In a private corner of Facebook today, this family exchange:
Child A was very busy.
Parent about A: He has an agenda
Child A: I’m not a gender
Parent: An agenda is when you have something you want to do
Child B: A gender is someone who serves food at baseball games
Parent: That’s a vendor
Child C *dies laughing*
And then from another parent:
My kid was so proud she tried cantaloupe at school. “The fruit, not the animal”
The Hi and Lois cartoon from 2/7/16:
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Super Bowl Sunday — today, this year — joins Thanksgiving and Christmas as a holiday that serves as an occasion for gatherings of family and friends plus a spread of characteristic food. A family food holiday, for short.
The SBS holiday crucially involves the Super Bowl football game, for the NFL championship: this year, SB LIII (El Ay Ay Ay!), New England Patriots vs. Los Angeles Rams at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta GA (6:30 ET).
While much of the US population gathers around tv sets for the game, its half-time show, and its ads — virtually emptying out many public spaces — others seek out alternatives. (I myself have an unbroken record of studied inattention to the game, from SB I in 1967 on.) Alternatives that are cultural, recreational, commercial, and even sexual. (This posting will devolve into tales of SBS mansex, but I’m putting that material at the end, so kids and the sexually modest can enjoy the rest of this material and then bail out when the gay guys strip and go at it with one another like weasels in heat.)
Once again, Ruthie grapples with ABC order, in the January 6th One Big Happy:
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The larger context: test tasks for kids, and what they’re for. Eventually this will take us to queens.
The 1/17 Wayno-Piraro collab on a Bizarro:
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
There’s a lot in this; I’ll start with the purely linguistic question: What does the N + N compound party linguist refer to? Then turn to the question of what’s happening in the cartoon, in particular how the notions of minority and diversity figure in it.
Tom Gauld’s cover art “Winter Garden” in the February 4th New Yorker:
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A lush indoor garden, in part representing a spring garden outside (narcissus, tulips), in part a garden fantasy (with huge trees, a parrot, a hummingbird).
Gauld — noted for his science-oriented cartoons and his goofily bookish ones — is an old friend on this blog (his Page is here). Meanwhile, here in northern California we’re going through our winter garden phases outside: a succession of spring flowers (narcissus of one variety after another, starting in December; flowering fruit trees starting now; tulips getting ready to bloom) plus specifically winter-blooming plants, like camellias and cymbidium orchids.
The One Big Happy from 12/30/18:
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Ruthie has heard that huge numbers of people gather in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. But why is it called Times Square? Obviously ’cause that’s where you go to tell time — where the clock stores are.
Charles Schulz’s Peanuts strip from 12/31/57, in which Snoopy takes on a penguin persona:
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The Daddy’s Home cartoon (by Anthony Rubino Jr. and Gary Markstein) for January 20th:
Doubly peculiar euphemisms heck and gosh: they’re replacing straightforward religious uses of hell and God, rather than transferred uses in cursing; and in any case the taboo associated with these cursing uses has ebbed to such a degree that euphemizing them has a decidedly quaint feel.
Sandra Boynton’s celebration of the day:
Be aware! Stay ware! Be constantly conscious of the significance of penguins. If that takes having a penguin shine a bright light in your eyes, so be it.
