence, who acquired prior licencee Warnaco Group in 2013.

In accordance with its Australian roots, Speedo uses a boomerang as their symbol. Due to their success in the swimwear industry, the word “Speedo” has become synonymous with racing bathing suits.

Though many Speedos and speedo-style swimsuits have already appeared on this blog, here’s a genial septet of fit, attractive young men, diverse on several dimensions, displaying themselves for the camera:

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Bonus: the title of this posting. It’s a play on “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”,

a song written by Australian singer Rolf Harris in 1957 which became a hit across the world in the 1960s in two recordings (1960 in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom for the original, and 1963 with a re-recording of his song in the United States). Inspired by Harry Belafonte’s calypsos, it is about an Australian stockman on his deathbed. The song is one of the best-known and most successful Australian songs. (Wikipedia link)

You can listen to Harris singing the song here. Warning: high earworm potential.

… in two recent strips, first at Dippin’ Donuts and then at the Sugar Shack. Looks like sweet tooth days for our Pinhead. Both strips are strewed with allusions of all kinds, of course.

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Background: where are these places? Not entirely sure, but my current best hypotheses are these:

the Dippin’ Donuts at 519 Main St. in Leominsters MA (one of three shops in Leominster, plus one in Littleton MA):

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the Sugar Shack diner in Chester MT, a 10-stool diner from the Valentine Company in 1953 (“These small diners were built in Wichita [KS] for several decades from the late 1930s into the 1970s. Some are still open today.” (link)):

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There are identificational complexities in both cases, though I think the visual matches are pretty good.

First, Dippin’ Donuts. Not the equally alliterative Dunkin’ Donuts, the “global donut company and coffeehouse chain” (Wikipedia link), but a collection of local shops and small local franchises (like the one in Leominster) that seem to have no connection with one another and to have originated as breakaways from the Dunkin’ behemoth.  Different shops have different building designs; even the MA set have different designs and logos, for instance:

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But the shop in #1 above is the only Dippin’ place I’ve found with a sign that has a donut in the middle, between the Dippin’ and the Donuts. And the building style is right, though the colors are changed (Criffith’s drawings often alter colors).

The the Sugar Shack. The (again, alliterative) name has been used for many kinds of establishments: coffee shops, candy stores, ice cream parlors, doughnut shops, soda fountains, diners in general — and of course to cabins where maple trees are tapped. Also to “adult entertainment clubs”, where men, or in some cases, women, can get some sugar (actually, Sugar Shack is attested as the name of a variety of sexual-services places, up to and including brothels). Green’s Dictionary of Slang has US (originally black) slang sugar (also sug or shug) ‘attractive woman’ (from 1803), then gay slang ‘attractive man’ as well (from 1934).

The name could easily have been coined on its own, or in some cases it was likely taken from the American pop song. From Wikipedia:

“Sugar Shack” is a song [about a coffeehouse] written in 1962 by Keith McCormack and Jimmy Torres. Torres gave his song rights to his aunt, Fay Voss, as a birthday present. The song was recorded in 1963 by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs at Norman Petty Studios in Clovis, New Mexico. The unusual and distinctive organ part was played on a Hammond Solovox, Model J.

(I refrain from playing on “the unusual and distinctive organ part” — but not, as you can see, from alluding to the possibility of goofing off like that.)

You can listen to the 1963 recording here (with a photo of Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs).

Some remaining odds and ends: from #1, October surprise (a political/cultural reference that not all readers will get) and the allusion to a reality show host (which I will now disregard); from #2, pure cane sugar (as opposed to corn syrup, granulated sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup, and also from molasses, though not all readers will recognize that) and the expression omina.

October surprise. From Wikipedia:

In American political jargon, an October surprise is a news event deliberately created or timed (or sometimes occurring spontaneously) to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the U.S. presidency. The reference to the month of October is because the date for national elections (as well as many state and local elections) is in early November. Therefore, events that take place in late October have greater potential to influence the decisions of prospective voters.

Since the 1972 [Nixon vs. McGovern] presidential election (when it came into use), the term “October surprise” has been used preemptively during the campaign season by partisans of one side to discredit late-campaign news by the other side.

