Yesterday on this blog, in “Not in a bad mood, just smart”, I looked at this cartoon panel that had appeared on Facebook:
(#1) Image plus text; the image was pretty clearly from Calvin and Hobbes (isn’t that Susie?), but the text (expressing a sentiment that resonated with me in current times, packaged in a slogan, or tag line) was unfamiliar to me
Then the searches.
The abbreviated form of a slogan, or tag line, that I came across on Facebook this morning, in what appeared to be a panel from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (see the Watterson signature), or could be an extract from such a panel with the tag line added (we live in a world that has both old Photoshop and new AI, so such things are trivially easy to arrange):
(#1) I had a thought of using this as a visual distillation of my attitude towards the current US government, but I wanted to get the credit right; that became a problem I haven’t yet solved
In the Business section of WIRED Daily, a piece by Brian Barrett on 4/23/25 with the headers:
‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw
Google’s AI Overviews feature credible-sounding explanations for completely made-up idioms
[Sexual acts discussed in street language, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest]
No, not like my excellent TeePublic DEI t-shirt —
(#1) A shout-out for diversity, equity, and inclusion
but a different sort of DEI t-shirt, one with a double entendre invoked on it, like this one in my 3/22 posting “Put a red apple in that mouth”:
(#2) A Double Entendre Invoking t-shirt: the slogan I like it spit roasted with the outline of a pig: innocently claiming that the wearer likes — that is, likes to eat — spit-roasted pork (with it referring to pig / pork); but raunchily suggesting the sexual act of spitroasting, conveying that the wearer likes — that is, likes to experience — that sexual act (with it referring to the activity), much like saying I like it bareback
Wayles Browne writes from Cornell:
you might spare a posting for Jacob Wackernagel, the Swiss philologist, who was the first to make sense of second-position clitics (https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/270), born 11 December 1852; and for Jost Winteler, the other Swiss philologist and author of Die Kerenzer Mundart des Kantons Glarus in ihren Grundzügen dargestellt (1876), who may or may not have been a predecessor of phonemic theory, but who definitely was a mentor to young Albert Einstein after the latter moved to Switzerland. Winteler was born 21 November 1846.
This is that posting, First, I have added Wackernagel (12/11/1852) and Winteler (11/21/1846) to my e-calendar.
Then, from my reply to WB:
I used to be an authority on second-position clitics, even have a t-shirt that says PUT YOUR CLITICS IN SECOND POSITION.
As for Winteler, Canton Glarus is where the Zwickys come from — mostly from Mollis.
Meanwhile, I happen to be wearing my Swiss-flag gym shorts. Hail, Helvetica! and all that.
Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro — Wayno’s title: “Forestry Union Negotiations” — plays with the homophones bear and bare in a fresh way, turning on the fact that Smokey the Bear (in those American public service ads for fire safety) is in fact a National Park Service ranger (who happens also to be a talking bear), and so would be required to dress in ranger garb:
(#1) The cartoon, in which Smokey appears on duty with his shovel for fighting fires, but regrettably bare: sans hat and (AmE) pants — also shirt and boots (regulation NPS wear is a gray shirt and green pants) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page)
Now: a little background on Smokey, followed by some other playing with bear and bare. (By the way, though these are homophones for many English speakers, including most Americans, there are English varieties in which they are distinct — but quite close phonetically, so the word play still works just fine.)
That’s what the fuzzy sign said that was being passed around on Facebook, in appreciation of its unintended ambiguity: it’s supposed to be exhorting us to oppose hate (with noun hate), but it could be telling us to do our hating on our feet (with verb hate); consider some parallels in which the N and V readings are pulled apart:
Stand Up To Hatred [N reading] OR Stand Up To Execrate [V reading, with understood object]
Stand Up To Yelling [N] OR Stand Up To Yell [(intransitive) V]
Stand Up To Urination [N] OR Stand Up To Urinate [ (intransitive) V]
I’ll look at the ambiguity in detail in a little while. But first some words about slogans, like the one on that fuzzy sign.
(Like Mary, Queen of Scots, I am not dead yet — but my right hand barely works because the finger joints are seized up so terribly I can’t straighten the fingers, and painfully swollen, and I am mightily pissed; had to apply ice packs at dusk yesterday, when the air pressure went way low and the pain got intolerable. This is, blessedly, a brief posting with not much typing to do.)
Max Vasilatos on Facebook on 6/10, with a smiling selfie:
(#1) Max’s header: “Breakfast of champions” — Twizzlers (twists of licorice-like candy, in various flavors) as a guilty pleasure, possibly even for breakfast
The Wiktionary entry for breakfast of champions:
(ironic) Beer, junk food, or other foods implied to be unhealthy. ETYMOLOGY Originally an advertising slogan for Wheaties breakfast cereal. Used ironically in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions to refer to a martini.
O pickle, my love / What a beautiful pickle you are!
Blame it on Nancy Friedman (@Fritinancy on Twitter), who took us down to the pickle plant in Santa Barbara on 7/18, citing these 5 delights, with their label descriptions:
Unbeetables (pickled beets with unbeatable heat) – pun on unbeatable
Carriots of Fire (pickled carrots to light your torch) – punning allusion to the film Chariots of Fire
¡Ay Cukarambas! (dill-icious spicy dill pickle spears) – complex portmanteau of the American Spanish exclamation ¡ay caramba! and the noun cuke ‘cucumber’
Asparagusto (pickled asparagus with a kick) – portmanteau of asparagus and gusto
Bread & Buddhas (semi-sweet bread & butter pickles) – pun on bread and butter (pickles)
(#1)
Pickles are automatically phallicity territory, and the Pacific Pickle Works in Santa Barbara CA (website here) doesn’t shy away from their penis potential, augmenting it by references to phallic carrots, asparagus spears, and unpickled cucumbers. If you have the eye for it, we all live in Penis Town.
Today’s Zippy strip takes us to triple Dinerland in Rockford MI (as it was before it closed in 2011), in a celebration of the rule of three — a narrative principle that favors trios of events or characters in all sorts of contexts:
(#1) The Three Musketeers (in the Dumas novel and the movies), the Three Little Pigs (vs. the Big Bad Wolf in the fable), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (the 1966 epic spaghetti Western), and the Three Stooges (the vaudeville and slapstick comedy team best known for their 190 short films)
The rule of three in a little while, but first, the diners of Rockford MI (a town of a few thousand people about 10 miles north of Grand Rapids).
