Archive for November, 2018

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Climax Jerky

November 30, 2018

Brought back from Colorado by Kim Darnell, this flyer for the company:

(#1)

What the company does is make and sell jerky — beef, bufflo, pork, elk, venison, turkey, salmon (alligator too, I think, though that’s not in this flyer) — so that’s pretty much got to be in its name. And then Dillon CO (where the company is headquartered, in Summit County) is only about 40 mi from the, as it turns out, very aptly named Climax CO (in Lake County); the relevant sense of the noun climax is ‘apex, highest point’. But of course, they’re also playing with us. I mean, “Reach Your Peak”.

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Posted in Double entendres, Language and food | Leave a Comment »

Return to Dangle City

November 30, 2018

It’s been a long time since my last “dangling modifier” — non-default SPAR — posting (on 3/15 in “giving a speech on drugs”, according to my records). Now, from Josh Bischof on the 23rd, this excerpt (now item Z4.86 in my files) from Paul Tremblay, The Cabin at the End of the World (2018):

He passes Wen’s grasshopper jar; sunlight flares off the glass and aluminum lid (screwed on tightly) as though saying see me, see me. Lying on its side and sunk into the taller grass, the earth is already absorbing it, consuming the evidence of its existence. (p. 175)

The subjectless adjunct in the boldfaced material has both a PRP VP (lying on its side) and a PSP VP (sunk into the taller grass) in it, and picks up (the referent of) its missing subject, not from the subject of the main clause (by the Subject Rule, as in a default SPAR), but, apparently, from the direct object in that clause. Nevertheless, unless you cleave unswervingly to the Subject Rule, you shouldn’t find the boldfaced sentence problematic, and there’s a reason for that.

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Posted in Danglers, Modification, Processing | Leave a Comment »

Green flowers

November 30, 2018

It starts with this design by Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky on her Instagram account on the 8th, with her comment “Not sure why I keep making flowers green”:

(#1)

And then it leads all sorts of surprising places, botanical, cultural, and linguistic.

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Posted in Art, Inflection, Language and plants, Technical and ordinary language | 1 Comment »

A morning in the home counties

November 29, 2018

That morning was November 11th, when the morning name was home counties.

A first stab, from Wikipedia:


(#1) The former administrative counties (1889—1965) surrounding London (names of those bordering London in boldface): 1. Buckinghamshire 2. Hertfordshire 3. Essex 4. Berkshire 5. Middlesex (now entirely absorbed within London) 6. Surrey 7. Kent 8. Sussex.

The home counties are the counties of England that surround London (although several of them do not border it). The counties generally included in the list are Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. Other counties more distant from London — such as Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire — are also sometimes regarded as home counties due to their proximity to London and their connection to the London regional economy.

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Posted in Geography, Morning names | 1 Comment »

OBH information

November 29, 2018

Two One Big Happy strips that appeared in my comics feed recently: from 10/31 (Halloween), with Joe displaying information about tv shows; and from 11/1, with Ruthie displaying molluscular information she has gleaned:

(#1)

(#2)

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Posted in Formulaic language, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Movies | 2 Comments »

He came from the sea … And can only love me

November 29, 2018

(Hunky men in minimal swimsuits, but nothing actually X-rated. The posting is about the presentation of self in photographs, via clothing, stance, gait, facial expression, gaze, and the like. Not much about language here.)

11/9 Daily Jocks sale ad for Marcuse underwear and swimwear:


(#1) Come Wander With Me

He came from the sunset
He came from the sea
He came from my sorrow
And can love only me

He said, “Come wander with me, love
Come wander with me
Away from this sad world
Come wander with me”

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Male art, Movies and tv, Music, Photography, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Swiss Tasmania

November 29, 2018

The raw material: a poster on Pinterest, which led to photos of a quaint village:


(#1) Mt. Ida and Lake St. Clair, in the highlands of central Tasmania


(#2) The faux-Swiss village of Grindelwald, near Launceston, TAS

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Posted in Art, Snowclones, Switzerland and Swiss things | 8 Comments »

A grotesque word

November 29, 2018

Tuesday’s Zippy:

(#1)

Another chapter in word attraction: Zippy’s (and Griffy’s) enjoyment of “funny words”. Here, gargoyle, which Zippy, absurdly, analyzes as a compound of the nouns gar (referring to a kind of sharp-toothed fish) and goyle (a rare, mostly dialectal, term for a deep trench) — so, roughly ‘fish ravine’. Turns out the actual etymology of gargoyle is entertaining enough on its own.

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Posted in Art, Beheading, Books, Clipping, Etymology, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Names, Onomatopoeia, Pop culture, Word attraction | 2 Comments »

Put an egg on it

November 27, 2018

[Added 4/19/19: This posting is now dedicated to the memory of soc-motsser Frank McQuarry, who died on 3/26/19. Knarf raised complaining to an entertaining art form, but went out steadfast and uncomplaining; his complaining was in fact a form of everyday art, not a mode of life. Meanwhile, he gave us the epigrammatic advice, “Put a fucking fried egg on it!”, which is why this odd elegy for him appears here.]

On the 26th, in my posting “croquet monsieur”, a return to the croque-monsieur sandwich and its variant with a fried egg on top, the croque-madame. At which point a Facebook reader suggested that the croque-madame was à la Holstein — a reference to schnitzel à la Holstein, whose primary addition to the basic schnitzel is a fried egg on top. There is, in fact, a school of thought that anything (well, anything savory) goes better with an egg — fried, poached, or raw — on top.

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Posted in Language and food | Leave a Comment »

Today’s stunning word retrieval error

November 27, 2018

From Ned Deily on Facebook:

Today’s Revisionist Word Fail (as seen in another FB group): “today marks the 40th anniversary of the assignation of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.”

A form-based, rather than meaning-based error, but possibly prompted by spelling rather than pronunciation; the error was in writing, after all.

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Posted in Errors, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Word retrieval errors | 1 Comment »

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