Three examples from the Wikipedia article that involve sex scandals:

1964 Johnson vs. Goldwater: The Johnson ship almost got caught up on the rocky shoals of the sudden scandal around Walter Jenkins, longtime top aide to Johnson. Jenkins’ career ended after a sex scandal was reported weeks before the 1964 presidential election, when Jenkins was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct with another man in a public restroom in Washington, D.C.’s YMCA (“so notorious a gathering place of homosexuals that the District police had long since staked it out with peepholes for surveillance”)

2003 California governor recall election: On October 2, 2003, the Los Angeles Times released a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger and subsequent allegations that he was a womanizer guilty of multiple acts of sexual misconduct in past decades. The story was released just before the 2003 California recall (which was scheduled for October 7), prompting many pundits to charge that the timing of the story was aimed specifically at derailing the recall campaign.

2006 midterm elections: The Mark Foley scandal, in which the congressman resigned over sexual computer messages he exchanged with underage congressional pages, broke on September 28, 2006, and dominated the news in early October. Bloomberg.com wrote, “The October surprise came early this election year….” Allegations that both Republicans and Democrats had knowledge of Foley’s actions months before the breaking of the story only fueled the speculation regarding the possibly politically motivated timing of the story’s release.

The “bloopers” involved in October surprises are not so much embarrassing errors as embarrassing statements made in private but then revealed, as recently was the case with the reality-show host.

omina. Here Urban Dictionary has a perceptive entry (by Pagano 10/16/04):

The NJ/Tri-State [NY-NJ-CT] way of saying, “I’m going to”: Omina go to the store, you need anything?

The expression doesn’t appear in DARE or in the big slang dictionaries, no doubt because people assaume that it’s just casual speech reduction, as many expressions in “New Yawk Tawk” (like jeet ‘Did you eat?’) seem to be. But we should take seriously the possibility that, whatever its historical origins, for some speakers omina is now a fixed conventionalized expression, and that Zippy in #2 is obsessively and emphatically agonizing over what he’s going to do at the Sugar Shack.

A prominent analogue to this sort of conventionalization would be the originally Black English expression /a(j)ma/ ‘I’m gonna’, most often spelled I’ma (this is now as close to a conventional spelling as we’re likely to get), but also spelled Ima / I’mma / Imma / Im’a / etc. — also I’m on — and  now more widespread informal AmE. I’ma can be produced slowly and emphatically, as I. MA, suggesting that some speakers no longer analyze the expression as containing I’m and some version of gonna ‘going to’. (Note: these speakers do also produce I’m gonna and similar variants, but as independent alternatives parallel to I’ma.)

Cane syrup. The Sugar Shack boasts that it uses only pure cane sugar in its drinks and confections. The alternative sweeteners for processed foods are corn syrup (100% glucose), high-fructose corn syrup, and molasses; for some cooking, corn syrup (for instance, Karo syrup), granulated sugar (from sugar cane), and molasses. The pure cane sugar in the Sugar Shack’s offerings is probably Steen’s. From Wikipedia:

Steen’s cane syrup is a traditional American sweetener made by the simple concentration of cane juice through long cooking in open kettles. The result is a dark, “caramel–flavored, burnt gold–colored syrup”, “deep and slightly sulfurous” with a “lightly bitter backlash”. It is sweeter than molasses because no refined sugar is removed from the product.

Steen’s syrup has been made since 1910 in Abbeville, Louisiana, by C. S. Steen’s Syrup Mill, Inc. Its packaging is marked by a bright yellow label. Steen’s has been called a “Southern icon” and essential for “sweet Southern dishes”.

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Clay Colwell on Facebook today:

I just saw a guy holding a sign saying “HAND JOBS $10”. He was outside a car wash, so I’m sure it was for hand-wash service, but ya never know.

We’ve visited the world of deliberately provocative hand job before, on 3/22/16 in “Annals of dubious commercial names”, referring to a spa named Hand Job (referring to manicures) on Castro St. in San Francisco. But the expression is widespread at car washes to refer provocatively to hand-washing. In both cases playing on vulgar slang hand job ‘masurbation of a man’.

There are hand job car washes in both the UK and the US. Here’s The Hand Job Car Wash & Detailing in Dumfries, Scotland:

Then there was a 2014 flap over the “Best Hand Job in Bolton” (Greater Manchester), reported in the Mirror under the head:

Car wash in hot water over ‘Best Hand Job’ sign as council sees red over cheeky slogan

The proprietor: “I got the idea from an American car wash advertisement on the Internet and thought it might get people’s attention if I put it on a sign outside.” Blame it on the Yanks!

