Today’s Pearls Before Swine, with a very silly pun:
Ottoman the piece of furniture takes us back to the Ottoman Empire:
Archive for June, 2013
The ottoman empire
June 20, 2013Poppies, lilacs, and lilies
June 20, 2013Spring and early summer are the blooming seasons for the California poppy, Eschscholzia californica, which blankets fields and hillsides (and open spaces on the Stanford campus) in yellow and orange:
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The compound California poppy is subsective: a California poppy is a poppy — as the word poppy is used in ordinary English, and in fact as it is used by botanists speaking informally. So California poppy contrasts maximally with California lilac, which is not a lilac in the eyes of ordinary speakers or botanists; California lilac is a resembloid compound rather than a subsective one. Daylily presents an intermediate case: it’s not subsective for botanists or for many ordinary speakers — for these people, a daylily is not a lily — but it is for some ordinary speakers.
Arnie Levin
June 19, 2013This fine New Yorker cartoon by Arnie Levin, sent to me by Sally Page Byers and Amanda Walker (along with an X-rated composition by Pierre et Gilles and an X-rated photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans; posting on Tillmans on AZBlogX, here):
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A play on the proverbial “An elephant never forgets”.
exoneree
June 19, 2013From the NYT‘s Opinion pages on Sunday the 16th, “A Song for the Exonerated” by Francis X. Clines:
Having lost 16 years in prison on a wrongful conviction for rape and murder, Jeffrey Deskovic opted for the simple exuberance of karaoke to celebrate the master’s degree he earned late last month from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “I enjoyed singing ‘Live to Tell,’ ” he says of his graduation visit to a loud and friendly bar.
“Too many things, not enough time,” says Mr. Deskovic, an unusual 39-year-old member in the growing category of “exonerees” — a word he loves — who have lived to tell their tales of bungled evidence, forced confessions and the deus ex machina of DNA. He eventually won millions in damages after Westchester police and prosecutors were officially excoriated for a “tunnel vision” investigation that mismanaged exculpatory evidence.
The word is exoneree — not in the OED, NOAD3 or AHD5, but very much in the news in the U.S. thanks to the Innocence Project and similar efforts at exoneration via DNA.
Rainbow pousse-café
June 19, 2013A rainbow drink to go along with rainbow food for Pride Month:
From OED3 (Dec. 2006) under pousse-café:
< French pousse-café strong alcoholic drink taken after coffee (1833) < pousser push v. + café coffee (see café n.). Compare earlier chasse-café at chasse n.
A glass of various liqueurs, cordials, etc., poured in successive layers, taken after coffee. [first cite 1862]
Mock Old English
June 18, 2013A Progressive Insurance commercial “Castle” (viewable here) currently running on tv engages in playful imitation of archaic English. As usual, such attempts are seriously inaccurate, but merely give the feel that older forms of English are weird (and use the verb inflection -(e)th a lot). The script, which recognizes the inadequacies of the language:
What causes wind?
June 18, 2013Today’s Calvin and Hobbes looks at scientific explanations:
Trees sneezing is a wonderful figure. And like many folk explanations of natural phenomena, it introduces an analogy to human activities.
Annals of phallicity: the penis cake pan
June 18, 2013Passed on by Kathryn Burlingham on Facebook: one woman’s ingenuity in reusing her penis cake pan, with festive results:
stoned
June 18, 2013Today’s Pearls Before Swine continues the strip’s recent indulgence in meta-commentary:
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Think of the children!
Oh, that stoned.
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Gendered stickers
June 18, 2013Delivered in the mail yesterday, two big books of stickers from the Melissa and Doug company (I use a lot of stickers on the postcards I send out and on the collages I make): the Pink Collection and the Blue Collection, intended for girls and boys (ages 3+), respectively. Each has ten themed pages, with themes mirroring gender stereotypes for kids.