According to my records, it’s been almost a month since my last underwear posting. Now, from Kim Darnell on Facebook, a link to this image from Megaphoto. Not about language, but it’s colorful.
Let us spray.
Archive for 2012
Artists in underwear
July 21, 2012The Pogo files
July 21, 2012One cartoonist who reveled in language but has been largely neglected in my postings on linguistics in the comics is Walt Kelly, the creator of Pogo. The problem is that good examples of Pogo material are hard to find on the net. But here are a few high points: the quote “We have met the enemy and he is us”; notes on the Okefenokee swamp dialect in Pogo; and the inspired nonsense of Kelly’s song parodies.
Opera news for penguins
July 20, 2012Via Arne Adolfsen on Facebook, this photo on the Facebook page Against Modern Opera Productions, under the heading “Guess the Opera!”:
Commenters on both Facebook pages have provided entertaining suggestions for an opera a penguin might be introduced into. Not to mention those boots.
César Cui’s Puss in Boots, in a penguin translation?
Dora Johnson
July 20, 2012News from the Center for Applied Linguistics yesterday:
CAL is saddened by the passing of our cherished colleague and friend, Dora Johnson, on June 26, 2012. Dora joined CAL in 1964 and was at the heart of many of our activities for 45 years. She will be profoundly missed by all whose lives she touched.
Dora was, I think, the only CAL staff member who lasted all through my years of association with the Center (including service on the Board of Trustees and involvement in several CAL projects). She was smart, energetic, funny, and motherly, and I always looked forward to spending time with her on my visits to the Center. She had a wonderful life history; from the Center on her retirement:
with whom
July 20, 2012Yesterday’s Scenes From a Multiverse:
Jon Rosenberg’s comment, about the second panel:
I have no idea if Gil’s first line of dialogue is grammatically correct. I can tell you that I rewrote it about a dozen times and it is fully refined, correct or not. It is a grandiose turd with a diamond shine and I will not change it, ever.
Well, it’s still odd, thanks to the combination of with whom and hot lady … made the sexy.
Bizarro POP
July 20, 2012On the heels of the phrasal overlap portmanteau (POP) iPad Thai, today’s Bizarro gives us photographic memory foam mattress:
That’s the idiom photographic memory + the commercial compound memory foam mattress ‘mattress made of memory foam’, giving our traveler an unpleasant surprise in his bed.
Annals of edgy phallicity
July 19, 2012Via Jeff Shaumeyer on Facebook, a video on
Why You Should Spiral-Cut Your Wiener
No thank you.
Oh… it’s from CHOW.com, on grilling hot dogs:
CHOW.com’s Blake Smith shows how the simple technique of cutting a spiral pattern into your hot dog before grilling it will not only improve the wiener-eating experience, but will also transform the dog into a conversation starter.
It seems to have been two months since my last phallicity posting (of May 20th): “Creepy phallicity”, also on hot dog phallicity (link). Well, it’s hot dog season.
Magritte
July 19, 2012Today’s Rhymes With Orange:
The reference is to surrealist René Magritte‘s “The Son of Man”, a painting that combines Magritte’s focus on identity (often involving a figure much like his own) and his use of an apple as a thematic element:
Dick Crazy
July 18, 2012From my friend Max yesterday, a postcard version of artwork by Michael Kupperman for The Believer:
It starts with a series of rhyming compounds — Maceface, Spacerace Face, Afro Laceface — and then branches out into merely preposterous compounds (with images to go along with them), like Moby Dickface and Mount Rushmore Face.
And then there’s Dick Crazy, an imperfect pun on Dick Tracy.