Roz Chast in the September 2nd New Yorker:
(#1)
An exercise in the semantics of N + N compounds, exploiting an ambiguity that might not have occurred to you:
in the semantics of the modifying N, N1 (here, the coordinate N bricks and mortar);
in the semantics of the head N, N2 (here, the understood N store);
and in the semantics of the relation between N2 and N1 (here, ‘N2 for N1, (specifically) N2 selling N1’, in this case ‘store selling bricks and mortar — rather than the ‘N2 (made) of/from N1’ relation in the familiar conventionalized compound brick(s) and mortar store ‘store (made) of/from bricks and mortar’.
… or edible roots (with root covering any underground plant organ), or whatever you call the stuff. In the 7/30 One Big Happy, Ruthie, confronted with /hol fudz/, takes it to be just such a label, hole foods, when her mother is referring instead to a grocery store, Whole Foods:
(#1)
The conventional (semi-technical) label for the category in question is root vegetables.
Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro collabo:
(#1) A parade of unidiomatic prepositional alternatives (with the P of) to the synthetic compounds cheese grater, nutcracker, meat cleaver, egg timer
(Wayno’s title: “Rhyme & Punishment”; see comments below)
To understand the relevance of these nominals, you need to know not only who Jimmy Buffett is and that his most famous song is the notoriously ohrwurmisch “Margaritaville”, you actually need to know a crucial couplet from the song:
Specifically “pinksalt floyd rocks” Sexy Dark Swiss. Oh, it’s chocolate and it’s really trendy, because it’s prebiotic, and it’s whimsical too (the name Gutsii playing on gutsy and alluding to the gut, the playful allusion to the rock band Pink Floyd), plus it parades itself as dark and sexy, like a forbidden lover who steals into your bed in the dark of night. It came to me from the snack drawer at LiveJournal, brought by Kim Darnell, who works there.
From the Food Navigator site, the piece “Prebiotic chocolate? Gutsii enters US market on a mission to make gut health simple” by Mary Ellen Shoup on 2/11/19:
(#1)
Saturday’s Zippy takes us to southeastern Pennsylvania, the land of my childhood:
(#1)
Not in escrow, but in Hellam Township, in York County PA. Specifically, in the Haines Shoe House. Which is a house in the form of a shoe (rather than a shop that sells shoes, or a storage place for shoes, or …).
The original spur was this Pinterest item:
(#1) [ cowboy butter ] [ dipping sauce ]
On the dipping sauce in #1; the cowboy butter that is its basis; the interpretation of cowboy butter and other cowboy X compounds (cowboy casserole, cowboy rub); the combination of cowboys, butter, and meat (each with possible sexual associations); Jackson Hole Cowboy Cream; and cowboy cheese bites.
Friday’s Wayno/Piraro collabo Bizarro strip (titled “Shaving Cream Pie”):
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
Ordinary barbers use shaving cream; clown barbers use cream pies. It’s just like spas: ordinary spas use facial creams (for moisturizing); clown spas use cream pies.
Bonus: the cartoon shows a clown barber twice over: a barber who is a clown, and also a barber for clowns.
Today’s Rhymes With Orange, with a clown facial:
(#1)
From NOAD, the nouning of the Adj facial ‘of or affecting the face’:
noun facial: a beauty treatment for the face.
Then the noun facial ‘facial treatment (for beauty)’ serving as head in the N + N compound clown facial (for a pieing — a pie-in-the-face — involving a clown or clowns), which contrasts in interpretation with the compounds cum facial (for a sexual practice in which semen is ejaculated onto the face) and beauty facial (used to clarify that the ‘facial treatment’ sense is intended).
