The Wayno/Piraro Bizarro for 5/29/18:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
Well, a green man would be voting for the Green Party.
But the strip is funnier if you recognize this particular green man as The Hulk, the alter ego of Dr. (Robert) Bruce Banner — in an exeptionally tractable and reasonable mood.
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
On Facebook today, Anneli Meyer Korn posted this Bizarro cartoon from 11/17/14:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
I was moved to declare November 17th Teddy Bear Picnic Day, in honor of Anneli and her husband Peter, but it turns out that (by whatever obscure mechanism these things happen) July 10th is already taken for this occasion, according to the Days of the Year site.
Well, of course, if you don’t know the song, you won’t find the cartoon particularly funny. (Suppose that the teddy bear’s message were “I’m sorry, the teddy bears are conferencing at Davos today”. That would be absurd, and so to some degree humorous, but nowhere near as funny as “I’m sorry, today is the day the teddy bears have their picnic”.)
Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, My life, Understanding comics | 2 Comments »
Today’s Calvin and Hobbes re-play has the two protagonists engaged in a heavy game of Cowboys and Indians:
(#1)
A play on two senses of rattle, denoting either a sound or a thing that makes a sound.
Posted in Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Nouning, Toys and games | 2 Comments »
Today’s Zippy, set in the Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights NJ (in Bergen County, in the NJ suburbs of NYC, near Passaic), celebrates grilled or fried ham and cheese sandwiches:
(#1)
Posted in Diners, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Names | 2 Comments »
Two cartoons that have come by me recently that work only if you have a fair amount of cultural knowledge in two dfferent domains, which are presented in the cartoon as parallel worlds equally present there. A Brevity strip by Dan Thompson from 4/27/18 (thanks to Joe Transue for help in identifying the strip); and a Wayno & Piraro Bizarro from yesterday:
Posted in Compounds, Language and animals, Language play, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Music, Portmanteaus, Semantics, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
In today’s comics feed, a One Big Happy that requires a double dose of pop-cultural moon knowledge to understand:
(#1)
A defiant gesture, a bit of lycanthropic folklore.
Posted in Ambiguity, Categorization and Labeling, Gesture, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Puns, Slang, Understanding comics, Verbing, Words and things | 1 Comment »
Three candy bulletins from the last month: the news (which came to me from Scott Schwenter on Facebook, reporting exultantly from Pickerington OH) that Trix Fruity Shapes (from General Mills) are back on the shelves; today’s Wayno & Piraro Bizarro cartoon with cotton gin ‘gin(-flavored) cotton candy’; and the Sunday 10/28 NYT Magazine Candy Issue.
Posted in Color, Compounds, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Portmanteaus, Signs and symbols, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
The Scenes From a Multiverse of 10/9, entitled #NOTALLPLACES:
A riff on Michael Schur’s sitcom The Good Place, with Kristen Bell (as Eleanor, apparently sent wrongly to the place after her deathGood Plae modality is harsh.) and Ted Danson (as Michael, the designer of the place). Also a comment on social media (Twitter vs. Facebook). And of course on the nature of reality and our perceptions of it.
Posted in Euphemism, Language and religion, Linguistics in the comics, Modality, Movies and tv, Philosophy, Semantics, Taboo language and slurs, Technology | Leave a Comment »
Posted on Facebook, this Peter Steiner cartoon from 2016:
(#1) From a 1/28/16 posting on Steiner’s blog
The humor turns on an ambiguity of the verb read, and also on a specialization of the derived nominal reading to a very culture-specific event.
(Then some words on the artist, who now has a Page on this blog.)
Posted in Abbreviation, Ambiguity, Books, Collages, Linguistics in the comics, Technology | 1 Comment »
In today’s comics feed, the One Big Happy from 10/4, in which Ruthie mondegreens:
(#1)
Yes: the song “We’re Off to See the Wizard”, from the 1939 movie of The Wizard of Oz, with we’re off (mis)heard as Rolf.
Posted in Books, Errors, Gender and sexuality, Language and medicine, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Mishearings, Movies and tv, Music, Names, Onomatopoeia | Leave a Comment »
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