The catch phrase of writer and performer Merle Kessler’s alter ego Ian Shoales, just a bit short of the more vernacular I’m outta here. That’s motion go. Then there’s elimination go, and an ambiguity between the two, as exploited by Calvin in this (recently re-cycled) Calvin and Hobbes strip:
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I let it slip past, but yesterday was Negation Day, 9/9 (a little bilingual joke), which ought to be celebrated by linguists. Certainly it should not go uncelebrated.
The catch phrase for the day is, of course, “No, No, Nanette”:
The morning name for the 6th: Attraverso i Secoli, the title of an elementary Italian textbook from about 60 years ago. Not mine, but Ann Daingerfield Zwicky’s. No longer in my possession, after several years of the Great Library Divestment, but still I remember it, and it somehow surfaced in my dreamtime.
The title attraverso i secoli ‘(down) over / through(out) / across the centuries / ages’ is a PP with the very interesting P attraverso, which (historically) is itself a P + a N derived from a verb of motion (cf. the English V traverse).
And the expression as a whole is formulaic, a conventional way of referring to (all of) historic time.
As a bonus, there’s the book Il Quidditch Attraverso i Secoli by Kenilworthy Whisp.
From the annals of naming, a probably inevitable name for a wine blend. From the cartoon files, a recent SMBC with a classic grammar peeve that is newly relevant. And from the news for penises, the image of a bicycle turned into a penis.
Every year we rise up and stream through the streets in exultation, mammoth penguins swearing in tongues. Tomorrow is the 78th Waddling of the Totems. And crying: Not dead yet!
Some documents of the day. Some reflections on the 78 cohort. And on living longer than the generation before you.
Four items recently added to the Pages on this blog: inventories of resources (primarily postings on this blog) on specific topics, under several headings: Linguistics notes, Lists, and XWriting, among others.
From Chris Zable on Facebook on August 3rd, a photo from her family’s holiday in Florida, with her comment:
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“Spotted this little lizard with a bright blue tail on a fence rail at the Tallahassee Museum. Much of their space is a zoo of local native species in generously-sized enclosures that are just fenced off bits of native habitat. We saw pumas, red wolves, and foxes among other critters.”
As good a photo of a blue-tailed skink as any you can find on the net. To come: on skinks; on the “Blue Tail Fly” song; and on my gay highjacking of the song, as “Blue Tailed Skink” (with skink as a portmanteau, skank + twink) — taking things far from Chris’s original child-friendly travel report.
(Men in skimpy underwear, but nothing actually scandalous. And there will be folk music, of a sort.)
It’s Labor Day, and you’re a guy, and you want to do something to celebrate working people (beyond enjoying the three-day holiday weekend, a product of the union movement). What to do?
Daily Jocks has your number: you’re hankering for a jockstrap, right? A really fine union-strong jockstrap:
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Sgt. Helsi, the Jumping Jack Flash, says:
Join the jockstrap army and see my world!
We are the jockstrap army
Every one of us with a basket
We all hate pants and shirts and shoes
Men: ready, aim, and flash it!
… with a note on the pronunciation of botanical names.
The crucial moment came in a re-run showing of the Rizzoli & Isles episode “Love the Way You Lie” (S3 E12, first aired 12/4/12), when the Boston detective (Rizzoli, played by Angie Harmon) and medical examiner (Isles, played by Sasha Alexander) pondered the significance of the fact that they had identified some pollen as coming from Solidago macrophylla, with the species name macrophylla pronounced /ˌmækroˈfɪlǝ/ (with primary accent on the third syllable). I was startled by the pronunciation: it’s Greek ‘big leaf’, so surely it should have the accent on the second syllable (as in thermometer, Hippocrates, etc.), something on the order of /mǝˈkrafǝlǝ/, and the writers had just gotten it wrong.
But no. The writers did their homework, and I was the one who was wrong.
Today’s Zippy, on cute vs. horrifying, two territories sometimes separated by a chasm, more often by an uneasy borderland:
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The central figure is either a cartoon character or a roadside fiberglass figure, but either way I haven’t found the original. Suggestions welcomed.
Elsewhere in Zippyland, there’s a domain of fun and dreams fulfilled, coexisting uneasily with, next to, a land of terror and nightmare — in amusement parks.
Outside of the darkly cute areas of Zippyland, there’s a huge sweetly cute world, centered on Japan and South Korea, but with a soft pink haze of Hello Kitty, Pinkfong (Baby Shark!), and more blanketing much of the world.