This New Scientist cartoon by Tom Gauld:
Five nominals of the form N1 of Mod N2. The first panel has the model for the other four: the metaphorical idiom family fount of all N2, where N2 refers to a kind of information. The last four are somewhat snide plays on this original. In effect, the cartoon supplies a template for generating fresh — in two senses — metaphorical idiom families on the basis of an attested one.
Yesterday’s Mother Goose and Grimm, featuring the computer dogs (the bull terrier Grimm at the keyboard, the Boston terrier Ralph advising him):
(#1)
To understand this strip, you need to know about keyboard shortcuts on a Mac computer, in particular the combination
Command-Z: Undo the previous command. You can then press Command-Shift-Z to Redo, reversing the undo command.
⌘-Z undoes, or reverses, keyboard actions. In the cartoon, the dimwitted Ralph suggests using this computer key combination to reverse events in general — in this case, the falling of the lamp to the floor and the breaking that resulted from the fall. ⌘-Z will fix it!
If only.
From Chris Hansen on Facebook, a late entry in this year’s Easter Peepstakes: a model who dreamt he played with yellow Peeps in his Aronik swimwear:
(#1)
About the company, its products, its models, its symbol, and its name
I posted on him here in a BE FUCKING POLITE t-shirt, giving us the finger. In that posting, I hadn’t identified the model, but now ace mandentifier David Preston has named Daniel M. Sheehan, of the L.A. men’s fashion firm Sheehan & Co., as the hunky silver fox in the photo. As it turns out, the aggression in that photo was entirely mock aggression: Sheehan the man is sweet, earnest, and funny — there are videos on the company’s site — and he describes the photo as “ironic”. Here’s another version of the shirt, fingerless and affectionate (a single red rose symbolizing love), but still oxymoronic (though now the context moves the intensifier fucking in the direction of sexual fucking: towards ‘be fucking politely’):
(#1)
Sheehan seems to have a huge following of women (who presumably fantasize about doing him) and a substantial following of straight men (who presumably fantasize about being him) and a huge following of gay men like me (who can indulge in both fantasies). The FUCKING shirts can be read as aimed at any one of these audiences, or of course all of them.
Now, since I find the man physically attractive and his presentation of self (some compound of macho and gay) equally attractive, six more photos of him and his work.
Today’s Calvin and Hobbes:
Calvin in one of his roles, as a 6-year-old boy in love with the clash of titans and destruction on a massive scale (he also has his moments of knowledge and opinion beyond his years, about art, for instance), and Hobbes in one of his roles, as an affectionate older-brother figure (he also has his moments as a tiger with tigerish instincts and as a playmate for Calvin). But what is Hobbes’s gently mocking speech act here.
This morning, this name of a song, which just bubbled up out of nowhere. (No, this is not a bright and sunny day.)
A sudden avalanche of linuistically interesting cartoons, on a variety of topics.
Yesterday’s Zippy:
First, there’s the morphological form dehumorized, an entirely transparent use of English derivational morphology (‘without humor, with humor removed’), but novel. But then there’s the ironic note that suppressing all humor is itself humorous.
A letter in the New York Times yesterday, from Ailan Chubb of Rio Rancho NM:
That the humor during oral arguments before the Supreme Court is deserving of analysis is interesting (“A Most Inquisitive Court? No Argument There,” by Adam Liptak, Sidebar column, Oct. 8).
I have noticed that sarcasm by one or more justices, and principally by Justice Antonin Scalia, is the prevailing sort of humor. Yet sarcasm is a known element of unfair fighting. It is destructive and takes away focus from the arguments. Some authorities call sarcasm anger couched as humor.
Given how certain justices use sarcasm in oral arguments, one would think that there is no backlog of cases in the courts; that certain justices have little respect for the enormous amount of tax dollars these proceedings cost; and that they aren’t mindful of the effect these decisions have on ordinary people’s lives.
Sarcasm, like verbal teasing, has a considerable aggressive component.