Similarly, The Hand Job Car Wash in Doncaster (South Yorkshire) and The Car Wash (Best Hand Job in Town) in Gateshead (Tyne and Wear) and no doubt a number of others.

An American sampler: the Hand Job Hand Wash in Hobart IN, the Hand Job Car Wash in Pasadena CA, and the Hand Job Auto Detailing in Ocala FL. And again, no doubt a number of others.

The title of this posting. A mash-up of “Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues” —

a 1974 single written and recorded by Jim Croce. It was the third single released from his album I Got a Name. (Wikipedia link)

— and the adjective blue, in the senses (from NOAD2):

informal (of a movie, joke, or story) with sexual or pornographic content: the blue movies are hugely profitable; (of language) marked by cursing, swearing, and blasphemy

Bonus sexual job. Noted in Urban Dictionary, car job ‘blow job or hand job performed in a car’. Automobiles might even be the archetypical locale for hand jobs.

(Plenty of language stuff, about English and French, but also quite a bit about man-man sex, sometimes in very plain language, so use your judgment.)

Over on AZBlogX, the posting “A fucktage”, with an ad flyer for a Falcon Studios sale, a montage of fuck scenes from four recent releases. A small WordPressable sample from this scrum of bodies and body parts, with especially notable facial expressions:

The portmanteau fucktage (accented, like montage, on the second syllable) is my take-off point here, for musings about montage, mounting sexually, pederasty, gay slang, and children’s songs.

(On the facial expressions, see my 5/4/13 X blog posting “What do I look like when I’m getting fucked?”)

From the AZBlogX posting, starting with an account of fucktage as a portmanteau:

Four fucks in a montage (montage < Fr. monter ‘to mount’ + noun-forming –age), “the technique of producing a new composite whole from fragments of pictures, text, or music” (NOAD2), or (as here) a collage created by this technique. Deliciously, each fuck is a montage ‘a mounting’ (of one man by another), so that the whole thing is a montage montage.

Dipping into French here brought me to the slang term pédé (shortened from pédéraste), which now generally means just ‘homosexual, gay, queer’ (and sometimes translates roughly as faggot), with no reference to age of sexual partner, indulgence in anal sex, or role in anal sex, though all three of these are canonically involved in the reference of pédéraste (and English pederast). From my Aptil 15th posting “Ganymede on the fly”, where I noted that a pederastic relationship is between an older man and a pubescent boy, stereotypically (not not necessarily) for anal sex. But:

it’s not entirely clear which partner in a pederastic relationship [pederast] refers to, though when the roles in such a relationship are sharply defined, it seems to be used most often for the dominant partner (in the Zeus role); there’s no standard term for the submissive partner, though I’m fond of catamite (with its direct association with the Ganymede role)

In any case, all this is leveled in pédé. All eight of the characters in the Falcon display are pédés, reveling in it for their viewers’ pleasure.

From the French: pédé led me to the curious conventional simile pédé comme un phoque ‘gay as a seal’ or (less commonly) comme un foc ‘as a jib’ (in sailing); and monter ‘to mount’ led me to the children’s song “Monter sur un éléphant” (“To mount / climb on / get on an elephant”).

comme un phoque. Etymological speculation runs rife: characteristics of seals and jibs are surveyed, English fuck is (repeatedly) appealed to, even French foutre (though it now means something like ‘fuck around’, while baiser is used for sexual connection; but foutre still has some of its vulgar power) — these last speculations turning on the fact that thoughts of faggots lead so many people to thoughts of men fucking.

But this is all speculation, and I haven’t seen anything like credible etymological research.

Much the same seems to be true of the English rough equivalent, gay as a goose. Maybe there is something etymologically significant in the characteristics of geese (their behavior or their appearance — goose necks are phallic), or in a connection to the verb goose ‘poke between the buttocks’, or maybe it’s just the appeal of the /g/ alliteration. But the etymology has yet to be nailed down. (“If it’s not true, at least it’s a good story” won’t cut it for serious lexicographers and historians of language.)

“Monter sur un éléphant”. (Serious earworm warning.) The song that I know is a song for children, meant to teach them to count. Verse 1 goes:

Monter sur un éléphant, c’est haut, c’est haut!
Monter sur un éléphant, c’est haut, c’est haut!
Monter sur un éléphant, c’est haut, c’est effrayant!

