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Hot pink Pride Party crew socks

August 11, 2023

A brief note on this intense item from the Daily Jocks DJX sale announced in e-mail this morning:


This might be semiotic overkill, with two gay gay gay messages each of which would have been clear on its own: hot pink socks, socks with Rainbow Flag bands — piercing, man, piercing

Well, they’re on sale (for $13), along with a bunch of other stuff from Daily Jocks. It’s high summer in my hemisphere, high winter in DJ’s hemisphere, off-season for Pride in both.

(Well, yes, I have given up on wearing socks, as just too difficult and painful to put on. But I can still assess clothing that I wouldn’t wear myself, so I can say that, in a sock-friendly universe, I would certainly consider buying the plain white version of these Rainbow Flag socks, also on sale for $13.)

Posted in Clothing, Color, Gender and sexuality, Rainbow clothing | Leave a Comment »

vière

August 11, 2023

In the current issue of the New Yorker, in the Talk of the Town section, a Paris Postcard by Lauren Collins: on-line on 8/7, with the title “Bartender, There’s a Beer in My Wine: Paris has been blanketed by posters for vière, a mix of vin and bière drunk from a wineglass, whose name, its creators say, started out as a joke”; in print on 8/14, with the title “Vière here” — about the hybrid beverage with a portmanteau name. Beginning:

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Posted in French, Language and food, Portmanteaus | Leave a Comment »

De Interpretatione

August 11, 2023

From the New Yorker issue of 8/14 (arrived in my mailbox yesterday), two cartoons about interpreting what we perceive — on what we see, a Stephen Raaka cartoon on the perils of pointillism; and on what’s been said, a Will McPhail drawing paired with this issue’s winner in the caption contest, with a text about literal vs. figurative understandings.

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Posted in Art, Comic conventions, Figurative language, Hyperbole, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics | 1 Comment »

Penal Grigio, the big house brew

August 11, 2023

Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro (Wayno’s title: Big House Brew — an alternative would have been Big House Hooch), with an outrageous pun on Pinot Grigio:


(#1) A vintage cellmate (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are in this strip — see this Page)

The model is the wine noun Pinot /pínò/, the pun is the prison adjective penal /pínǝl/: pretty close in sound, worlds apart in meaning (which is what makes the pun outrageous).

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Posted in Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 3 Comments »

The commonification of Magic Shell

August 10, 2023

A comment from Bill Stewart this morning on my posting from yesterday, “The states of matter: coconut X”, with reference to the third of the  (temperature-sensitive) states of coconut X considered there: not the free-flowing oil nor the spreadable semi-solid fat / cream, but a firm solid:

You remind me that I can take advantage of this unwanted by you hardening to make our own Magic Shell. Not that we need the ice cream anyway, or even the decadent indulgence of Magic Shell, which we’ll impose upon our grandson.

What caught my eye was the treatment of Magic Shell, obviously a proper noun (and a brand name), as a common noun (and a generic name): you can make your own.

But then I had to face up to the hard truth that I was utterly ignorant of what (commercial) Magic Shell or (homemade) magic shell might be. From Bill’s context, some sort of killer dessert, with coconut X as an ingredient.

So, the first order of business was to learn about Magic Shell. Then some recipes for making your own stuff. Then some comments about the generification / genericization of brand names, and the commonification (my term) of proper nouns.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Common vs. proper, Language and food, Opposition, Semantics, Trade names | 1 Comment »

On the trail of the high-riding fiberglass bicyclists

August 10, 2023

Yesterday’s Zippy strip, set in Sparta WI:


(#1) Ben Bikin’ astride his high wheel, with an attitude

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Posted in Art, Linguistics in the comics, Pop culture | 4 Comments »

CROTCH PONG 4 U

August 9, 2023

A follow-up to this morning‘s posting “Crotch pong” (note the lower-case p), about crotch stink, and to Wendy Thrash’s comment on Facebook, right after I posted this:

I am SO disappointed that this isn’t a new game

to which I observed:

I really should have seen that coming.

— meaning that I should have expected someone to hope for a game Crotch Pong (note the upper-case P), somehow combining the ping-pong-ish features of the Atari game Pong with hard-core genital action (the mind reels).

But let me pass over the melding of the common noun pong and the proper noun Pong — they are homophones, after all — and look back (with some fondness) at Pong, which can be credited with helping to establish the video game industry.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Language of sex, Toys and games | 2 Comments »

The states of matter: coconut X

August 9, 2023

I discovered the melting point of coconut X several summers ago. My air-conditioning aims to cool things to 80 F, so when it gets hot outside, inside my condo the spreadable coconut fat (used for daily treatment of my feet, legs, hands, and arms) melts (at around 77 F) to to a free-flowing liquid that’s very hard to cope with.

So this morning I put the jar in the refrigerator (where it’s probably between 35 and 40 F) — and discovered another state of the substance, a very firm solid that is also almost impossible to deal with; I have to chip away chunks of the stuff with a pointed implement, chunks that alas, do not spread (though I can get small amounts of the liquid state by using the (roughly 97 F) body heat in my hands to melt a chunk).

So now it’s back at room temperature, turning to oil again.

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Posted in Language and food, Language in advertising, My life, Names, Semantics of compounds | 1 Comment »

Crotch pong

August 9, 2023

(Intimate talk about male bodies, mostly mine, in plain terms, though not so racy as to ban kids — but I will freely use the vernacular noun and verb piss, nouns dick and balls. In any case, some people will find the topic of crotch odor unsavory.)

I’d hoped to be able to post about meat dreams and crotch pong on the same day — just for the sound of the two off-color compounds together, but meat dreams took a lot longer than I’d expected (I somehow ended up in the 16th century), so crotch pong had to wait a day. So it goes.

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Posted in Alliteration, Assonance, Clothing, Compounds, Dialects, Language and the body, Language of sex, My life, Signs and symbols, Slang, Smell, Taboo language and slurs, Underwear | 1 Comment »

Meat dreams

August 8, 2023

Not manmeat dreams, which I have all the time, usually quite pleasantly, my desires being inclined that way. But slabs-of-meat dreams, all through last night’s sleep. Not distressing, but inescapable: a continuing presentation of one piece of raw animal flesh after another, with titles out of Monty Python, things like:

#10, the breast of chicken; #45, the ham hock; #17, the pork loin; #99, the strip of bacon; #4, the leg of lamb; #57, the veal cutlet; #62, the porterhouse steak

I kept thinking: these are all really important, I’ve got to write them all down. But it was all in my head, where there’s no place to write things down. Frustrating.

When I eventually woke fully, at 1 am, I realized that my subconscious was sending me a message: IT’S TIME TO START EATING REAL MEAT. My subconscious was firmly convinced that my body had recovered sufficiently from my gall bladder surgery (almost 2 months ago) to cope with the full range of food. It was now shouting at me: GET ON WITH IT, DUDE!

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Posted in Art, Beheading, Language and animals, Language and food, My life | Leave a Comment »

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