First time poster, blah blah blah and all of that crap–i.e., take pity on my poor blackened soul…(although according to Algernon, I’m likely to be gobbled up by somebody much larger than me) Hey, wait–that sounds like it could be fun…
Anyway, I chose today to de-lurk because I just noticed something in my chosen place of business–the prevalence of phallic symbols.
Now I don’t want y’all to think I’m some kind of man-hater because I enjoy a good phallic symbol occasionaly, but I work in a law office and throughout the office we have placed tall pointy statue-type things shaped vaguely like the Washington monument. These items have no intrinsic value other than the fact that they “look pretty” according to the office manager, who BTW is a gay male (not the possible relevance). Then, as I was sitting in a partner’s office, (mind you a short, runty partner who likes to speak to my boobs) I noticed a picture of a building–for reference, it’s called the Flatiron building in New York–you can see prints of it at art.com–this picture looks JUST LIKE A PENIS…The partner said HE just liked the building–thought it looked “important” and put it in his office. Later today–after beginning to notice the abundance of phallic symbols, I went to a neigboring office, and their pointy statue things were BIGGER than ours.
#1 Are phallic symbols as prevalent in places other than law offices?
#2 Should I tell the head partner that the neighboring law office has bigger phallic symbols and we must immediately procure GIANT phallic symbols?
#3 Am I just particularly horny today and everything’s starting to look like a penis?
#4 Does anyone else just laugh his/her ass off when they see the ironic giant white Washington monument looming over DC?
Yes, the pit may not be the best forum for this thread as it is not exactly a complaint, but my blatant use of the word “penis” made me feel that the pit was the best place for this…
Ever notice that your fingers look like phallic symbols? Think about that. Five wiggly little phalluses sticking out the end of each arm. Hey - your arm kind of looks like a phallus, too. It’s thicker and longer than your finger-phalluses. And you know what, that person walking by is tall and slender. Hmmmm… kind of like a…
Yes. I live near a missle base. The place is just crawling with symbolism.
Excellent idea. I wonder if farmers have wars over the size of their silos?
Now that you mention it, I have a pencil here on my desk with the extra eraser… and you know, it just looks like a desktop penis… oh, crap, now I’m staring at the bald guy in the office across the hall, and he looks like a MUCH BIGGER penis… Hey! There’s a banana in my lunch, and you’ll never guess what it reminds me of!
Yes. Nothing better than a structure that says, “Mess with us and we’ll fuck you.”
Welcome, Jeanie. And thanks for letting me spend extra time thinking about penises.
Those “tall pointy statue-type things shaped vaguely like the Washington monument” are called obelisks. The ancient Egyptians, uuhhh…how to put it…erected many of them, so I’d guess they’ve been “in” for around 5000 years or so.
Anyway, maybe you should take up lingam gnosis, “the ancient art of penis reading: forget palmistry, everything you need to know about your man is written on his cock.” (No, I won’t post any links - Google on it if you must.) Heh, sounds like a field without too much stiff competition so it’s easy to get ahead.
That building in the center is pretty overtly dildonic (I think I just invented a word)…should be nicknamed “the 'do” or something. But anyway, phallic symbols are always in, of course.
Ya want something phallic, try looking in a first year Latin book! You know, the one with the picture of the Roman soldier, and all those little lines pointing to parts of his soldierly “equipment”? The sword/gladius is thrust into the sheath/vagina
So, after an evening starting with “C’mere sweety, I want to read your future…” I feel like this may be a future career option for me. I can see it now…a big turban on my head like Karnack the Great, but nothing else as I have found it is easier to read the lingam when it is tumescent. I could give those massage parlours a run for their money.
The idea of the Washington Monument as phallic symbol has been made before – look at Philip Jose Farmer’s interestingly weird SF novel Flesh, where in the distant future the monument is made a much more explicitly phallic symbol, or in Tom Weller’s wonderful Culture Made Stupid, in which he picturesboth the Washington Monument and the Martha Washington monument (a hole in the earth that looks like the inverse of the Washington Monument). I suspect (for real) that there are a lot of phallic symbols or symbols of phallic origin around that we are not consciously aware of.
But it used to be much worse (or much better, depending on your point of view). Roman culture swarmed with phallic symbols. “Good Luck” apotropaic phalli protruding from the tops of buildings, or placed as bas-reliefs in the walls of buildings. Painting of phalluses and the ithyphallic god Priapus everywhere. Hanging lamps in the form of penises. When they started excavating the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, they started uncovering such “obscene” items and declared “This building must have been a brothel!” But as time went by and they continued to find them everywhere, they shrewdly realized that not every building could be a brothel. We’ve got a clear case of culture shock.
The weirdest thing, to me, are the Priapus figures placed like scarecrows in the gardens – little human figures with mean faces and huge (relative to the statues) bright red penises, sometimes with signs. They were intended to scare away birds and vegetable thieves, Imagine garden gnomes with oversized peckers painted bright red carring signs that say “Trespassers will be Violated.”
They still have a festival of the phallus in Japan, I understand.
