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Knight bibs

May 21, 2020

Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro (“Joust Desserts”) takes us to the restaurant Le Chevalier de Bon Goût, whose clientele is dragons:


(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbol in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there’s just one in this strip — see this Page.)

The dragons are wielding tools for cracking open knights in armor to get at the tasty meat inside: their versions of the wooden mallets and seafood crackers used for wrestling lobsters to submission. And they are wearing knight bibs: their version of the lobster bibs offered by seafood restaurants.

(more…)

Posted in Language and food, Linguistics in the comics | 2 Comments »

Bro Buddies

May 21, 2020

(Men’s bodies and mansex discussed in very plain language — not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

Bro Buddies, a recent gay porn flick from Falcon Studios, with three topics plucked from it: a bit of sexual slang; facial expressions communicating sexual messages and expressing emotions during sex; and detached body parts that take on a life of their own. Two images (way over the line for WordPress) are stashed away in a posting today on AZBlogX, “Cock run amok”; they’ll be described below.

(more…)

Posted in Books, Facial expressions, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Movies and tv, Puns | 3 Comments »

Balloon quotes

May 20, 2020

No, not speech balloons in the comics, with quoted speech inside them (though those are of considerable interest), but quotations made up of inflated balloons mounted on a vertical surface (in a form of performance art), which are then photographed, to yield the enduring art works: balloon-quote photography. The artist is Michael James Schneider, using the name blcksmth. His recent work Hustle Memory:

(#1)

(more…)

Posted in Art, Homosexuality | Leave a Comment »

Minimalist, and sometimes anti-bacterial

May 20, 2020

(Extremely minimally dressed men, with discussion of their bodies and of mansex in street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Annals of men’s underwear, starting with some extremely minimal items, including one that claims to be anti-bacterial; notes on armpit and crotch sweat and its associated bacteria, with their characterstic smells and tastes; and (a surprise bonus) the advertised virtues of merino wool underwear and t-shirts.

Under the fold, I’ll start with two of the more remarkable minimalist items: the Echo Mesh jock pouch (and harness) from CellBlock13; and pro wrestler John Cena in a hot pink banana hammock.

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and animals, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

The toroids of York

May 19, 2020

Two recent Zippy strips on Maple Donuts in York PA:


(#1) From 5/11; note the sign “Drive Thru / God Bless / America”; Maple Donuts has 4 locations in the York PA area, and it’s not clear which one appears in any particular Zippy strip, or whether Bill Griffith has created cartoon amalgams of them; and note the title “Covfefe Break”


(#2) From 5/15, specifically on the noun toroid ‘geometric figure resembling a torus’

(more…)

Posted in Diners, Errors, Language and food, Language play, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

The things they touched

May 18, 2020

The centerpiece of this posting is a poem by Conrad Aiken, “Music I Heard”, about the loss of someone much loved, and about the way the things that they touched and used can continue to resonate with you after they are gone. I was reminded of this poem by Mark Seiden (in Facebook), who heard echoes of it in my recent Facebook postings about the things that were touched and used by my two dead partners (Ann Daingerfield (Zwicky), gone in 1985; Jacques Henry Transue, gone in 2003), especially their clothing, especially through the scents of their bodies as carried by this clothing.

Mark’s FB note pointed not just to the Aiken poem, but to an especially moving setting of it by the composer Henry Cowell. The Cowell was new to me, though I was familiar with a (characteristically operatic) setting by Leonard Bernstein.

So, yes, this looks all high-artsy, with serious poetry and music all over it, but it’s also pretty much as deeply carnal as you can get, about bodies and their smells and tastes. Both of these things are important.

(more…)

Posted in Language and food, Language and the body, Movies and tv, Music, My life, Poetry | 4 Comments »

Title bout

May 17, 2020

“Title bout”: Wayno’s title for yesterday’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro:


(#1) Irresolvable stylistic choices? You could just punt, and avoid having to make any choice (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)

Actually, it’s worse that this; between panels 2 and 3, there should be 2.5:

Based off true events

(more…)

Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Usage, Usage advice, Usage attitudes, Variation | 2 Comments »

Division of labor

May 17, 2020

Not particularly about language, but it tickled me, and these days I can use some entertainment.

From the New Yorker cartoon caption contest #708 (in the 5/18/20 issue), a pair of men — one a fuming cook, the other a man in full armor, who’s the speaker in the cartoon — confront one another during a major kitchen disaster:


(#1) (I haven’t been able to identify the artist’s signature; suggestions welcome — now identified as Sofia Warren)

The caption choices:

A “I heard dinner needed rescuing.”
B “The round table is set.”
C “Fine–next time you slay the dragon and I’ll cook.”

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Linguistics in the comics | 3 Comments »

Bridge troll

May 16, 2020

Today’s Zippy, another of Bill Griffith’s adventures in public art (tilted towards the whimsical and bizarre, but in fact more general than that):


(#1) Featuring the Fremont Troll in Seattle WA

Both whimsical and impossible to ignore.

(more…)

Posted in Art, Linguistics in the comics | 2 Comments »

Edgar Allan Wrench

May 15, 2020

Time for a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau), today in a Wayno/Piraro Bizarro strip: Edgar Allan Poe meets the Allen wrench:


(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

The two contributions: Poe and his story “The Premature Burial”; and the Allen wrench, or hex nut, a device analogous to an ordinary screwdriver, designed to tighten or free up  specially designed screws or bolts with a recessed hexagonal slot in their head.

Buried alive, with the casket top screwed or bolted down? Reach for your Allen wrench!

(more…)

Posted in Books, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »

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