Because mammoths, today’s Rhymes With Orange:
(#1) Advances in Mammoth Science: early scientists encountering Mammuthus primigenius var. nudus
Naked came the mammoth
September 25, 2017retainers
September 24, 2017A recent One Big Happy:
There are retainers and then there are retainers, and the kids have good reason to know about one kind of them — the dental appliance — but probably aren’t familiar with the others.
Stuck in Folsom Prison
September 24, 2017Scott Hilburn’s Argyle Sweater cartoon from the 20th:
A parody set off by a pun.
A sapsucking planthopper
September 24, 2017… and more; eventually there will be draft horses, covered bridges, and distelfinks. But first, a bulletin from my cousin Eleanor Severin Houck about the advance of the spotted lanternfly in southeastern Pennsylvania (Eleanor is in Berks County, county seat Reading, in the Pa. Dutch country, where we both grew up).
From the annals of noxious pests, double-team division, a pairing of the disgusting and destructive insect pest Lycorma deliculata with the rampant invasive plant pest Ailanthus altissima.
Boys with Plants
September 23, 2017The name of an Instagram site, which I learned about from Laura Staum Casasanto today. Stunning plants (heavy on houseplants, but by no means confined to them) accompanied by good-looking men, handsomely photographed. Laura supposed, correctly, that the combination would work well for me, and she was right.
Two from 9/8
September 23, 2017… in the September 8th issue of the New Yorker. Both presenting the usual challenges to understanding — there’s a lot you have to know to make sense of them — and both playing on language.
(#1) by Jeremy Nguyen
(#2) by John McNamee
Bear chairs
September 23, 2017Today’s Zippy lumbers through some plays on bear, in a bear chair:
(#1) The bear figure as both comforting and threatening
Bear chairs, gay bears, flags, and more.
Husbands and wives
September 22, 2017Three veins of spousal humor, starting in the early 19th century and ending in an edgily close-to-life comic stereotype realized in cartoons, tv shows, and movies.
Three rocks
September 22, 2017Yesterday’s Zippy:
(#1)
Great wisdom comes from the 3 Rocks. But not necessarily an understanding of what’s going on in the cartoon, which appears to be no more than playful surrealism, with a trio of talking rocks. Entertaining at that level, but as is usual with Bill Griffith, there’s a subtext: the 3 Rocks are an established thing in Zippy.
Briefly 9/21/17: paresthesia
September 21, 2017My friend Mikkie wrote movingly this morning about trying to get relief from nerve pain following on a stroke he had a while back; unfortunately, the only medication for his condition isn’t compatible with other drugs he’s taking, so he’s miserable. In any case, his doctor supplied a name for his condition — a variety of paresthesia — and paresthesia turns out to be, for me, a chronic fact of life, ever since my necrotizing fasciitis disaster of 2003. Constant but low-level, not soul-absorbing (as it’s been for Mikkie).
