Archive for the ‘Nonsense’ Category
April 1, 2021
A Twitter comment on yesterday’s posting on dildos, the sex toys — entitled “Mitch is always DTF” (Mitch is a dildo) — reminded me that the word dildo has developed a use as a slur or term of abuse, and that — despite this blog’s long-standing attentions to dildos as sex toys, to slurs in general, and to the development of vocabulary in the sexual domain into terms of abuse — I hadn’t previously recorded this development here. So here comes a gang of fuckin’ stupid dildos.
From GDoS:
1 a general term of abuse: a fool, an incompetent [clear examples are 20th century; in American slang dictionaries in the 1960s, e.g. College Undergraduate Slang Study 1967-8 Dildo A person who always does the wrong thing; 1998 what a pair of fuckin dildos] …
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Posted in Etymology, Gender and sexuality, Insults, Language of sex, Nonsense, Slurs | 1 Comment »
April 10, 2020
Yesterday’s Zippy has Our Pinhead imagining empathetically identifying with Grover Cleveland, Gwyneth Paltrow, Frank Zappa, Martin Van Buren, … and a (particular) squirrel:
(#1) The title of the set piece in Zippy’s dream — “Martin Van Buren, Feeding Nachos to a Hyperactive Squirrel” — uses a familiar syntactic template for describing scenes
This is the world of “Washington Crossing the Delaware” and “Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer”.
Meanwhile, Zippy engages in a mental exercise that has absorbed philosophers of consciousness for about 50 years, as distilled in the title of an influential paper by Thomas Nagel: “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?”
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Posted in Art, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Nonsense, Philosophy, Poetry | 1 Comment »
May 3, 2019
… and the monster that guides the elderly. Both pieces of outdoor art in Switzerland, the first in the town of Glarus (in my ancestral canton of Glarus), the second in the city of Zürich.
(#1) The Caring Hand in Glarus
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Posted in Art, German, Language and politics, Language play, Nonsense, Poetry, Portmanteaus, Switzerland and Swiss things, Translation | 7 Comments »
December 12, 2018
It’s time for that moving, rousing carol that makes this time of the year so special. I refer of course to the great seasonal song of Okefenokee County, the Pogolicious, Kellytastic “Deck us all with Boston Charlie”:
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Posted in Catchphrases, Clichés, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Nonsense, Parodies | Leave a Comment »
June 27, 2018
The town of Wallisellen in Canton Zürich, Switzerland, has just come up again on this blog (in the posting “Three Züricher Peter Zwickys”), as the site of the Zwicky silk-thread company and now the Zwicky construction and real estate company. Two notable things about the place (from its Wikipedia page): the etymology of its name, which looks like a compound (and is), but without easily identifiable parts; and a Swiss German nonsense rhyme that incorporates the town’s name.
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Posted in German, Language play, Music, Names, Nonsense, Placenames, Poetic form, Poetry, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »
March 15, 2016
A recent morning name, a ghost from my childhood: a novelty song first recorded in 1941. From Wikipedia:
“The Hut-Sut Song (a Swedish Serenade)” is a novelty song from the 1940s with nonsense lyrics. The song was written in 1941 by Leo V. Killion, Ted McMichael and Jack Owens. The first and most popular recording was by Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights.
The lyrics of the chorus are supposed to be a garbled rendition of a Swedish folk song. The chorus goes in part: Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit.
The song then purports to define some of the words, supposedly Swedish: “Rawlson” being a Swedish town, “rillerah” being a stream, “brawla” being the boy and girl, “hut-sut” being their dream and “sooit” being the schoolteacher.
You can listen to the 1941 Horace Heidt recording here.
Many other recordings were made over the years.
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Posted in Language play, Morning names, Music, Nonsense | 3 Comments »
June 28, 2015
Today’s Zippy, with a parody of (part of) Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, from the (mostly political) dreaming mind of Claude Funston:
The parody reproduces the recurring /ɪŋz/ rhyme of the original, once as /ɪŋz/ (the things of the original), three times as /ɪŋ/.
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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Nonsense, Parodies, Poetry | Leave a Comment »
April 3, 2015
An addition to my “na na na” posting, with an xkcd cartoon compressing a collection of “na” songs into a chart: the song “Get a Job” and the name Sha Na Na for the rock group that took its name from the song. Nonsense syllables rule!
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Posted in Music, Nonsense | Leave a Comment »
