Today’s Zippy, with 19th-century novelty architecture:
(#1)
Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
Fireworks, hot dogs, and, yes, gun sales
July 4, 2016Three phallic things for (U.S.) Independence Day, the Fourth of July, today: fireworks, one of the classic audio-visual symbols of sexual climax; hot dogs (so common that there’s a whole Page on this blog on wurstlich phallicity); and guns, those icons of American independence and power. In order, from Jack Handey humor in the most recent New Yorker (July 4th, cover by Barry Blitt showing John Cleese doing a Brexit Silly Walk off the edge of a cliff); an assessment of hot dog brands by bon appétit magazine writers; and a Fourth of July gun sale from Cabela’s, featuring a semiautomatic rifle similar to the one used in the Orlando Pulse massacre.
Unlike a panda, which famously eats, shoots, and leaves, a Real American eats, shoots, and gets off.
Making plans
July 2, 2016An old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon in my comics feed on the 30th:
It’s all about achieving goals (in this case, to get to the other side of the lake) and making plans to achieve those goals, involving subsidiary goals (in this case, to drain the lake) and plans to achieve those subsidiary goals (in this case, by bailing out the lake with a bucket).
Human beings can be remarkably clever at devising auxiliary goals to reach larger ends, sometimes in several layers; Calvin’s problems are not in the planning facility, but in the utter futility of the auxiliary plan he’s devised.
Some other animals show some ingenuity in subsidiary planning, at least in certain contexts and for certain kinds of goals; great apes are known for their cleverness. But some animals in some situations are just not prepared to do auxiliary planning, as anyone who’s dealt with dogs, even very smart ones, can attest.
On the surreal train
July 1, 2016Following on my earlier posting on ceiling fans and, yes, the surrealism of René Magritte, today’s Zippy:
Every once in a while, the strip’s self-referentiality extends to recognition of its surrealist inclinations and the hostility this arouses in some people.
I’m enjoying the idea of Shrley Temple proposing to Marcel Duchamp.
Michael DiMotta
June 28, 2016(Graphics on gay male subjects, probaby not for kids or the sexually modest, and with little linguistic interest.)
A follow-up to my “Kinsey strip-tease” posting yesterday. I was unable to identify the artist for the graphic there, but (once again) Chuk Craig has done the detective work: illustrator Michael J. DiMotta, who free-lances lots of stuff, but has a special attachment to hunky, barely clad men and other gay male subjects.
The Kinsey strip-tease
June 27, 2016Passed on by Daniel MacKay on Facebook, this graphic interpretation of the Kinsey Scale of male sexuality:
Daniel: “What could the artist have been thinking by relating the amount of clothing to the gay-ness of the subject?” What indeed? Kinsey 6 as the state of nature? The ultimate in depravity? Or what?
The graphic has been picked up by many dozens of posters, but not (that I have found) with an attribution to a source.
Levels of taboo language
June 26, 2016Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, on a linguistic theme:
Aside from the meta character of the strip — the dogs know they are characters in a cartoon — there’s their avoidance of the word bitch, as unsuitable for the strip, because the strip is carried by “family newspapers”, where women and children (notoriously delicate and easily damaged by words) might come across bitch (even used to refer to a female dog, not to mention in the idiom son of a bitch).
Bob Eckstein
June 24, 2016On the occasion of my posting a Bob Eckstein (“bob”) cartoon (#1 in 6/22/16, “Two tests in cartoon understanding”), the cartoonist has friended me on Facebook (earlier Eckstein from 5/30/15, “Earworms, snowmen, and parodies”). So now a few more of his cartoons, of several different types.
Word times: two Ruthies, three Psychs
June 24, 2016Annals of lexical confusions and innovations. Two word problems from Ruthie in the cartoon One Big Happy (two recent strips), a word confusion and two innovations from the tv show Psych.
Two tests in cartoon understanding
June 22, 2016From the July 2016 issue of Funny Times, two cartoons that are real tests of understanding, the second more so than the first. From Bob Eckstein, a cartoon that is funny on the grounds of sheer silliness:
(#1)
And from J.C. Duffy, a cartoon that is just incomprehensible unless you have two pieces of (pop-)cultural information:
(#2)