proof that boring linguistics papers are not always boring

i know what you’re thinking. you’re thinking that boring linguistics papers are always boring. but it ain’t always so, slacker! as evidence, i submit the paper* on the aforementioned adverbial prefixes in klamath. here, scott delancy discusses the prefix sg- (act with the penis) as it appears in several klamath myths.

the concluding line is the best line that ever appeared in all of linguistics (i bolded it for extra emphasis). i would wear a t-shirt of a tattooed version of a cross-stitched rendering of it, if such a thing existed.

sg- occurs in a set of semantically rather idiosyncratic stems:

• /sgocaqta/ — bend the penis on
• /sgena/ — take out the penis
• /is goqo:tYe:nia/ — scrape the penis around inside

This is hardly surprising; there is a limited range of things which can be done with the penis, even in myth.

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* “lexical prefixes and the bipartite stem construction in klamath” by scott delancey, international journal of american linguistics, (january 1999).

the first sex scene in scottish literature

the following steamy scene was written by ragbag role model, thomas urquhart way back in sixteen fitty two. like all things urquhart, it combines latin and greek neologisms, absurd euphemisms, wildly elaborate sentences, obscure allusions, and circumlocutious syntax. it also happens to be decidedly unerotic.

Thus for a while their eloquence was mute, and all they spoke was but with the eye and hand, yet so persuasively, by vertue of the intermutual unlimitedness of their visotactil sensation, that each part and portion of the persons of either was obvious to the sight and touch of the persons of both; the visuriency of either, by ushering the tacturiency of both, made the attrectation of both consequent to the inspection of either. Here it was that passion was active, and action passive, they both being overcome by other, and each the conquerour. To speak of her hirquitalliency at the elevation of the pole of his microcosme, or of his luxuriousness to erect a gnomon on her horizontal dyal, will perhaps be held by some to be expressions full of obscoeness, and offensive to the purity of chaste ears; yet seeing she was to be his wife, and that she could not be such without consummation of marriage, which signifieth the same thing in effect, it may be thought, as definitiones logicae verificantur in rebus, if the exerced act be lawful, that the diction which suppones it, can be of no greater transgression, unless you would call it a solaecisme, or that vice in grammar which imports the copulating of the masculine with the feminine gender.

if you had trouble getting turned on by this, much less understanding it, join the crowd—it was as hard to follow way back in sixteen fitty two as it is today. fortunately, i have found an online translation for you.

WATCH BIG-TITTED MILFS GET HARDCORED 24-7

thus was the subject line of a piece of spam™ that infiltrated my gmail this morning and all i could think was: look at all that inventive anthimeria!

anthimeria is using one word class as a member of a different word class (eg. using a noun for a verb). this literary device is deftly employed not once, not twice, but thrice in the 6-word, ithyphallic spam header.

• the noun phrase, big tits is used as an adjective
• the adjective, hardcore is used as a verb
• the cardinal numbers, 24 and 7 are used as an adverb

and yet: one could cram even more anthimeria into the header by saying something like, “eyeball big-titted milfs…”

nouns as adjectives? adjectives as verbs? has the world gone topsy-turvy or is this a WORD CLASS KEY PARTY OF EPIC PROPORTIONS?!?!

on a semi-related note*: i will be occupied for the next 24/7.

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* a note related to my semi

singular pleasures

the final pearl in our pearl necklace of erotica comes from harry matthews’ singular pleasures. mr. matthews has the distinction of being the only american member of the randy group of french oulipo writers. members of this group used wacky constraints (e.g. never using the letter e, starting each sentence with a successive letter of the alphabet, et cetry etcetry) in order to get their literary juices flowing. mr. matthews, like fellow member italo calvino, used constraints but never really elaborated on what they were.

singular pleasures is a collection of vignettes all involving masturbation in one form or another. it is the invisible cities of fapping. here are some good ones:

Masturbating as he lies on a floormat, his head propped on one hand, his eyes on a lighted television set, somewhere in Kyoto, there is a young man of twenty. The screen in front of him shows a young man lying on his side and masturbating while watching a television set on which a young man is lying on his side and masturbating while watching a television set on which a young man is lying on his side and masturbating while watching a television set whose image is too small to decipher.

Somewhere north of the Bering Straits, sitting on the edge of an ice floe, his face impassive, all movement concealed beneath thicknesses of pelt and fur, an Eskimo male of thirty-one is bringing himself to an orgasm of devastating intensity in a slickness of dissolving blubber.

A man of thirty-five is about to experience orgasm in one of the better condominiums in Gaza. He is masturbating, but neither hand nor object touches his taut penis: arranged in a circle, five hairblowers direct their streams of warm air toward that focal point. He has plugged his ears with wax balls.

