Archive for October, 2016

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Triple-play pun

October 19, 2016

From correspondent RJP, this image that’s been making the rounds on Facebook:

(#1)

A nine-word sentence with only three content words, all of them punned on; all the puns are imperfect, the last pretty distant. Starting from the song line

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

with the substitutions:

dawning > awning, age > cage, Aquarius > Asparagus

Much as I admire the punning, I have to point out that the plant in the chicken-wire cage isn’t asparagus; it looks like a legume, a pea or bean.

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Posted in Language and plants, Puns | Leave a Comment »

Journalist Fred Zwicky

October 18, 2016

Many notices on Google Alert for Fred Zwicky, always on the occasion of a story he’s written for the Peoria (IL) Journal Star (with photos of the subject of his piece). He has a portfolio on the journalists’ site Muck Rack, where he’s identified as the “Visual Assignment Editor” on the paper. The identifier combines two journalistic terms, one (assignment editor) that’s been around for some time, one (visual journalist) that seems to combine the traditional roles of reporter, photographer, and photo editor.

(#1)

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Posted in Language in the media, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

More Zwicky postings

October 17, 2016

There’s now a Page on this blog for things Zwicky (besides me): postings about people named Zwicky and things named Zwicky. In recognition, an assortment of things not already posted: on muesli, a fanciful derivation of the surname (on a t-shirt), a low-budget mystery film, a Quebec eco-activist, and a Zwicky cheese man who’s moved from America’s Dairyland to serving the Big Apple.

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Posted in Clothing, Language and food, Movies and tv, Names, Portmanteaus, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

Nick Cave and the Soundsuits

October 17, 2016

Today’s news from Stanford included “Nick Cave exhibition at Stanford challenges artistic conventions”:

A new exhibition at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University blends the visual arts with performance. Nick Cave’s Soundsuits are part sculpture, part costume [and part musical instruments]. Made of a myriad of discarded and disused materials, they are designed to be worn and moved in, concealing the wearer’s race, gender and age. The exhibition runs through Aug. 14, 2017.

There’s an accompanying video.

Note: not the Australian musician Nick Cave, fascinating though he is, but the artist Nick Cave.

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Posted in Art, Music | 1 Comment »

Workin’ Blue at the Car Wash

October 17, 2016

Clay Colwell on Facebook today:

I just saw a guy holding a sign saying “HAND JOBS $10”. He was outside a car wash, so I’m sure it was for hand-wash service, but ya never know.

We’ve visited the world of deliberately provocative hand job before, on 3/22/16 in “Annals of dubious commercial names”, referring to a spa named Hand Job (referring to manicures) on Castro St. in San Francisco. But the expression is widespread at car washes to refer provocatively to hand-washing. In both cases playing on vulgar slang hand job ‘masurbation of a man’.

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Posted in Double entendres, Language of advertising, Language of sex, Slang | 2 Comments »

Dog massage

October 17, 2016

Today’s Bizarro:

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

In case you didn’t know that Shih Tzu is the name of a breed of dog, you can infer that from the cartoon, and you can see that the little dogs are (absurdly) being used to give a massage here. That’s funny in a way, but to really appreciate the cartoon, you have to know that there’s a type of massage known as shiatsu. Cultural knowledge looms again.

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Posted in Borrowing, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Names | Leave a Comment »

Zwickys of New York: Chuck the mixmaster

October 17, 2016

Following on yesterday’s appreciation of artist Calder Zwicky, I was led to check out Zwickys in New York City. There aren’t a great many, at least from the Swiss migrations to America in the 18th through early 20th centuries; Swiss immigrants from those days went first primarily to farm country (some details below), and their descendants (like me, and Calder Zwicky) then moved to seek new lives in urban areas. However, among the Zwickys of New York I did come across sound mixer Chuck Zwicky.

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Posted in Events and occasions, Music, My life, Names, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

On the Zwicky art watch: Calder Zwicky

October 16, 2016

Thanks to a Google Alert, on the 12th I became aware of the NYC artist Calder Zwicky, through an announcement of a two-person multimedia exhibit “Mistakes Were Made – Adam Tetzloff and Calder Zwicky”, October 12-16, at the West Side Art Coalition, “exploring themes of public space, found objects, destruction, beauty and humor”. That led me to this wonderful photo:

(#1)

In an online course from the Museum of Modern Art, Calder Zwicky, associate educator, demonstrates color mixing techniques.

This seems to be CZ’s day job, as it were, in which he gets to pursue, among other things, teen outreach (a project of importance to him) for MOMA, while he exhibits in many shows around the city.

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Posted in Art, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

Huzzah!

October 16, 2016

On the 13th, in the New Yorker daily posting, a rapidly composed shout of delight from David Remnick (the editor)

LET’S CELEBRATE THE BOB DYLAN NOBEL WIN

(I would have added an exclamation point.) With links to 8 songs and an interview. Plus a quickly sketched cartoon from David Sipress:

  (#1)

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Posted in Awards, Linguistics in the comics, Music, My life, Poetry | Leave a Comment »

… and his fruit was sweet to my taste

October 16, 2016

A return, after several years, to posting my collages on this blog and on AZBlogX (depending on their X-ratings). Two inaugural postings: one already on my X blog with five collages in the Bangers & Mash series, now one on this blog with two Sausage Tree collages (high phallicity, no actual phalluses):

(#1)

(#2)

(more…)

Posted in Collages, Gender and sexuality, Parody, Phallicity | Leave a Comment »

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