Today’s Zippy takes us through three commercial establishments with (variants) of –orama names, while fretting ambivalently about American patriotism:
(#1)
Wein-O-Rama (Cranston RI), Billy’s Burg-O-Rama (Oxford MA), and Liquorama (stores with that name in many locations), plus Zippy’s own coining, Shrink-O-Rama. As it happens, Bill Griffith has used the imagery in #1 for at least one other strip, which I posted on Language Log on 1/20/07:
Friday’s Zits:
(#1)
The playful libfix –gasm, extracted from orgasm and suggesting great satisfaction (akin to orgasm). Here attached to clean (either Adj or V, probably Adj),
Today’s Zippy, with a cartoon transformation:
The three Dingburgers admiring Little Zippy (already cartoon characters) become more and more like cartoon characters, more cartoonish, more cartoony: bigger eyes, bigger ears, longer noses.
From Andras Kornai, a link on my Facebook timeline, tagged as “for Mr. Alexander Adams”: a Schwa Fire piece, “The Name on the Cup: Brewing the Perfect Coffeenym” by Greg Uyeno. About choosing a name for ordering in a coffee shop with lots of background noise. A related task is choosing a name for making reservations over the phone (I have a small amount of local fame in some circles for using Alexander Adams as a reservation name.)
Then there’s Uyeno’s playful coinage coffeenym.
In television commercials that recently came past me: yummify (and more) in a 5-hour ENERGY commercial; and waffulicious in an IHOP commercial.
Yesterday’s Zippy:
Another chapter in Zippy’s playful morphology, notably with -ity: seriosity and goofiosity. (The names Mrs. Decaf and Mr. Groundnuts are a bonus.) The laughter uh-hyuk is true cartoonish Goofiness: a quote from the Disney character Goofy.
Today’s Zits, with jocular morphology and some (Wurst-style) phallicity as well:
Jeremy for Weenie World!
Then there’s dorkage.
Today’s goofy Zippy:
A grab-bag of stuff here, beyond the 60s clothes: the playful coolth (which has been around for some time) and Clauditude (certainly special to Zippy); the punning allusion to John Donne’s “Ask not for whom the bells toll; they toll for thee”; and the extra language play in the title, on polyester.
Eleganza Fashions (aka African Eleganza Fashions) is still in business, but in much reduced form; its Facebook page says it’s located at
2045 University Blvd #4 (BEHIND DUNKIN DONUTS), Hyattsville, Maryland
Today’s Zippy, which incorporates the comic-within-the-comic, Fletcher and Tanya:
F&T is a recurrent feature in Zippy. It’s a masterpiece of (Gricean) irrelevance, in which the conversational partners flagrantly talk past one another. What each of them says is grammatical English, though often peculiar in content. But the exchanges don’t cohere at all.
Today’s Zippy, on the origin of humor:
(#1)
Bill Griffith is fond of playful morphology: here, humorology ‘the study of humor’ and humorologist, plus humorosity ‘humorousness’.
