Avocado Chronicles: 6 on the beach

July 17, 2019

A surprise entry in the Chronicles: this Julia Suits cartoon in the (just-arrived) July 22nd New Yorker (apparently, these days, everybody is an avocadoist):


(#1) “No, you said you’d bring lemon juice!”

Lemon juice (or olive oli) acts as a protection against avocados browning on exposure to the air — a parallel to sunscreen protection.

(Note that, as in the “You complete me” cartoon — #6 in my 7/14/19 posting “Avocado Chronicles: 3 the chemical formula” — the sexes of the two avocado halves are identifiable, as male insertive (convex) vs. female receptive (concave), but in #1 it doesn’t really matter which of the two is speaking.)

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Posted in Comic conventions, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

I do like a bit of cowboy butter to my meat

July 17, 2019

The original spur was this Pinterest item:


(#1) [ cowboy butter ] [ dipping sauce ]

On the dipping sauce in #1; the cowboy butter that is its basis; the interpretation of cowboy butter and other cowboy X compounds (cowboy casserole, cowboy rub); the combination of cowboys, butter, and meat (each with possible sexual associations); Jackson Hole Cowboy Cream; and cowboy cheese bites.

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Posted in Compounds, Gender and sexuality, Language and food, Language of sex, Language play, Masculinity, Metaphor, Semantics of compounds | 3 Comments »

Avocado Chronicles: 5 California’s iconic food

July 17, 2019

Continuing the avo roll, a brief pointer to earlier postings on the avocado as California’s iconic food, with its apotheosis in the California roll (inside-out hosomaki sushi with crab, cucumber, and avocado). Noting also that though avocados are a significant crop in California, avos (and their name, from Aztec / Nahuatl) originated in Mexico and most of the avocados consumed in California come from Mexico. Making the California roll a proudly cosmopolitan food — not specifically American, Japanese, or Mexican, but all at once, as well as a bit of culinary chamber music, a trio of contrasting tastes and textures (plus the nori, the sushi rice, and the sesame seeds).

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Posted in Language and food | 1 Comment »

Singout at the CA chorale

July 16, 2019

As I arrange for a small Sacred Harp singing at my house in Palo Alto next month, a Bizarro from the past, this 1/10/07 strip:

(#1)

Relevant fact: SH singing is famous for being loud and harsh in tone — especially the altos, whose voices are often described as having a “glass-cutting” timbre.

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Posted in Homosexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, My life, Puns | Leave a Comment »

Avocado Chronicles: 4 avotoast

July 15, 2019

Although, or perhaps because, I live in one of the world’s avocado toast hot spots, I’d hoped to avoid posting on the silly fad for avotoast, but then this Mother Goose and Grimm cartoon — with its pun on toast — appeared in my comics feed:


(#1) Up off the counter and onto the table

Three things: avocados, toast, and avocado toast.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Child language, Culture, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | Leave a Comment »

Tall Tree TeleSwissies

July 15, 2019

Swissies are everywhere (AMZ posting of 5/19/17, “Marco, Marco, Marco”). Even in Palo Alto, Tall Tree City, where the Swiss flag flies proudly — Einer für alle, alle für einen; Un pour tous, tous pour un; Uno per tutti, tutti per uno; In per tuts, tuts per in — a mere five blocks from the Swiss Mammoth Center on Ramona Street:


(#1) The Swissies are coming, the Swissies are coming! 675 Forest Ave. in Palo Alto, the long arm of Swiss telecom in Santa Clara County

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Posted in Palo Alto, Switzerland and Swiss things, Technology, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

The Skylunch of the American economy

July 14, 2019

The cover of the July 13th Economist is yet another variation on the famous 1932 photograph Lunch Atop a Skyscraper (known in these parts as Skylunch I):


(#1) Recalling Skylunch I in content as well as form: Skylunch I celebrated working people (especially recent immigrants) and the rising NYC (and by extension, the US)

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Avocado Chronicles: 3 the chemical formula

July 14, 2019

Selling avocados in Santo Domingo DR:

(#1)

H2O KT is a play on Sp. aguacate ‘avocado’, treating it as:

the chemical formula H2O for agua ‘water’ + ca, the letter K /ka/, + te, the letter T /te/

that is, as la formula química del aguacate ‘the chemical formula for the avocado’. The joke isn’t quite perfect: K is indeed a symbol for a chemical element, potassium, but there’s no element T (though there is Te, the metalloid tellurium). (There is a compound potassium telluride, K2Te, but I don’t know how it interacts with water.)

The joke will lead us to the demotivational industry (with a penguin interlude); to snark and Mad magazine; to color blindness; to egg and avocado dishes; and to a sexually suggestive cartoon and its gender ideology.

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Posted in Chemistry, Gender and sexuality, Humor, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Penguins, Science, Spanish | 1 Comment »

The Avocado Chronicles: 2 etymology and etymythology

July 13, 2019

The text for today, a piece from the NPR Kitchen Window site (“A weekly peek into the kitchen with tasty tales and recipes”), “What’s in a Name? The Avocado Story” by Howard Yoon, from 7/19/06: a monstrous tapestry of confusion, error, and fabrication, tracing the English food name avocado to a 1914 coinage by California farmers who became the California Avocado Association (an organization that was probably the source of most of the balled-up fantasy below).

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Posted in Etymology, Etymythology, Language and food, Lexicography, Semantics, Subsectivity | 4 Comments »

The clown barber of Custard Street

July 12, 2019

Friday’s Wayno/Piraro collabo Bizarro strip (titled “Shaving Cream Pie”):


(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

Ordinary barbers use shaving cream; clown barbers use cream pies. It’s just like spas: ordinary spas use facial creams (for moisturizing); clown spas use cream pies.

Bonus: the cartoon shows a clown barber twice over: a barber who is a clown, and also a barber for clowns.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Brevity vs. Clarity, Comic conventions, Compounds, Language play, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Morphology, Semantics of compounds | Leave a Comment »

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