Today’s Zippy, with remarkable names:
Bill Griffith loves to play with names.
Archive for July, 2013
A name puzzle
July 12, 2013Name notes
July 12, 2013Item 1, royal names. On NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, people discussing names for the forthcoming British royal baby.
Item 2, unisex names, in particular Taylor.
Item 3, fashions in naming, especially for American Jews.
More meta-cartoons
July 11, 2013The great wave of meta-cartooning, in which characters in a cartoon recognize in some way that they are, in fact, in a cartoon, continues, as Robert Coren noted in a comment on my posting on yesterday’s Zippy. Here I’m going to reproduce the two strips from Robert’s comment (both from yesterday), mostly because (so far as I can tell from my records) I haven’t posted about them before. So, an Arlo and Janis and an Adam@Home:
(#1)
(#2)
Unlike my other postings this morning, shirtless men will not come into it. That is, this posting is shirtlessnessless.
Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”
July 11, 2013(Not much about language, but mostly about music, clothing or lack of it, and sexuality. Eventually there will be another shirtless man.)
On NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, a story about Robin Thicke’s latest hit song, beginning:
For five weeks in a row, Robin Thicke’s playful, button-pushing song “Blurred Lines” has been the No. 1 song in the country. It’s a catchy piece of summertime pop, but much of the attention came after the premiere of the song’s video, which features Thicke and his male collaborators — the rapper T.I. and the producer Pharrell Williams — strutting for the camera alongside a trio of models. The men are fully dressed. The women, in an “unrated” version of the video, are nearly nude (you can watch the relatively safe-for-work version here). It set off a wave of criticism, and focused attention on the song’s lyrics, which feature the line “You know you want it.”
The nearly-nude NSFW version is here (#1).
(The women’s breasts, including nipples, are shown in this version, but not their pubes, which are covered by flesh-colored panties.)
More tennis hunks
July 11, 2013(Not about language, but mostly about men’s bodies.)
This seems to be a Morning of Shirtlessness. Following on a posting about musician Steve Grand working as an underwear model, I now return to shirtless tennis stars, this time with Wimbledon champion Andy Murray and all-time great Roger Federer (yay, Switzerland!) — once again, a somewhat leaner man paired with a more muscular one (but both are hunks).
Steve Grand, DNA, Timoteo
July 11, 2013(Not a lot about language, but mostly about music, sexuality, and the display of men’s bodies.)
[Note 7/10/14: at the request of the photographer (see comments), most of the images have been removed from this posting. As far as I know, they can all still be accessed by Google image searches on Steve Grand, DNA, or Timoteo.]
This is about the country musician Steve Grand, the cover musician Steve Starchild, and the underwear models Steve Chatham and Finn Diesel — who are all the same young man, now getting wild media attention through a music video. From Wikipedia:
Steve Grand [born 1990] is a country music performer from Lemont, Illinois. He was acclaimed as the first openly gay male country singer after the music video of his song “All-American Boy” went viral on YouTube in less than a week.
“All-American Boy” is a sweet song of unrequited love, between the gay singer and his straight best buddy. It’s notable for including a kiss between the men that passes without eliciting “gay panic”, either in the buddy or in most of the video’s many viewers. Grand is also a strong singer with an attractive voice (hence Starchild’s career as a cover singer) and a very attractive body as well (hence Grand’s career as an underwear model, under various names).
Sconic sections
July 10, 2013From several sources on the net, this entertaining story posted 6/25/13 on the Evil Mad Scientist site:
Play with your food: How to Make Sconic Sections
The conic sections are the four classic geometric curves that can occur at the intersection between a cone and a plane: the circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola.
The scone is a classic single-serving quick bread that is often served with breakfast or tea.
And, at the intersection of the two, we present something entirely new, delightfully educational, and remarkably tasty: Sconic Sections.
Detailed instructions follow. The edges of the sections can be highlighted by jam, chocolate, or Nutella (as above).
Sexy olive oil
July 10, 2013Ad agencies use both sex and playfulness to sell things; see near-naked Anderson Davis in ads for Kraft’s Zesty Italian salad dressing (here) and lots of naked people (with the naughty bits cleverly concealed) in a funny Richmond ham comercial (here). Now (passed on by several people on Facebook) still more sexy silly food advertising, from Bertolli Olive Oil Australia, in this video.
We get purported model, chef, and author Alfredo Caldo-Freddo (‘heat-cold’), mostly in a skimpy (and backless) apron (so that we get a glimpse of his handsome butt) but sometimes in tight pants, showing off his chest, doing an Italian accent, and jokily hawking three kinds of Bertolli olive oil: Extra Virgin for cold dishes and Classico and extra light for hot dishes.
Flouting Quantity
July 10, 2013Today’s Dilbert has the devious Wally flouting Grice’s maxim of Quantity:
(On Grice’s maxims, see this posting.) Saying “not two” implicates — conversationally implicates — not two or more, but Wally disregards this in favor of treating not two as ‘not exactly two’. But the pointy-headed boss has enough experience with Wally to suspect his deviousness.
Cartoon stubble
July 10, 2013Today’s Zippy, with more meta-cartooning:
(#1)
That’s not real, follicular stubble, just cartoon stubble.