Archive for the ‘Form and function’ Category

Focusing on form rather than content

April 15, 2026

In today’s (Wayno / Piraro) Bizarro, a bank teller focuses on how quaint it is that a bank robber has written his demand on paper (the way they did it in old movies), while disregarding the pressing threat of the robber’s gun:


(1) A quibbling triumph of details of form over the real threat of content (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

Faced with dreadful, uncontrollable situations, people sometimes take to fretting about some minor issue that is more easily remedied.

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human urinal

April 8, 2026

(a brief note about sex between men, described in street language — entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)

The hybrid. From “The Human Urinal” episode of MEN.com’s The Men’s Room DVD (the first scene (of 5) on my recently arrived copy of the 2/26 DVD:

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An infestation

January 19, 2020

A quirky Joe Dator cartoon from the January 20th issue of the New Yorker:


(#1) “We’re not a seafood restaurant–this building has a pretty severe lobster infestation.”

NOAD‘s account of the everyday usage of infestation (with notes added by me in square brackets):

noun infestation: the presence of an unusually large number of insects or animals [not plants or microbes] in a place, typically so as to cause damage or disease [of concern to human beings]: infestation with head lice is widespread | efforts were made to deal with an infestation of rats in the building.

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