Trifecta time

(In the middle of this, with reference to my invention LDV Day, is a discussion of men’s bodies and of sex between men in elevated language — so technically not over the line, but certainly not to everyone’s taste.)

Three different occasions that happen around this time of year, on three different schedules, but this year come together in a single week. And we’re in the midst of it. First, two festivals of pleasure: the Valentine cluster (2/12 Lincoln Darwin Day; 2/13 LDV Day; 2/14 Valentine’s Day) and

Shrove Tuesday / Mardi Gras / Carnival / Pancake Day / Fas(t)nacht / Doughnut Day (in the land of my childhood). A day of — depending on where you are — food excesses, sexual excesses, raucous parading in the streets in fabulous costumes, role inversions, whatever, before the 40-day shriving of Lent, the Christian season of penance before Easter’s rebirth (through crucifixion and resurrection). (from my 2/13/23 posting “Abraham Lincoln hosts two festivals of pleasure”)

Mardi Gras — by the church calendar, tomorrow, though festivities are already in progress — is a moveable feast in the Christian liturgical calendar, dependent on the date of Easter, a date that’s calculated for each year from the phases of the moon. In 2024, the two festivals of pleasure happen to coincide; today is Lincoln Darwin Day and Wednesday is Valentine’s Day (which is also a family holiday for me, since it’s my daughter Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky’s birthday).

And then in 2024 these two festivals come during the continuing celebrations of the lunar new year according to traditional Chinese reckoning (in a 12-year cycle); a Year of the Dragon began on 2/10, and the parades and displays are still going on.

That’s the outline; a few more details, with some illustrations, follow. (Oh yes, this is also today’s MQOS Not Dead Yet posting, just more elaborate than usual.)

LDV Day. From my 2/13/20 posting “Lincoln Darwin Valentine Day”, the stuff I warned you about:

Lincoln Darwin Valentine Day lies in [you might say it fills] the cleft between Lincoln Darwin Day, February 12th, and Valentine’s Day, February 14th. It is a day of unbridled mansexual excess, coming as it does between the high seriousness of the day that honors two towering figures — two Great Men — of the 19th century and the romantic heterosexual excesses of Valentine’s Day. It’s Carnal Carnival without reference to the religious calendar …

The symbol of LDV Day is a red or pink rose bud on its stem, standing simultaneously for a fat erect penis … and for a quivering anal rosette

… The two practices [of man-on-man fellatio and anal intercourse] are celebrated, especially in public displays, in the rites of the day, which are at once solemn and weighty, and also ecstatic and transcendent.

From an earlier posting of mine on the Valentine cluster, this item of Marco Marco homowear, a Valentine’s brief:

 (#1)

along with my LDV doggerel (a 4×4: a quatrain of (trochaic) tetrameter):

Lincoln Darwin Valentine
Is a cutup friend of mine
Loves the boys with all his heart
Loves them hard in every part

All this, and Mardi Gras too. Meanwhile, we’re still celebrating the entrance of the dragon (who first appeared a couple days ago, on 2/10). Celebrations in many forms, including dragon artwork. In a variety of media. Even fresh fruit.

Happy vegan lunar new year. A wonderful composition from the San Francisco Vegan Society (on 2/10; passed on to me by Ellen Kaisse this morning):

(#2) Almost childish artlessness (just a lot of fruit arranged on a platter), deployed to make a clever culturally significant image of great power