(haut ‘high’, effrayant ‘terrifying’).  Then we get “Monter sur deux éléphants”and on and on.

In a version that’s new to me, each verse has a new animal (“Monter sur un crocodile” etc.), with the rest of the text altered appropriately. You can watch a performance by Ben Bowen here, with big gestures for kids to imitate.

This variant inspired me to devise crudely gay variants, using monter ‘mount’ in a sexual sense (and putting two notes on the article un):

Monter sur un pédé, c’est gai, c’est gai!

or

Monter sur un giton, c’est gai, c’est gai!

(or c’est vrai! or, for the rhyme, c’est bon!). The second version uses slang giton, earlier ‘male hustler’, now (apparently) ‘sissy, catamite’.

Here ends the pédé-mounting stream of consciousness.

(Necessarily, discussion of (female) body parts and plain talk about them. A warning if you’re especially sensitive about these matters.)

In today’s mail, a piece of mail art by Ryan Tamares:

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An amendment of an image that’s been making the rounds, in response to the spoutings of Squire Grabpussy. Fuck yeah!

From The Guardian on the 10th, by Nicole Puglise, “‘Pussy grabs back’ becomes rallying cry for female rage against Trump: The Republican nominee’s boasts about groping women has inspired a combative meme as women vow to ‘grab back’ on election day”:

Donald Trump received considerable backlash after his comments on grabbing women “by the pussy” resurfaced from a video that was leaked on Friday [October 7th].

The Republican nominee’s use of the word “pussy” inspired one of the strongest reactions, with women expressing their outrage online and creating posters, T-shirts and a song hammering home the message that the #PussyGrabsBack on election day.

… Some shared images of the Trump campaign’s famous red hats, instead with the phrase “Grab em by the pussy” in white embroidery.

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The “Don’t Tread On Me” flag from the American Revolutionary War

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and the Obama “Hope” image were also adapted for the cause.

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Jessica Bennett, author of Feminist Fight Club, turned the phrase into a widely shared image with a cat in mid-snarl, crediting Amanda Duarte with the sentiment. Bennett, Duarte and Stella Marrs, who created the original image of the cat, and Female Collective, a feminist brand and online community, have turned the image into a T-shirt.

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(The basis for Ryan’s card.)

As for matters pussy, I’ve been over this territory at some length (following on news reports about the band Pussy Riot), in a posting of 8/19/12, “The pussy patrol”. Highlights:

… there’s some evidence that the ‘vagina’ sense of pussy has recently [in 2012] become very prominent indeed.

I used a Google Ngram search on a pussy (which I judged to be biased towards the ‘cat’ and ‘weakling’ senses) vs. her pussy (which I judged to be biased towards the ‘vagina’ sense) to investigate the frequency of taboo pussy. Both expressions occur at very low frequencies until 2000, when her pussy shoots up precipitously.

Supporting the idea that vaginal pussy has recently become much more frequent is another Google Ngram search, comparing kitty and pussy. For a century or so, both  occur at modest frequencies, with pussy a bit ahead; then in roughly 1990, pussy starts taking off, and it shoots up in 2000.

These are counts from books; a shift towards vaginal pussy would have taken place earlier in informal writing and in speech. But in any case, vaginal pussy is now prominent indeed, to the extent that many people, I suspect, would prefer to avoid feline pussy. (Pussycat continues, but mostly in metaphorical uses rather in literal use.) So Pussy Riot is in fact problematic for people concerned about linguistic modesty.

Now a digression on the tangled semantic web of the word pussy, from OED3 (Dec. 2007).

… It starts with cats, and then radiates in different directions, including to women in general, then (presumably by metonymy) to the vagina and to women as sexual objects. Once the word was used for women, it was open for referring to men with feminine characteristics (effeminacy or merely weakness), and then, more or less inevitably, to gay men, though this isn’t a particularly frequent sense. Things eventually shook down to three main domains of meaning: ‘cat’, ‘weakling, coward, sissy’, and ‘vagina’.

Oh yes, the title of this posting.  A play on the song title “Get It While You Can” (Jerry Ragovoy and Mort Shuman), made famous by Janis Joplin. You can watch a 1970 tv performance by her here. With get or grab, it’s about affection, not assault.