Passed on to me by Arne Adolfsen, this vintage ad (from the 1940s, for what was then the Visking Corp.):
(#1)
Skinless wiener is pretty much immediately risible, because it’s bound to bring circumcision to mind.
Skinless wieners
August 17, 2017In camera
August 17, 2017Today’s Zippy takes us to photographic LA:
(#1)
While namechecking the famous American photographers Diane Arbus, Edward Weston, Berenice Abbott, and Weegee, Zippy peers in the window of the Darkroom at 5370 Wilshire Blvd. in LA, now a bar and restaurant, originally a camera shop in the shape of a camera.
Looking for buidings in the shape of a camera will then take us around the world, thanks to a construction company in Karawang, West Java, Indonesia.
Gay slurs in New Zealand
August 16, 2017… with quotations from a Stanford linguist.
The story: “Garry Mallett’s explanation of the F-word falls short” by Jeremy Olds yesterday in the NZ website Stuff (stuff.co.nz), about fag(got), beginning with events in Hamilton City NZ (south of Auckland on the North Island):
OPINION: It’s unclear why Hamilton City councillor Garry Mallett believes pink is a “homo colour”. Perhaps he thinks it’s effeminate; perhaps he thinks it’s cute.
Whatever the case, when Mallett described a pink piece of paper from an agenda last week as a “homo colour”, before using the word “fags”, his comments were perceived as homophobic by his colleagues, including councillor Angela O’Leary.
While he apologised for his language this morning, Mallett was last night defending his comments, saying gay people are comfortable with the labels, and to think otherwise is to be “sucked into this politically correct vortex,” The Spinoff reported.
“Many homosexuals freely and willingly identify with these words. Indeed, to some extent, homosexuals have ‘commandeered’ these words such that many non-homosexuals feel uncomfortable using them,” he said.
Ah, the right to use fag openly and proudly as a slur, threatened by the pansies, fruits, and fairies who have begun reclaiming fag for their own use.
July 24th, p. 9: two artists
August 15, 2017(References to mansex in public places in the second part of this posting, so that section is not for kids or the sexually modest.)
The July 24th issue of the New Yorker, p. 9, with announcements of two art shows in NYC, one (still life photographs of food by Sandy Skoglund) involving an old artistic acquaintance of mine, one (a group show with two paintings by Lucas Michael) including an artist unfamiliar to me, but LM’s theme of glory holes at an LA sex club caught my eye.
More Zippy-O-Rama
August 15, 2017Today’s Zippy takes us through three commercial establishments with (variants) of –orama names, while fretting ambivalently about American patriotism:
(#1)
Wein-O-Rama (Cranston RI), Billy’s Burg-O-Rama (Oxford MA), and Liquorama (stores with that name in many locations), plus Zippy’s own coining, Shrink-O-Rama. As it happens, Bill Griffith has used the imagery in #1 for at least one other strip, which I posted on Language Log on 1/20/07:
Combos
August 14, 2017Today’s Bizarro, in which Mr. Peanut (a registered brand) and Ms. GrapeJella (my invented name), a jar of grape jelly, face off:
(#1)
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
So many ways to combine the grape and the peanut, directly or via their metonymic associates (Ms. GrapeJella and Mr. Peanut) and their metonymic associates (grape jelly and peanut butter); and by combining things or by combining words (more carefully: linguistic expressions denoting those things).
Two European estates in America
August 14, 2017The Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores MI (which brings us a satisfying instance of the –palooza libfix); and the Castello di Amorosa near Calistoga CA (which offers a range of California wines and also Belgian-style chocolate). The first designed to reproduce the vernacular architecture of the English Cotswolds, the second a fantasy re-creation of an Italian castle.
Four more Kite collages
August 13, 2017A recent Pinterest mailing included a board devoted to the Aberrant Art collages of Barry Kite — this because I posted on them a while back (on 11/30/16 in “Poet in Search of His Moose”). Six of them in that earlier posting, now four more I’ve chosen from those in the Pinterest mailing. They range from relatively simple compositions to an enormously complex one. But like the collages I posted about last year, they’re zany educations in art and popular culture, packed with astonishing juxtapositions of images.
Reduced coordination, joke forms, and sociocultural categories
August 13, 2017Two days ago, I set a competition for readers:
Compose a follow-up to the following lead-in to a joke:
Tom, Taylor, and Jonathan Swift walk into a bar…
Three matters, having to do with reduced coordination, joke forms, and sociocultural categories.
Fungus gnats
August 13, 2017Appearing around the drain of my bathroom sink on Friday, a small swarm of tiny black flies, which fled from my investigations by running, rather than flying, away. Ah, fungus gnats — usually found in soil, as around houseplants, rather than in household drains, but there probably was organic material in the trap for them to feed on.
A shot of bleach, followed by flushing with hot water, cleaned up the infestation.
