>In one of his novels, Dashiell Hammett described a woman with a gun
>as "a frail with a rod." Nothing phallic about guns, though.
That's right, Doug. Nothing. Unless we go out of our way to reproduce the identity, anyway.
In a rerun of a twenty-five-year-old show about hunting which aired here this week, the hunter explains what happens to the fallow deer as the bullet strikes: "the round ideally enters at the shoulder blade, shattering the joint as the bullet's hollow point leads it to tear open into a wall of shards that tears the heart and lungs into shreds. As the deer's body is 85% water, the shock of the round causes an enormous impact shock which causes massive internal bleeding within the remaining organs. As this is happening, a real good shot, the one I dream about, passes through the spine, shatters that, and then breaks the opposing shoulder apart. Ideally the bullet will come to rest there, so as not to puncture the hide on that side."
Hot stuff, eh?
Lotsa blokes in Hammett books are tooled up, too. Are they biphallusial or summat? And, yeah, a revolver in a front pocket might make an ambiguous bulge. So would a pair of rolled socks.
I mean, what's the point of all this cock-struck speculation? Dicks are handy things to take on a picnic, and there the distinct significance of these almost incongruous protuberances ends, I reckon. I look at the little things hanging off my sons as they scurry noisily from the shower, and shiver at the thought they're gonna grow up under the impression that they're packin' a lethal weapon with a dodgy safety catch.
And I've read Butler's allusions to the floating phallus - haven't the slightest clue what on earth she thinks the point is, either.
Yours thoroughly and irritably bemused, Rob.