(roth’s baseball glove, twain’s field, and now matthew’s seal blubber: if you haven’t already guessed—the secret theme of this year’s sexlit day is onanism)

see this list for more.

do you know what mark twain was doing in the summer of 1876?

answer 1: he was researching material for what would later become the prince and the pauper. TRUE.

answer 2: he was writing his great, great-american-novel the adventures of huckleberry finn. ALSO TRUE.

answer 3: he was penning bawdy elizabethan fanfiction that included the characters: queen elizabeth, william shakespeare, ben johnson, walter raleigh, and—my main squeeze—françois rabelais. MEGA TRUE!!!

1601 is its title. twain considered it so risque that it took him 26 years to finally acknowledge that he wrote it. said twain, “if there is a decent word findable in it, it’s because i overlooked it.” you can get it for free here.

Then fell they to talk about ye manners and customs of many peoples, and Master Shaxpur spake of ye boke of ye sieur Michael de Montaine, wherein was mention of ye custom of widows of Perigord to wear uppon ye headdress, in sign of widowhood, a jewel in ye similitude of a man’s member wilted and limber, whereat ye queene did laugh and say widows in England doe wear prickes too, but betwixt the thighs, and not wilted neither, till coition hath done that office for them. Master Shaxpur did likewise observe how yt ye sieur de Montaine hath also spoken of a certain emperor of such mighty prowess that he did take ten maidenheddes in ye compass of a single night, ye while his empress did entertain two and twenty lusty knights between her sheetes, yet was not satisfied; whereat ye merrie Countess Granby saith a ram is yet ye emperor’s superior, sith he wil tup above a hundred yewes ‘twixt sun and sun; and after, if he can have none more to shag, will masturbate until he hath enrich’d whole acres with his seed.

Then spake ye damned windmill, Sr Walter, of a people in ye uttermost parts of America, yt capulate not until they be five and thirty yeres of age, ye women being eight and twenty, and do it then but once in seven yeres.

sexlit day is here at last

i have been rolling on zoloft since the conclusion of word idol, but today’s (slightly-rescheduled) second annual observance of sexlit day has been the light at the end of my freudian tunnel.

what is sexlit day? sexlit day is a way of posting the greasiest, oiliest, most prurient passages from our all-too-typically dry canon; think of it as mr. skin but for literature. these excerpts shall remain largely without commentary—because of the mélange of complex emotions that they my rouse in you, the last thing that you want to be thinking of is me over your shoulder with a wide impish grin.

a word of warning: while the ragbag is usually an all-ages show for puritans and neo-conservatives, sexlit day is that rare pagan bacchanalia where anything goes. thus: enable the v-chips on your computers if reading naughty words from literary virtuosos is not your thang.

the first excerpt is from phillip roth’s mastur(bation)piece, portnoy’s complaint (1969). grab yourself a catcher’s mitt and enjoy:

What if later, after the show, that one over there with the enormous boobies, what if…In sixty seconds I have imagined a full and wonderful life of utter degradation that we lead together on a chenille spread in a shabby hotel room, me (the enemy of America First) and Thereal McCoy, which is the name I attach to the sluttiest-looking slut in the chorus line. And what a life it is too, under our bare bulb (HOTEL flashing just outside out window). She pushes Drake’s Daredevil cupcakes (chocolate with a white creamy center) down over my cock and then eats them off of me, flake by flake. She pours maple syup out of the Log Cabin can and then licks it from my tender balls until they’re clean again as a little boy’s. Her favorite line of English prose is a masterpiece: “Fuck my pussy, Fuckface, till I faint.” When I fart in the bathtub, she kneels naked on the tile floor, leans all the way over, and kisses the bubbles. She sits on my cock as I take a shit, plunging into my mouth a nipple the size of a tollhouse cookie, and all the while whispering every filthy word she knows viciously in my ear. She puts ice cubes in her mouth until her tongue and lips are freezing, then sucks me off—then switches to hot tea! Everything, everything I have ever thought of, she has thought of too, and will do. The biggest whore (rhymes in Newark with “poor”) there ever was. And she’s mine! “Oh Thereal, I’m coming, I’m coming, you fucking whore,” and so become the only person ever to ejaculate into the pocket of a baseball mitt at the Empire Burlesque house in Newark.

#sexlit

this morning: i lost two novels

from the journal of edmond de goncourt (1850?)

I have had happily confirmed the confidences of Gavarni on the economical manner in which Balzac dispensed his sperm. Lovey-dovey and amorous play, up to ejaculation, would be all right, but only up to ejaculation. Sperm to him meant emission of purest cerebral substance, and therefore a filtering, a loss through the member, of a potential act of artistic creation. “I don’t know what occasion, what unfortunate circumstance caused him to ignore his pet theory, but he arrived at Latouche’s once, exclaiming ‘This morning I lost a novel.’

indeed, a better euphemism does not yet exist.

addendum: i remember reading something similar about the equally kooky, george “nard dog” shaw—but i am in too much of a post-coital novel-losing stupor and thus am not able to find the reference.