Archive for the ‘Language and politics’ Category
November 23, 2025
11 … 2 … 3 it’s Fibonacci day today; the omens foretell 5 in your future, and then 8, and then 13, and then 21, leaping upward in ever-greater jumps, in an elegant spiral of numbers (I used to be a mathematician, and still have a license to chatter enthusiastically about numbers and abstract patterns). This is today’s moment of wonder and delight, the only protection I can offer against what comes next.
A moral monster of great power, dripping corruption and careening into dementia, is the stuff of unbearable nightmare; we are all living in it. Even worse: behind this demonic figure stand cool-headed engineers of death and dominion. But today I talk about the figurehead of their plots, Our Overlord Grabpussy. In two of his recent forays with the press, which I report on here from a New York Times story of 11/18 by Michael M. Grynbaum (which I believe to be the most accurate and detailed account of these two episodes — which I’ll call Saudi and Pedo); the NYT is behind a paywall for me, but three friends managed to get copies of the text for me.
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Posted in Events and occasions, Insults, Language and politics, Language in social life, Mathematics, Monsters, Morality, Music, Public and private | 2 Comments »
November 14, 2025
The US congressman, in today’s news because his pointed criticisms of Our Overlord Grabpussy have netted him a retributive charge of mortgage fraud, but I was about to post about him as an exemplar of liberal political critique (along with, among others, Rachel Maddow, Pete Buttigieg, and Joyce Vance) and also of nice-guy masculinity (masculinity being one of my perennial topics), with a note on a presentation of himself that employs both informal dress and facial scruff — the latter being a conventional advertisement of masculinity and toughness.
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Posted in It's Just Stuff, Language and dress, Language and politics, Language and the body, Masculinity, This blogging life | 2 Comments »
November 6, 2025
I had much more interesting things to post about, after my adventure at the lawyer’s, endlessly signing my name, dating and locating my signature, and then having it all notarized. But I’m the go-to guy on the Recency Illusion — surely not the first to notice the phenomenon, but I gave it a name and talked it up, so I come with a small but bright aura of Recency fame.
Which brings me to Grifterissimo Grabpussy, who in the past two days has burbled on about becoming aware of the word affordability. Who would have thought that so many Americans would be so deeply concerned about the cost of living?
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Posted in Illusions, Language and politics | 2 Comments »
October 29, 2025
The background, from FactCheck.org (a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center), “Meme Doctors Quote From Well-Known Satirist” by Angelo Fichera on 12/12/19:
[satirical columnist Andy] Borowitz … in a post to his verified Facebook page in 2016:
Stopping T**mp is a short-term solution. The long-term solution, and it will be more difficult, is fixing the educational system that has created so many people ignorant enough to vote for T**mp.
This was quoted (in a punctuational variant) on Facebook today, with ensuing commentary (edited some here):
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Posted in Education, Language and politics, Metaphor, Morality, Slogans | Leave a Comment »
October 11, 2025
🏳️🌈 👨❤️👨 🏳️🌈 National Coming Out Day, and also J&A Day, Jacques and Arnold’s wedding-equivalent anniversary (some explanation of that cooccurrence in an appendix to this posting)
The 10/8 Wayno / Piraro Bizarro strip, posted here because it’s sweetly bizarre (true to the strip’s title), complex, and cleverly goofy (like the one in my 10/9/25 posting “The flannel frontier”); something to enjoy for a moment in the midst of terrible times:
(#1) A phonologically perfect pun (Caesar the salad punning on Caesar the emperor), the pun-like Holy Roman Empire (a German political entity) playing on Roman Empire (governed by the Caesars of Rome), and a phonologically imperfect pun (romaine the salad green punning on Roman) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)
(The two salad puns are Wayno’s; Holy Roman Empire as a pun-like play on Roman Empire is an invention of the Roman Catholic church in Germanic lands in the early Middle Ages.)
The cartoon shows a Caesar (with laurel leaves) appearing before his people, cradling a humongous bowl of salad and waving a pair of salad servers like a weapon (Julius Caesar is often portrayed in Western art as wielding a sword). Next to him, a soldier utters a variant of the ceremonial greeting Hail Caesar! — celebrating not Caesar, but his salad.
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Posted in Events and occasions, Gender and sexuality, History, Homosexuality, Language and food, Language and politics, Language and religion, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, My life, Names, Puns | 9 Comments »
August 17, 2025
As Brutus is an honorable man, so The Crab City Darkness is a beacon of free speech.
A report on Facebook today from one newspaperman, quoting this (slightly edited) opinion from another:
This week marks the completion of my 39th year at [The Crab City Darkness]. Much has changed during my tenure including the policy regarding social media posts. So let me just say that I offer absolutely no criticism of the organization or owner [Dinosaur Broadcast Man] here. None whatsoever. Indeed, I am happy to have my speech restricted in this manner. Isn’t it best for all involved? I really appreciate the reassuring sense of being monitored 24/7 for content by my employer. Wouldn’t you?
Yes, of course. Please slam your boot on my neck; I feel unbearably unconstrained. Illiberty, that’s the ticket.
Posted in Language and politics, Quotations, Sarcasm and irony | Leave a Comment »
August 17, 2025
When recent chat with my childhood summer camp / Princeton / Wyomissing PA (now Golden CO vs. Palo Alto CA) friend Bill Richardson (William F. Richardson, hereafter WFR) turned to about politics in Reading PA (county seat of Berks County, where we both grew up; and where WFR’s father William E. Richardson (1886-1948; hereafter WER) was a progressive Democratic congressman from 1933 to 1937), I referred to the Socialist Park of my childhood (where we went for 4th of July fireworks):
— WFR: How do I not know there was a Socialist Park in Reading??
— AMZ: You don’t know about Socialist Park because it was in Sinking Spring, not Reading, and because Wyomissing had its own more elegant parks, while Socialist Park was more of a people’s park (with a dance hall and a roller rink).
WFR’s family had status and money, mine came out of the working class, but that was no bar to our friendship.
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Posted in Language and politics, My life, Parks, Photography, Reading, Work | Leave a Comment »
