Archive for the ‘Puns’ Category

Be vocal. Be visible. Be fierce.

June 3, 2023

Advice for Pride Month this year, when forces of hatred and fear, wielding harassment and intimidation, seem increasingly arrayed against LGBT+-folk, threatening our celebrations, attacking the symbols of our communities, spreading malicious disinformation about us, and acting to curtail our rights — so that we have to confront these forces publicly and fiercely. An image of resplendent, powerful, ferociously sharp-toothed pride for the occasion, covering the spectrum from intense red to vibrant purple:


(#1) From my 6/27/15 posting “Gay Pride”, with my comment: rather more adult males than you’d expect in a pride of lions — but then these are gay lions, so they bond with pleasure

(Already back then, 8 years ago, the image was clearly memic, distributed from hand to hand from an original source no one knew (or cared about); some creator crafted this remarkable image and paired it with the punning title Gay Pride — a gay pride for Gay Pride — but we’re almost surely never going to be able to identify the source. It came to me again yesterday, through another acquaintance who found it on Facebook.)

From #1 a fortuitous find enabling an associative leap to a famously savage leonine diorama. And then in another associative leap, to feasting with panthers, to big cats in general (especially those of the genus Panthera), and to gay men who are beautiful, powerful, and fierce.

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No Pho King Way!

June 1, 2023

From Steve Carter on Facebook today, a pointer to Phở King Way, a Vietnamese restaurant in Gateway Shopping Center, Mission Viejo CA (in Orange County):


The restaurant; its name is a pun on fucking way, as in no fucking way!

Extracted and abbreviated entry from GDoS:

excl. no way!: (orig. US) in no way whatsoever! absolutely not! [1st cite 1970]

The exclamation is then expanded with the emphatic modifier fucking (They’re fucking crazy, etc.): no fucking way! (more…)

Piñatarians, proselytizing

May 26, 2023

Very much a Mary, Queen of Scots, not dead yet posting — but in fact a wildly celebratory one. Explanations after the main event, in which eccentrically costumed (but neatly attired) enthusiastic young men have appeared at the front door to push their niche religious beliefs on the resident (who views them dubiously):


(#1) Offering the (good) word / the (good) news to the heathen — feel free to imagine the emphatic pronunciations that are often represented by initial caps on Good, Word, and News — in a goofy cross of dead-serious LDS evangelism and the jokey belief system of the Pastafarians (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

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It’s endive!

May 21, 2023

Today’s  Mary, Queen of Scots, not-dead-yet cartoon (I’m alive!): today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro:


(#1) The two ingredients of this preposterous pun: It’s alive! and endive (punning on alive)

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Whizz Kid

May 17, 2023

That’s the punch line, right up front. I was going to post about the complex practices that attend my living in Urinal City in the Land of Diuresis, and maybe I’ll get to that some day, but today it’s pretty much just giggly stuff about English lexical items.

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Name that picture

May 17, 2023

A little follow-up to the Bizarro cartoon in yesterday’s posting “16 will get you 3”: suppose you were given just Wayno’s central drawing in that cartoon, with the challenge of giving it a name:

Well, there it is, the whole joke in a wordless image, which could stand alone as a puzzle, without any of the framing in the Bizarro version.

You, the viewer, would then have to discover Darth waders.

16 will get you 3

May 16, 2023

In my comics feed for today, May 16th, three excellent strips: a Zits on learning how to use a computer (and coping with explanations for how to use it from the deeply tech-embedded, like the 17-year-old Jeremy Duncan in this strip); a Rhymes With Orange with a truly bizarre way for spelling your name when ordering drinks at the neighborhood cafe; and a Bizarro with a high-groan pun.

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DISNEY ON ICE

April 17, 2023

Well, the title pretty much gives the joke away. An outrageous (but phonologically perfect) pun in a Bizarro cartoon from 9/6/12:


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

What the woman and her two kids get to view is Disney on ice —

(the body of the dead-since-1966 Walt) Disney (resting) on (a block of preservative) ice (in a display case)

What she bought tickets to was an entertainment (especially aimed at children) called Disney on Ice

(an entertainment in which characters from the Walt) Disney (Company’s animated cartoons are portrayed by performers skating) on ice

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From parts unknown

March 21, 2023

In yesterday’s (3/20) Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, a cowboy — call him FM —  bellies up to the bar in a saloon in the fabled Old West:


(#1) Though he’s wearing jeans and  a handsome Western dress shirt, FM’s greenish pallor, eccentric hair, and neck bolt mark him as an outsider, not from these parts, not from around here; meanwhile, FM is a composite being, cobbled together from random parts — bodyparts — by Victor Frankenstein (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

So there’s parts and there’s parts. And FM’s from parts unknown  is a parts ‘bodyparts’ pun on the model of parts ‘places’ in what is now a rather formal and poetical expression from parts unknown ‘coming from an unknown place’. The Frankenstein world superimposed, absurdly, on the Gunslinger world.

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The poutine checkup

March 17, 2023

Yesterday’s (3/16) Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, with poutine checkup as an outrageous pun on routine checkup — something for the celebratory days of mid-March, from Pi Day on the 14th through St Patrick’s Day today:


(#1) A regular checkup on the state of the patient’s poutine — the fries, cheese curds, and gravy of this Quebecois specialty (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 7 in this strip — see this Page)

Meanwhile, the patient is presented as stereotypically Canuck — among other things, wearing a tuque (that knitted wool watch cap) and earmuffs.

Wayno’s title for the cartoon: Say “eh” — evoking another piece of Canadianness, the discourse particle eh; see, from my 5/18/14 posting “… plus four”, this New Yorker cartoon by Benjamin Schwartz:


(#2) On the (mostly) Canadian discourse particle eh, used (roughly) to confirm the attention of the listener (but appearing here in a medical exam in the place of ah); Canadianness is signaled by the RCMP uniform

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