… Wayno’s portmanteauing title for yesterday’s (12/27) Wayno/Piraro Bizarro:
(#1) A play on Shaw / slaw (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
Three things: one, plays on the Shaw of George Bernard Shaw (plenty of room for silliness here); two, on the wonders of (cole) slaw; and three, a note on the exclamation by George (which of course has nothing to do with GBS, but also nothing to with kings of Great Britain, since George I (from Hanover) didn’t ascent to the throne until 1714, while exclamations calling on a George go back at least to 1616).
Wayno/Piraro Bizarro cartoons for the 21st (Winter Solstice), 23rd (Festivus, for the airing of grievances), and 25th (Christmas Day). The first two are Christmas-related, but today’s is not (at least in any way I can see), so in a spirit of holiday orneriness, I’ll start with that one.
12/25: the Fritz Carlton:
(#1) Ritz on the fritz (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)
Fritz Carlton: an erratic portmanteau of on the fritz ‘not functioning’ and Ritz-Carlton the luxury hotel chain. (Note: the desk clerk is a supercilious Frenchman, an imagined present-day César Ritz.)
It’s that time of the year again, you can smell it in the air: Pumpkin Spice Season. For some, a keenly arousing moment, as in this e-card (#1 in my 10/26/17 posting “Three more pumpkin-spicy bits”):
(#1) A POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau): verb pumpkin spice up = noun pumpkin spice + verb spice up ‘make more interesting or exciting’
[Proviso: this posting is about, among other things, ritual insult — a kind of verbal play-fighting — but it doesn’t pretend to be an essay on the very large number of forms and functions of ritual insults (and, more generally, play-fighting), even in the modern U.S., much less in different sociocultural contexts around the world and throughout history.]
Today, example 2 in a series of comics on masculinity for boys, a One Big Happy from the past (6/27/09):
(#1) Ruthie heaps formulaic insults on her brother Joe (including the kid insults stupid head, monkey face, and nachos for brains — poopy head, a stand-in for the stronger shit for brains, would be the classic kid insult) until she hits on something he really cares about
The Wayno/Piraro Bizarro from 5/4 (which was, appropriately, Star Wars Day):
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau), but here’s behavioral science + science fiction = behavioral science fiction. There’s something to be said about each of the contributing expressions.
It’s Eva Marie Saint Lucy’s Day and, in today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro combo, a Kurt Russell terrier bounds in:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbol in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there’s just one in this strip — see this Page.)
First, Kurt Russell and the Russell terrier. Then Eva Marie Saint and St. Lucy’s Day. In both cases, a member of what I’ve called the Acting Corps (see the Page on this blog), with a name in a POP (a phrasal overlap portmanteau; see the Page on this blog).
