Today’s morning name: Caran d’Ache. A Swiss art supplies company specializing in pencils. With a complex linguistic and social history behind its name. There will be cartoons as well. (No food, sex, music, or plants, but you can’t have everything. On the other hand, there will be clowns and some chemistry / materials science.)
(#1) The box for a 40-color selection of pencils, proudly flying the Swiss flag
Yesterday’s morning names. I have a ghost of a clue as to why Mandarin oranges came to me at dawn, but the Malamute Saloon is a total mystery.
Two recent magazine articles of linguistic interest: from the Atlantic issue for September 2018, “Your Lying Mind” by Ben Yagoda, about cognitive biases; and in the New Yorker‘s 9/3/18 issue “The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages: What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us?” (on-line title; “Maltese for Beginners” in print) by Judith Thurman.
The example: because of how good of a friends we are (from the Canadian-American tv series The Good Witch, S3 E3, first aired 5/14/17)
An example of a type that’s very hard to search for, so I tend to treasure each one I come across.
It begins with this photo, sent to me by a gay friend who found it, unattributed, on a hot-men website; found it, um, moving; and thought I would too:
(#1) Filed under “Hunks at play”, though the hunks don’t seem particularly playful
They are, first of all, hunks. The photographer’s gaze dwells on their bodies, presenting them as desirable pieces of meat. Then, they are sullenly inexpressive, not playful at all, despite the fact that they’re messing around on a boat.
I thought I recognized the style and the content as well, and I was right: Bruce Weber, a photographer who has played a major role in making homoeroticism — crudely, men as meat — a thing in the ad world (women as meat in ads has a much longer history). “Hunks at play” is actually Weber’s “Capri, Italy 1994”.
Today’s Bizarro/Wayno collab:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
Not one, but two portmanteaus: for the ailment, overemotion sickness = overemotional + motion sickness; and for the treatment, Melodramamine = melodrama + Dramamine. Plus the (melo)dramatic gesture.
My most recent appalling food posting — 6/20/18, “Annals of appalling food” — looked past the regrettable food of fast-food restaurants to other regrettable savory food (chicken fried bacon, in that case) for home cooking. There’s a whole subgenre devoted to appalling things to do with hot dogs. And another subgenre devoted to regrettable salads, typically combining sweet and savory elements in an uneasy union, as in the “Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise” of William Bolcomb’s satirical song.
Then there are appalling desserts, which reach beyond the usual components of sweet pastry, cake, pastry creams, jams, fruit, nuts, and sweet dessert sauces (chocolate, caramel, butterscotch) to the playful incorporation of ingredients like breakfast cereal, candy, marshmallows, Jello, whipped topping, pudding, and nut butters.
Which brought me, some weeks ago, to a recipe on the YellowBlissRoad site for, omigod, Twix Apple Fluff Salad (hat tip to Kim Darnell).
On the mastodon.social page , a posting by @Aleums of a scheme for generating a whole family of portmanteaus from a base set of five emotion adjectives:
(Ultimate source not identified.)
In the 7/30 strip, on the ambiguity of the word letter; in the 7/31 strip, a play on the name of the letter Y:
(#1)
(#2)
(Hunky men in skimpy underwear, but otherwise not alarming. And it will take you to some surprising places.)
Today’s Daily Jocks guy, for Marcuse underwear, with the ad copy (lightly edited):
(#1) Marco Brown, the pool boy with a white thong in his heart
Sporty & sexy, the premium Egoist collection from Marcuse will give everyone around you wild thoughts. Available in 2 colors [white and navy] and 3 styles, jockstrap, [bikini] brief & thong.
The first of the Three Marcos. On to the others…