In my writing, it goes back a dozen years to a Language Log posting on rubber ducky, with further duck notes over the years; notable from the outset were items like the vinyl rubber ducky, a rubber ducky made of vinyl. And then today Bob Eckstein burst onto Facebook with a new Christmas item from the Archie McPhee company, a rubber chicken Christmas ornament — yes, a glass rubber chicken.
Archive for November, 2019
On the rubber fowl beat
November 22, 2019Here’s to adorable Gina
November 21, 2019… Friend of the skate and the cod
The Gina is a Zwicky, and adorable is a self-description. On her Twitter account:
(#1)
(I believe Gina is my first Zwicky of the Sea.)
A regular festival of ambiguity
November 20, 2019(Later in this posting there are a couple of raunchy men’s underwear ads, and some cautiously worded references to men’s bodies and mansex, so some readers might want to exercise caution.)
Ruthie and Joe in the One Big Happy from 10/9:
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Three senses of (ir)regular in just four panels. All traceable ultimately to the Latin noun regula ‘rule’, with rule understood as in NOAD:
noun rule: 1 [a] one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere: the rules of the game were understood. [b] a principle that operates within a particular sphere of knowledge, describing or prescribing what is possible or allowable: the rules of grammar. …
The range of senses of regular is impressively large, and illustrates a whole variety of mechanisms of semantic change; the three senses above are a microcosm of this greater world.
HardSoft
November 18, 2019(Hunky young men with very little on, in a sexualized context, so not for everyone.)
The Daily Jocks ad for 11/13, with ad copy, plus a caption, and then further illustrations for the caption:
(#1) “Introducing the Covert collection by [fantasy homowear company] CellBlock13: This jockstrap features a snap off pouch made of luxuriously smooth coated PU [polyurethane] that showcases your goods just right, and extra-soft fleece w/ u-bulge on the inside will feel great against your package. Available in Red, Blue & Khaki.”
Shoe-high pie
November 17, 2019The grim tale of the shoe elves who got wasted on ale and were baked into a bro pie by the evil shoemaker’s wife — I embroider a bit here — as condensed by Wayno and Piraro in their 11/7 Bizarro strip:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page. Two of these, the Pie of Opportunity and the Lost Loafer, figure in the actual content of the cartoon and will be duly attended to in a moment.)
The Bizarro Bros have folded a fair number of things into this cartoon, starting with the bro mindset and the slang nouns dude and bro, going on to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, in particular the tale of the elves and the shoemaker, and incorporating shoes from both Grimm and Bizarro, plus Greek pie, and I don’t mean spanakopita.
A hell of a queen
November 17, 2019From my 11/17/18 posting (exactly a year ago) “Teddy Bears’ Picnic Day”, with this Bizarro cartoon:
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I was moved to declare November 17th Teddy Bear Picnic Day …, but it turns out that (by whatever obscure mechanism these things happen) July 10th is already taken for this occasion … [however:] Elizabeth acceded to the English throne on November 17th, 1558, so that today is unquestionably Elizabeth I Accession Day. From a Princeton Triangle Club show from a great many decades ago, the anthem for today:
I’m Elizabeth the First / Say it if you durst / I’m a hell of a queen!
I’m now thinking of (Elizabeth’s) Accession Day as Hell of a Queen Day — a much more versatile concept.
Toadsuck catfish
November 16, 2019Today’s Zippy, with a catfish buffet in the Toad Suck / Toadsuck AR area:
(#1) Buffet at the Toadsuck Catfish Inn (in Choctaw AR, on US 65 South), obviously of keen interest to Mr. (The) Toad
As is so often the case with establishments in Zippy strips, this one closed a few years ago — though alternatives, like Eat My Catfish in Conway, flourish in the area (which is prime catfish territory).
And, well, yes, there’s the name Toad Suck.
Revisiting 37: pie charts
November 15, 2019Follow-ups on two themes: pie chart referring to a graphic display of information; and categories and labels in the domain of desserts, notably in the PIE, SWEET-PIE, and CAKE categories. Spurred by a link (from Kim Darnell) to this posting on the edible Austin site (as in Austin TX), “A Guide to Deciphering Dessert” by Bambi Edlund:
(#1) Another sense of pie chart: ‘chart of pies, a charting of pies, a chart showing pies’ (parallel to flower painting, room diagram, and part(s) list), vs. pie chart ‘chart resembling a pie’ (parallel to penguin suit, penis mushroom, and mushroom penis)
Chart pie
November 14, 2019The Wayno/Piraro Bizarro collabo from the 9th:
(#1) If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page. Meanwhile, the pie segments run through the flavors in the order named, clockwise from the pumpkin segment at the top.
Transpositional wordplay of an especially simple sort, involving a two-word expression, with X Y ~ Y X — in this case taking off from a conventional N + N compound, the metaphorical pie chart ‘chart resembling a pie’, and reversing the parts to yield the novel, and entertaining, (also metaphorical) compound chart pie ‘pie resembling a chart’.
The model expression pie chart refers to an object familiar in our culture, while the play expression chart pie refers to something novel and surprising: a pie made up of segments drawn from various different pies. Not a combination or mixed pie, like the familiar strawberry rhurbarb pie — a kind of hybrid pie — but instead a composite (‘made up of various parts or elements’ (NOAD) or chimerical pie, with distinct parts taken from different pies. (On chimeras, see my 11/13 posting “The chimera of Faneuil Hall”.)