The xkcd of 1/24/11 (#851, “Na”), passed on by Facebook friends:
An avalanche of musical repetition.
Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
na na na
March 28, 2015John Bell
March 28, 2015From Facebook friends, this John Bell cartoon:
(#1)
A wonderful double pun, on stroke (‘brushstroke’ or ‘cerebrovascular accident’) and brush (‘implement for painting etc.’ or ‘light and fleeting touch’).
Hillary’s emoji
March 28, 2015The cover of the March 30th New Yorker, “Clinton’s Emoji” by Barry Blitt:
From the cover story by Mina Kaneko and Françoise Muhly:
“Where would we be without emoticons, emoji, and sideways winky faces typed out of punctuation marks?” Barry Blitt, the artist behind this week’s cover, says. “Seriously, how does anyone understand anything that’s written with only letters?” he continues. “I feel sorry for the alphabet. I’m waiting for the first original novel to be composed solely with emoticons. Oh, and Hillary Clinton.”
The cat at the vet’s
March 26, 2015A Benjamin Schwartz cartoon from the March 30th New Yorker:
Some friends have written me to ask for an explanation of this cartoon. The key part is the name Schrödinger. The cartoon is about Schrödinger’s cat, which has a certain fame in theoretical physics
Marine mammals
March 26, 2015Two images on Facebook recently: a Sandra Boynton drawing for Manatee Appreciation Day (March 25th, yesterday); and a wordless cartoon (on the “Mermaid Melissa” site, artist uncredited) picturing a narwhal as a unicorn in disguise):
(#1)
(#2)
(#2 has an actual narwhal for comparison.)
The end of March
March 23, 2015Today’s Frazz:
Ok, buh-bye is indeed an iamb, but it’s not a lamb. Anyway, the end of March is eight days away.
Lab mix
March 22, 2015Today’s One Big Happy:
If you don’t know the snowclonelet template X mix for dog hybrids (poodle mix, shepherd mix, etc.) and don’t know that Lab can be a clipping of Labrador Retriever, then you’re thrown back on things you do know and have to treat lab mix as a compound meaning something like ‘something mixed up, created, in a lab’. Cue Frankenstein.
Speed of speech, speed of thought
March 21, 2015Today’s Calvin and Hobbes:
Well, a lot of those thoughts are plans (below the level of consciousness) for the production of speech, so of course they come first. But Calvin is talking about somewhat more conscious thinking, weighing choices about the content of what you’re going to say — in which case, thinking before you speak might be good advice.
Signifying
March 20, 2015Today’s Scenes From a Multiverse (on-line here):
They’re playing a game of the Dozens, which starts out promisingly in the first panel but then runs down and takes a strange turn.
Political correctness run amuck, or amok, or whatever
March 18, 2015Today’s Scenes from a Multiverse (on-line here):
But think of the children, the being on the right objects, while the main speaker espouses rapey misogyny as true art. But my real interest here is in the idiom run amuck — or should it be run amok?