The Blowfish Blog

Context is Everything

Humans are a pattern-making species. That’s why we see images of the Virgin Mary in pieces of cheese toast, why we see shapes in the clouds, and why even the most sane of us occasionally come across a wackjob conspiracy theory that makes us say, “Hmm, that actually sounds kind of plausible . . .” And, of course, that’s why we see genitals everywhere. Because we’re a pattern-making species that’s obsessed with the contents of our own underpants.

Seeing things that accidentally resemble vaginas is relatively rare (though Georgia O’Keefe found a few flowers that did the job, I suppose). Still, you can find the occasional building or aerial view of a city or weird sculpture that inadvertently resembles a vagina. A few are collected here at the Sex or Not blog.

Accidental phalluses abound, however. The good people at BoingBoing recently compiled an impressive list of concrete cocks and the terror they wreak. What began as a simple post about some people in Oregon freaking out over accidentally phallic civic erections (heh) quickly developed into a mad link-fest, with numerous readers writing in to provide links to their favorite examples, from the “Big Dick” tower in Newcastle Australia to more modest concrete penises meant to protect pedestrians from onrushing cars.

This reminds me, naturally enough, of geographical penises, particularly the notorious Mull of Kintyre, a penis-like peninsula in Scotland. The Mull was infamously the basis of the “Mull of Kintyre Test”, which limited how erect a penis depicted on film in Britain was allowed to be. The “angle of the dangle” wasn’t permitted to exceed that of the peninsula, which meant, basically, that an aroused nude man could never be shown on film. There’s a chance the test is entirely apocryphal, and anyway, the limitation was loosened a few years ago, but it’s still a good story.

I’ll end with a brief intentional geographical penis: The Cerne Abbas Giant, an enormous naked ancient chalk drawing in England, featuring a giant with a large erect cock and a very large club, in case you didn’t get how manly he was from the penis alone. The Giant has been in the news lately, because someone drew an enormous picture of Homer Simpson holding a doughnut next to his Bigness, attracting the ire of assorted interested parties. (The Homer drawing will not last for centuries, having been created with biodegradable paint.) Some clever internet prankster made the logical connection and created an animated gif of Homer playing ring toss with his dougnut and the giant’s cock. This kind of stuff is the reason the internet was invented.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, 1 August 2007 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Caught in the Net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.