Archive for the ‘Penguins’ Category
September 5, 2024
You imagine the scene: a dark and sleazy establishment serving drinks, but in the back room, hard-core habitués share bites of banned biscuits of every sort, while reveling in vices of the flesh.
Oh, not bar ‘an establishment where alcohol and sometimes other refreshments are served’, but bar ‘an amount of food formed into a regular narrow block’. On which turns a confession by Tim Brookes (of the Endangered Alphabets Project, based in Vermont; website here) on Facebook today:
Back in England, and straight away the old vices return …
In particular, the vice of McVitie’s Penguin biscuit bars.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Language and food, My life, Penguins | 1 Comment »
July 13, 2024
A surprise from my tiny family this morning, as my grandchild Opal presented me with two gifts: the children’s picture book The Pengrooms by Paul Castle (Paul Castle Studio, 2022), together with an adorable plushie toy of Pringle the Pengroom — Pringle, who is grooms with Finn (both sporting rainbow bow ties, in case you missed the same-sex theme). The cover of the book, showing the couple atop a wedding cake, with the publisher’s blurb:
(#1) Follow Pringle and Finn, two penguins with big hearts, as they deliver wedding cakes to their friends in the animal kingdom. Each cake tells a story, and each [same-sex] wedding offers a challenge that Pringle and Finn must face together. The Pengrooms is an enduring tale about love, diversity, and the importance of working as a team.
Pringle is larger than Finn — couples differ in many ways — but they’re equal partners as a team. The Pringle plushie:
(#2) Pringle, with a really big bow tie
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Posted in Books, Effeminacy, Gay voice, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and animals, Language and food, Penguins, Rainbow, Social interactions, Sociocultural Roles, Toys | Leave a Comment »
June 8, 2024
Briefly noted. Michael Covarrubias — an American, from Battle Creek MI, who lives and works in Turkey, and is now on holiday in Madrid — has been reporting on Facebook on the texture of the life around him in Madrid, taking photos with a keen eye for little bits of beauty, oddity, and humor. Today’s MC observations included a surprise: state-fair concession food from the farmlands of middle America. That edible and portable triumph of Americana, the corndog / corn dog: a hot dog coated with cornmeal batter and deep fried, on a stick. The Perrito Nebraska ‘little Nebraska dog’, an exotic specialty of the little restaurant La Españolita (I’m sorry; we’re all awash in diminutives).
As a bonus, it comes with some truly grotesque ad design that undercuts the natural goofy-phallic attractions of the corndog as art object.
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Posted in Language and food, Language in advertising, Penguins, Phallicity, Spanish | Leave a Comment »
March 30, 2024
Thanks to a pointer from Jeff Bowles, this first panel from a Peanuts strip (dated by Charles Schulz as from 2/16/60), now a candidate for my on-line icon:
(#1) Schroeder at his toy piano, on which rests a somnolent Snoopy, emitting the cartoon Z of sleep (also the Zwicky initial); for further personal meaningfulness, I am a former pianist (still an enthusiast of the piano repertory), now an analyst of the comics (among other things)
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Posted in Art, Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Mammoths, Mascots, Music, My life, Penguins, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
February 11, 2024
A Facebook alert today from Michael Palmer, reposting from Nadeesha Sonali Fonseka > Stranger Things in Stunning World on 2/9:
Australia’s oldest man Alfie Dates (109) knits tiny sweaters for injured penguins!
Some Aussie penguins in tiny sweaters
The Penguin Books sweater is especially sweet. And there’s a Rainbow Flag sweater too, for the politically conscious penguin.
(Yes, this is today’s Not Dead Yet posting. I have fantasies of writing somewhat longer-form entries, but life’s been difficult.)
Posted in Clothing, Penguins, Rainbows | 1 Comment »
November 9, 2023
From cartoonist Charlie Hankin in the 11/13/23 New Yorker (which has not yet arrived in my mailbox), a big black bird, a writer at his desk, and a penguin. And then today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, with a geneticist reluctant to order fusilli at a restaurant, asking for linguine instead. The first one is pretty easy, so long as you recognize an American poet and his most famous subject. The second is more challenging, requiring that you know about both pasta and genetics, plus a concept that unites fusilli and DNA.
This is another Small Posting Through Pain (see my previous posting, on boletes), which will probably take me several hours to get through, because my poor fingers hurt like hell.
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Posted in Biology, Furnishings and tools, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Penguins, Understanding comics | 6 Comments »
September 23, 2023
From Emily Menon Bender on Facebook today, reporting on one of her visual finds on a run while she’s on the road — in this case, in Chicago:
(1) Penguins in gay bow ties, ornamenting a portable concrete barrier stashed by the side of the Lakefront Trail, along the Lake Michigan shore
Two things here: the barrier, which is not just any concrete traffic barrier, but is of a very common design, which of course has a name, one you would never have predicted.
Then the trail itself, which is quite something.
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Penguins | 1 Comment »
August 29, 2023
With artwork by New Yorker cartoonist Brendan Loper, passed on by John McIntyre on Facebook, for the beginning of school (I laughed out loud):
(#1) The original seer-consulting cartoon, from the New Yorker of 12/5/22, had the caption: “The answers you seek shall be revealed to you by shutting up and paying attention to what happens in the movie.” The academic caption was created by someone, maybe even Loper, for Shutterstock
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Posted in Academic life, Linguistics in the comics, Penguins | 2 Comments »
July 27, 2023
It’s definitely Penguin Day on AZBlog — following on my earlier “Illusory penguins ” posting — with this wonderful wordless Jared Nangle cartoon in the new New Yorker, for 7/31:
(#1) The kite inherits its flightlessness from its subject; bird kites and butterfly kites can fly, but not penguin kites (meanwhile, a kite that could dive and swim like a fish would certainly be a disappointment)
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Posted in Cartoonists, Linguistics in the comics, Penguins | Leave a Comment »
