What looks to be an excellent report on work in semantics/pragmatics on speech acts, from OUP:
(#1)
Archive for August, 2018
Book flash: New Work on Speech Acts
August 16, 2018Central Shark
August 16, 2018We’re in the middle of the SyFy Channel’s Sharknado Week (the 12th through the 19th), an event that continues to fly the banner of life-threatening sharp-toothed monster-fish even after the Discovery Channel has largely turned over its own SHARK WEEK offerings (July 22nd through 29th this year) to putatively informative feature stories. None of that wimpy speculative journalism for the staff at SyFy, who steadfastly maintain the tradition that has brought us SyFy-original gems like their 2010 Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda (which I watched again yesteday).
Each year some new movies (plus, of course, the classics of past years). Fresh meat this year:
Deep Blue Sea 2, Megalodon, Santa Jaws, Frenzy, Nightmare Shark, 6-Headed Shark Attack, with, as an extra attraction on Sunday, The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time!
Lantana on the trail
August 16, 2018Another report on the plants out my front door and in my neighborhood. A scene around the corner from my house in Palo Alto, showing a street planting of trailing lantana (Lantana montevidensis) between the sidewalk and the white picket fence around an urban farmhouse (a survival from an earlier time):
(#1) Northeast corner of Emerson and Homer, across Emerson from the Whole Foods; across Homer from tech and fashion shops; diagonally across from the Greek restaurant Taverna (formerly the Mexican restaurant La Morenita)
At the eggcorn’s edge
August 15, 2018Two cartoons from the 11th, passed on to me by Benita Bendon Campbell, both turning on (mis)perceptions and (mis)interpretations:
(#1) Family Circus: guest towel / guess towel (cf. brand-new / bran-new)
(#2) Luann: cake stand / keg stand (cf. acorn / egg corn)
Head in hands
August 14, 2018The Zippy from the 13th, in which the Pinhead mocks a piece of metal public art:
(#1)
This is a Zippy, so you can be sure that there’s an actual piece of public art that looks like this (though it took quite some time to find it, and then I stumbled on it by accident — a happy accident, as it turns out, which got me to the work and the sculptor through a Dutch bronze duck.).
Then the figure in the sculpture has its head in its hands — a gesture with a variety of possible meanings, seen in other sculptures. Which of course were the ones I found when trying to identify the statue in #1.
And Bill Griffith has salted the strip with two textual references: “The Sculpted Word” (the title), and “Man in Search of …” (last panel).
Butch fagginess
August 14, 2018The Daily Jocks ad for the 13th offers frank homowear from Barcode Berlin:
(#1)
Some premium men’s underwear firms advertise to men in general (and women who buy clothes for men), though with a special pitch to gay men, but a few — among them, Barcode Berlin — aim themselves directly at a queer clientele. BB’s crop tees display attractive midriffs, and the models project muscular masculinity — solidly butch — but the tees also convey sociosexual messages in teasing and boastful ways that echo the open banter of queer men amongst themselves, acting faggy: faggy minus fem(me), butch fagginess).
The nacho cart
August 13, 2018Drew Dernavich in the August 20th New Yorker:
(#1) “Would you like to sample something from the nacho cart?”
An office cart conveying a gigantic heap of nachos, with hot cheese dripping over the side. Underneath are who knows what astounding toppings for the taco chips, your choice.
A demented dessert cart, transporting horror-movie foodstuffs. The fanciest of high-end dining juxtaposed with low-end cheap thrills and street food, smelling of Mexican food trucks.
In Syntax Country
August 13, 2018In a vivid linguistics dream in the am hours of the 10th, a page of linguistic data gold that (in the dream) I carefully saved to my computer — my dream computer, of course — so I could post about it triumphantly later in the day. Alas, later in the day my dream computer was off-line, so to speak, and all I had from that marvelous page of data when I woke briefly was this not entirely certain recollection:
We never stop(ped) rolling over them / them over in Syntax Country.
Two possible contributors to this dream message.
Why choose when you can have both?
August 12, 2018In my e-mail, more Pinterest boards combining sexually hot Sterek (Stiles + Derek) slash art and remarkable hot dogs, most of them hybrids as well, as in this contribution from The BakerMama | Maegan Brown website on 9/29/16, “Grilled cheese hot dogs”:
(#1)
A brilliant combination of two classics: grilled cheese and hot dogs! A buttery crisp hot dog bun filled with lots of melted cheese [Monterey jack and cheddar] and a juicy grilled hot dog. Why choose when you can have both [understood: in the same (hybrid) dish]?
In this case, the hybrid food sounds tasty, but sometimes the hybrid is (like the spork) less satisfying than either component on its own, or even (like SNL‘s Shimmer, a floor wax and a dessert topping) an unpleasant union of incompatible elements..
P-alliterative and tetrametric lines
August 11, 2018… front-accented (especially trochaic) tetrametric, in fact. Separately and in concert. Notably combined in
purple rainbow puppy pen (SW SW SW S)
which is the household name for this object, recently acquired by Kim Darnell at a local vet’s office and now added to my cabinet of curiosities display:
(#1)