Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Zippy the Pinhead is known for its absurdity, but today’s strip is *about* absurdity:

Then there are the Dingburger names (Bill Griffith loves to play with names): Valspar, Ronzo, Foto-tainer, Gasburner.

Valspar:

The Valspar Corporation is an international manufacturer of paint and coatings based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. It is the ninth largest paint and coating corporation in the world. The 200+ year old Valspar was founded in 1806 as a paint dealership in Boston, Massachusetts. The Valspar name emerged in 1903 as a new clear varnish, and became the company name in 1932. (link)

Ronzo (from the Ronzo site):

Ronzo is an independent, non-profit [British] artist that exists because this fragile Earth deserves a voice. It needs solutions. It needs change. It needs action.

Quite frankly, it needs Ronzo!

Fototainer is a Dutch firm supplying photographers for parties, company events, weddings, etc.

And Gasburner:

A gas burner is a device to generate a flame to heat up products using a gaseous fuel such as acetylene, natural gas or propane. Some burners have an air inlet to mix the fuel gas with air to make a complete combustion. Acetylene is commonly used in combination with oxygen. (link)

Finally, there’s the book that Gasburner is reading: Of Dice and Men, with a play on the title of John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men.

This entry was posted on March 14, 2013 at 5:55 am and is filed under Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Names. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.