Facts And Phallacies

Kansas State University’s marching band was TRYING to pump up the home team crowd, by showing the Starship Enterprise battling the opposing team’s mascot, the U. of Kansas Jayhawk.

They failed rather spectacularly. The resulting phallery (see it here) cost the director of the marching band a suspension, and the team a $5,000 fine.

Okay, so this was one phallery that initially got away from me. For once, I didn’t see it. It took me a bit. But I could CERTAINLY see a bird and a phallus more readily than the Starship Enterprise cramming itself into the mouth of a waiting bird. Maybe because that is more readily accessible to one’s imagination than what the band’s formation was trying to produce.

I mean, really… Why the Star Trek reference? The Kansas State mascot is Willie the Wildcat, not William Shatner… Ohhh… wait… Willie. I get it!!!! (But I still think they’d have done better trying to produce a cat going after a bird (Wildcat v. Jayhawk). Either way, I give the band and its director credit. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to develop and execute these marching band formations…

While I was looking up a link for my last post, I found this gem of video from two giants of comedy, both of whom left us here on Earth far, far, FAR too early. Therefore, fact: Robin Williams and John Ritter together on stage back in the late 70’s = pure improv genius. And that’s no fallacy! I just couldn’t not post this; thanks to YouTuber OvalNet for uploading it.

Robin Williams Comedy Special with John Ritter

Weather turns phallic… The very nature of hurricane forecast cones pretty much requires that they end up looking like phalluses. (See NOAA’s Definition of the National Weather Service Track Forecast Cone for details on how the graphic is derived.) But sometimes the graphic ends up being somehow more compellingly phallic than usual. In this case, Tropical Storm Erika and the state of Florida seem to be starting a duel. (Anyone remember the memorable scene from the John Ritter movie, “Skin Deep”? No? Look it up… Oh, okay; it was a 1989 movie. You may not know what to look for, so here it is!!)

Anyway, here is an Intellicast image from August 2015 for Erika’s storm track:

Morris Island, just south of Chatham, MA is in an area of very active coastal geomorphology. Monomoy Island, for example, has an approximately 140-year periodicity of being attached and separated from the mainland in the Chatham region. The whole Elbow-of-the-Cape locale has some interesting and rapidly changing features such as shifting spits, ebb and flood tidal deltas and more.

Once I saw that first phallacy-as-fact image (the sea salt spray shown in my first post), I started seeing phallacies everywhere in my academic work at the time (in coastal and glacial geology).

Tell me that you don’t see the phallacy suggested by Stage Harbor and that bit of Morris Island jutting out there towards Harding Beach (heh… Harding… how adolescent am I?) on the other side of the channel. Just. Too. Phallic. (And naturally too – no drawing involved! The image is from Google Earth, without any… errr… enhancements.)

Heard on NPR’s “Wait, Wait -Don’t Tell Me,” then confirmed by numerous articles, the fact of potholes on roads that have led to the Phallacies of a street artist now known as Wanksy. Wanksy has brilliantly drawn attention to damaging potholes on roads in a small town in England by spray-painting Phallacies around, next to or entering into these road hazards. The paint washes off after a few weeks (Wanksy stresses that fact in an interview), but in the meantime, the drawings have been enough of an eyesore to some townspeople that the potholes have been getting filled. Filled. Huh. And not too well, I might add – quick patches that are going to fall apart in short order… Basically a cursory, uninvolved attempt at filling the holes. Not unlike a long-past short-term boyfriend of mine.

The quick, crude phallacy drawings by Banksy are reviled by some, and reveled in by others. (Personally, I love the puniness of the so-named Cockness Monster posted on Wanksy’s Facebook page.) I know that after our northeast U.S. apocalyptic post-winter horde of potholes — what would be the proper term for that? A cluster of craters? A drove of depressions? A swarm of ruts? An asphalt scabland?…

Where was I? Oh yes – after the never ending winter of 2015 has generated more potholes than a dope farmer’s fields, I would applaud the efforts by a Banksy-esque artist in my neighborhood. So much more of a useful application of phallacies than just seeing cocks-in-the-clouds.

Another success.

Just to provide proof that I am not the only person who sees phallacies everywhere, I offer an article from the good old UK Daily Mail (a paper that provides plenty of fodder for the facts-or-phallacies question), which goes into depth (pun intended, of course) about a woman, Noeleen Foster, who was “thrilled to capture” (Daily Mail’s words) a turgid – and quite elaborate – mist-phallacy rising high into the skies over Zuccoli, Australia.

Good on you, Noeleen – you look pretty happy with your discovery! I would be too.

Noeleen’s cloud-head may not be the only one ever (the Daily Mail includes another such cloud snapped by), but to my eyes, it certainly is the most anatomically correct.

(Image by Noeleen Foster; I enhanced the brightness and contrast only – and hey, it looks more like a painting than a photo… Hmmm…)

See the whole article: Looking at clouds in a whole new way in the Daily Mail

I saw a toaster and blender photo in a “new kitchen gadgets” article in This Old House magazine, and I thought, “Holy sh*t. Someone most certainly is having fun here, and TOH didn’t get the joke.

But, nope. I was wrong. Sooo wrong. Now, I know the adolescent male in me finds this awesomely funny, but really – what marketing and/or design engineer thought it would be cool to: (a) name their company SMEG, and (2) create a line of retro-50’s appliances with said name boldly imprinted onto each item? Okay, that was a trend back then. But to me, there is a hell of a big difference between having “Frigidaire” or “GE” or “Amana” in chrome block lettering on your fridge and washer and toaster… and having “SMEG” all over your kitchen.

There are just too many possibilities here. In the banner header for the site, one of the pulldowns is even listed as “COOKING WITH SMEG” (note arrow in the image above). Oh, dear lord of the apple pie and uncooked liver, MAKE IT STOP. NOW. Oh, I just can’t…Cooking with smeg??? Didn’t ANYbody at that place think of how the infantile-humored among us would read that?

I’ll take a Smeg toaster in Cream, Alex. Or maybe a Lime Green Smeg fridge… Although I must admit, the red mini-fridge would be fun for a bar. And I like the lines of the stand mixer. Just not with SMEG on it.

See the whole line-up: SMEG Retro Kitchen Appliances

The image in this post is from a water chemistry book called Global Environment: Water, Air, and Geochemical Cycles, by Elizabeth Kay Berner and Robert A. Berner (1995).

Tell me that you don’t see what I see. I mean, what graphic artist creates this, and then looks at it and says, “Yeah, that looks like sea salt particles being released into the air from bubbles on the ocean surface.”

Really??? It didn’t at least vaguely remind him (I am guessing it was a male) of something else?

I don’t know – a few of the people in my circle don’t see it as an ejaculating phallus with two white testicles. Maybe it’s just me, but I just think it is a bit too… detailed.

This is how facts and phalluses (phallii?) combine. In many places, in many ways. Almost too often in the world of scientific graphics, especially, it seems, in fields such as geology and meteorology. Or maybe those are just the ones I am most familiar with.