Archive for June, 2018

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Characters 3: Cony and Brown

June 30, 2018

Continuing the characters theme:

Back on the 15th, in “Background foods and food discoveries”, I dwelt for a bit on Coney Island hot dogs, or simply Coneys, and digressed to look (in the text and in a comment) at the items coney/cony. Summary:

coney/cony for ‘rabbit’ and ‘rabbit fur’ has a long history, and is still current. Meanwhile, the coarse slang coney/cony or cunny,  strong in the 16th century, apparently dropped out of use by the late 19th, then apparently was revived in the second half of the 20th (with the spelling coney in 1960 and 2009, with the spelling cunny in 1973 and 2003).

My search on cony led to the Japanese company Line and its (female) rabbit character Cony (who is thoroughly cute rather than coarse). You never know where things are going to go.

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Posted in Emoji, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Characters 2: Perry the Platypus

June 30, 2018

Continuing the characters theme:

Back on the 4th, some friends posted on Facebook about what they discovered at their local Walmart:

(#1)

A karaoke machine — a Perry the Platypus CD player (from Disney) — on sale for $38.99. (A Hello Kitty player was also available at the store. Characters tend to travel in packs.)

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Posted in Clothing, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Toys and games | Leave a Comment »

Characters 1

June 30, 2018

Thomas Nast’s Boss Tweed, Uncle Sam, Denslow’s Wizard of Oz, Archie Andrews, Mickey Mouse, Godzilla, Mr. Peanut, Superman, the Ohio State Buckeye, Herbie the car, Hello Kitty. Not exactly (real) persons, but characters that are like persons to various degrees and in various ways. And all created by artists, all animated — given the breath of life — by visual artists of one sort or another.

In later postings I’ll get to two characters that have recently caught my attention: Percy the Platypus, transformed into a CD player; and Cony the Japanese virtual-sticker bunny, now working in short romantic videos with Brown the bear. First, some musings on characters.

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Signs and symbols, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Paul Octavious

June 29, 2018

A gift today from Maggie Ainsworth-Darnell: a great big poster version of this steamy photo, folded up in a recent release of the game Cards Against Humanity:


(#1) Kiss 2017 – Paul Octavious x Cards Against Humanity

Maggie decided immediately that this had to go to me; she knows my tastes — it’s not just a kiss, but a same-sex kiss, in fact between men, and, for lagniappe, interracial, and also a male recasting of a lesbian kiss in a famous 2002 poster by UK photographer Tanya Chalkin (1971-2018):

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Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Male art, Portmanteaus, Puns, Toys and games | Leave a Comment »

Swiss spin-off: herringbone tweed

June 29, 2018

The thing about spin-offs is that they can take you way far away from where you started. In this case, the start point is in my 6/19/18 posting “A Swiss thread”, about the Swiss silk thread company Zwicky and its ad posters over the years, including, in #5 there, Otto Bamberger’s famous herringbone tweed coat Plakat (‘poster’) for the Swiss men’s clothing company PKZ:


(#1) An artwork, not a photo

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Posted in Clothing, Fashion, Language and animals, Metaphor, Names | Leave a Comment »

Just a hijink

June 28, 2018

The Adam@home strip from June 5th (recommended to me by Robert Coren):

(#1)

It’s all about this hijink, with SG hijink, (roughly) ‘joke, bit of playfulness’. The usage is rare.

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Posted in Aktionsart, Back formation, Count & mass, Linguistics in the comics, Semantics | 1 Comment »

Mix and match

June 28, 2018

Today’s Zippy, at the Main Street Diner in Plainville CT:

(#1)

takes us back to this 12/16/14 posting, “Telezippic communication”:

(#2)

The same artwork, slightly different coloring, entirely different text, but the same story line:

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Posted in Diners, Linguistics in the comics, Music | Leave a Comment »

More Pride events

June 27, 2018

Two items for this week: an unofficial day of judicial celebration in the U.S., rainbow architecture as part of Barcelona Pride.

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Posted in Architecture, Art, Holidays, Homosexuality | Leave a Comment »

Drunk Cartoon POP

June 27, 2018

This week’s Drunk Cartoon from Bob Eckstein:

driverless car + car chase. At a drawbridge over troubled waters.

Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus | Leave a Comment »

Swiss spin-off: Züricher Geschnetzeltes

June 27, 2018

While searching on Züricher (and its variant Zürcher), as part of a look at men named Peter Zwicky in the Zürich area, I came across Züricher Geschnetzeltes, a characteristic Swiss dish that I did not experience as a child, but in fact first encountered at a little restaurant on Limmatstraße in Zürich — in September 1972, almost 46 years ago. A very simple veal dish, served on freshly made noodles, but absolutely perfect: melt-in-the-mouth strips of veal in a sauce that was both brown and creamy, elegant yet intense. Julienned carrots sauteed in butter. A crispy white wine. A plain green salad.

Something along these lines, but with noodles:

  (#1)

(A style of food that is, unfortunately, not particularly photogenic.)

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Posted in French, German, Language and food, My life | Leave a Comment »

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