Today’s Zippy, another installment in the Barbara Stanwyck retrospective (Stella Dallas (1937) here, Double Indemnity (1944) here):
Zippy and Zerbina are coping with the plot of the alliterative The Mad Miss Manton of 1938.
Archive for 2013
Screwball comedy
July 1, 2013Context
July 1, 2013Yesterday’s Dilbert:
The relevant sense of context here, from NOAD2:
the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed: the decision was taken within the context of planned cuts in spending.
Return to Oz
July 1, 2013Yesterday’s Pearls Before Swine, yet another meta-strip that builds up to an elaborate outrageous pun of the “immortal porpoises” type — for which the cartoonist merits death:
There are many variants of the “immortal porpoises” joke; the one I heard first built to “transporting young gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises”. The joke type depends on a piece of formulaic language that is then punningly varied at multiple points.
Shirtless on the Great Plains
July 1, 2013(Not much about language.)
Tim Evanson reported on Google+ yesterday that he was driving to North Dakota. And posted this scenic photo:
(#1)
[Tim writes:] Denizens of North Dakota look like this. Yes, it’s Kellan Lust — I mean, Lutz. He’s from Dickinson.
Lutz is famous for taking off his shirt and showing off his body. In this case, as much of his body as he can show without crossing the line into X; #1 is a cock tease shot as well as an abs shot.
Gestures and symbols
June 30, 2013From many sources, in e-mail and on Facebook, this ad from the Family Research Council:
(#1)
“Oral Sex and Doggie Style! Family Research Council: Call 2 Fall Is Call 2 FAIL!” by Lisa Derrick 6/27/13:
Gay-hating Family Research Council, now labeled a hate group rather than carrying the Christian branding of being a loving faith-based group, has yet another epic fail on their sweaty social media hands. Their latest campaign, Call 2 Fall complaining about marriage and the repeal of DOMA using hip cool internet lingo is the most hysterically wrong-thinking ad since, well their last one.
… This image from Family Research Council … clearly suggests fellatio followed by modified doggie style intercourse.
So: a “call to fall on our knees” comes out looking like a call to fellatio.
Once again, same-sex relationships in the New Yorker
June 30, 2013The cover of the forthcoming New Yorker:
(#1)
Bert and Ernie view SCOTUS, in the light of this week’s DOMA and Prop 8 rulings.
Rainbow Empire Building
June 29, 2013From several sources on Facebook, this Pride/post-SCOTUS image of the Empire State Building:
(#1)
The old lady (completed in 1931) looks great in rainbow. As, of course, does the current SF City Hall, opened in 1915 after the great earthquake destroyed its predecessor.
Rainbow pizza, rainbow underwear
June 29, 2013In celebration of the resumption of same-sex marriages in California and of Pride Weekend in San Francisco, I offer two takes on rainbow pizza (two out of a huge number you can find on the web), and then, since the second led me to a photo of a young man in rainbow underwear, I offer two more such photos (out of a truly enormous number of these).
Choosing words
June 29, 2013In today’s Zits, Sara disses Jeremy’s body type and Jeremy defensively objects to her word choice:
From NOAD2’s thesaurus under skinny:
his extreme height made him look especially skinny: thin, scrawny, scraggy, bony, angular, rawboned, hollow-cheeked, gaunt, as thin as a rake, skin-and-bones, sticklike, emaciated, waiflike, skeletal, pinched, undernourished, underfed; slim, lean, slender, rangy; lanky, spindly, gangly, gangling, gawky; informal looking like a bag of bones, anorexic; dated spindle-shanked.
No wiry there; instead, the synonyms are heavily negative. But in the other direction, the thesaurus under wiry, we get skinny (among mostly positive synonyms):
a wiry man: sinewy, athletic, strong; lean, spare, thin, stringy, skinny.
Poultry in motion
June 29, 2013A Scott Hilburn pun strip, passed on by City Lights on Facebook:
(thighs – hide is a nice half-rhyme, with /z/ matched with /d/)
Two earlier appearances of Hilburn on this blog: “A conjugational visit” of 5/6/11 and “The perils of fronting” of 7/4/12 (with three strips and some information about Hilburn).