From Wilson Gray and Bert Vaux on Facebook, this New Yorker cartoon by Danny Shanahan:
A pun on get help, turning on who plays the benefactee role in help-getting: the drowning man (‘get help for me’), or Lassie (‘get help for yourself’).
Archive for 2012
Still more puns
July 15, 2012The education report
July 15, 2012Recently, a California Report on KQED noted (with alarm) the impending closure of almost all adult education in the Oakland school district. From the Oakland Local (“Edward Shands School to Close, Adult Education Faces Severe Cutbacks in Oakland” by Pamela Drake on the 3rd):
Thursday night may have been the last graduation the Edward Shands Adult School puts on. After 139 years of free basic adult education and ever-expanding offerings, including its high school diploma program, Oakland Unified School District has decided to close almost the entire adult school department.
All that may be left would be skeletal literacy training for ESL students whose kids attend the school where they study. Some GED programs would be saved, but the complex in East Oakland named after Oakland’s beloved adult education leader, Edward Shands, will be shuttered.
Shands has offered ESL programs, nursing assistance training classes, morning and evening GED classes, and the high school subject program in which students may take regular high school classes and receive diplomas in front of their friends and family. It is located next to the Eastmont Center and is convenient to the majority of students who live in Fruitvale, Central East Oakland and Deep East .
I’m especially concerned about the ESL and GED programs, which are offerings with obvious significant public good. How will immigrants learn English, and how will dropouts get a second chance at a high school education?
How did we get to this?
More puns
July 15, 2012Via Wilson Gray on Facebook, this New Yorker cartoon by David Sipress:
So: the idiom play dead, plus the band the Grateful Dead.
Flying the flag
July 15, 2012Passed on by Ann Burlingham on Facebook, a wonderful story (“In Sleepy Minnesota Suburbs, Church Ladies Launch Gay Marriage Crusade”) from the Atlantic, beginning:
The southwest Minneapolis suburbs of Minnetonka and Eden Prairie bring to mind Garrison Keillor’s tales from Lake Wobegon: They’re lined with well-maintained homes and tree-lined roundabouts, and home to residents of largely German and Scandinavian ancestry. But the ladies of these towns have quietly begun a revolt — one fought with rainbow flags and a Minnesota nice attitude.
Ann connected the story to our experiences in Columbus OH.
Lupin(e)s
July 15, 2012A recent postcard from Chris Ambidge, from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, depicted (among other things) a beautiful Lupinus perennis, a threatened wildflower of the eastern U.S.:
Lupines, both wild and cultivated, have long been among my favorite plants. Here in California, a number of species (mostly blue, some yellow) grow wild in great profusion. Back in Ohio, I tried to grow Russell hybrids, but they were short-lived; the climate and relatively heavy soil (even with my hard work amending it) didn’t seem to agree with them.
Some words about the plants, and then some about the etymology of lupin(e).
Cow saws and mondegreens
July 15, 2012A piece in today’s New York Times Magazine (“Lady Mondegreen and the Miracle of Misheard Song Lyrics” by Willy Staley) looks at the (apparent) verb fanute in rap. And gets into the topic via a 1982 Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson:
First, “Cow Tools”, then fanute.
Everyday logic
July 15, 2012A Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal linked to by David Craig and Dan Everett on Facebook:
This could have been framed as a valid inference — but it isn’t here.
Laydeez do Comics
July 15, 2012From Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, a link to the Laydeez do Comics site:
What especially caught her eye was the metanarratives.
Dinner-table conversation
July 14, 2012Today’s Zits:
Despite the touting of communication at the dinner-table as fostering good social relations for the kids, not all teenagers get with the program.