Archive for the ‘Mascots’ Category
April 17, 2023
— a Wayno / Piraro Bizarro cartoon from 10/20/21, “Written by Goober Louis Stevenson”, according to Wayno’s title:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
A wonderfully goofy cross between two items of popular culture:
— the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, originally told as a literary tale, a caution about the dark duality of human nature and the danger of aspiring to divine power, but quickly folded into the popular consciousness in many forms
— and the figure of Mr. Peanut, the anthropomorphic mascot of the Planter’s Peanut Company
with the amiable and elegant commercial legume standing in for the evil and murderous Edward Hyde.
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Posted in Books, History, Language and ethnicity, Language and food, Language in advertising, Linguistics in the comics, Literature, Mascots, Movies and tv, Race and ethnicity, Stereotyping | 1 Comment »
February 13, 2023
(#1)
Thanks to this year’s alignment of the Gregorian and Roman Catholic church calendars and the schedule of official US holidays, the month of February 2023 has two periods of presidential pleasure in it — festivals of Lincoln and license (food and sex) embracing first 2/12 (Lincoln Darwin Day), 2/13 (today, LDV Day), and 2/14 (Valentine’s Day), and then 2/20 ((US) Presidents Day) and 2/21 (Mardi Gras).
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Posted in Compounds, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and food, Language of sex, Logos, Mascots, Phallicity, Poetic form, Semantics of compounds, Signs and symbols, Underwear | 1 Comment »
February 11, 2023
Annals of bizarre commerce, in today’s announcement by Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky that she has ordered an (ornamental) deer head with ZWICKY (among other things) emblazoned on it. From Miho Unexpected Things (“Striking and fun italian home decor”), where it’s one of a number of deer heads on offer:
(#1) This particular model is named Zwickypedia; ZWICKY is presumably pronounced en français, like the other words on the head
WTF!? you exclaim / ask. Why ZWICKY?
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Posted in Furnishings and tools, Language and animals, Mascots, Signs and symbols, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »
January 3, 2023
(On the personal background, see my Zardoz posting; the posting below is one I started yesterday but was unable to finish. Hard days.)
Yesterday’s Rhymes With Orange cartoon shows a collection of (apparently all male, to judge from the prickly body hair) penguins putting on their (tuxedo-like) overcoats for journeying home after a winter party:
(#1) Translation between worlds: the characters are all penguins, but they are also human beings in a modern social situation
These penguin suits are overcoats (somewhat resembling tuxedos); in the classic penguin-suit cartoon, however, the suits are actual tuxedos.
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Posted in Clothing, Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Mascots, Penguins, Slang | Leave a Comment »
November 3, 2022
Return with me now to the middle of June, when I was impelled into the world of Zwicky logos, including not only ones for prominent Swiss commercial enterprises in grain, sewing thread, and real estate (the grain company is where it all started on 6/14), but also for beer (in Colorado), hair styling (also in Colorado), car repair (in Canton Aargau in Switzerland), and astronomical surveys (in California).
The original impulse came from Kyle Wohlmut, posting on Facebook on 6/14 “at Zwicky Areal”, with this photo taken from his commuter train:
(#1) KW > AZ (about the gnome in the logo): I don’t think that’s a very good likeness…
The logo in question:
(#2) The gnome is indeed not a good likeness of me
There ensued a confusion that turned out to have to do with the word Areal, but eventually it was established that the gnomic logo in #1 and #2 is for the Zwicky grain company (Schweizerische Schälmühle E. Zwicky AG), headquartered in a corner of Canton Thurgau; while the Zwicky sewing-thread company (now merged into the German company A&E Gütermann) and the real-estate company (Zwicky & Co AG, headquartered in the Zürich suburb of Wallisellen) base their logos on the Donald Brun silk-cat poster of the 1950s (which I’ve posted about repeatedly).
But Kyle’s note sent me on a search for Zwicky logos, which took me immediately to the 4 Noses Brewing Company in Broomfield CO, makers of Zwicky P (a Pilsner-style lager) and on to all the rest.
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Posted in Art, Language and food, Logos, Mascots, Signs and symbols, Zwickys | 2 Comments »
September 8, 2022
As reported in my 82nd birthday posting “Three greetings for 9/6/22”, while I was holed up at home in severe and debilitating heat misery on the day, some friends e-mailed me delightful greetings — visual, verbal, and musical — and a hundred or so of them wished me a happy birthday, mostly via Facebook. Meanwhile, I ordered up some coffee gelato (it was also National Coffee Ice Cream Day, and that’s my favorite ice cream flavor) and a carrot cake (which is, well, cake, but very flavorful and chewy and not terribly sweet, and it comes with a lovely cream cheese frosting, all of which suits my tastes). I found no way to honor the Marquis de Lafayette (born 9/6/1757), though here I’ll give my summary from the Lafayette section of my 9/7/19 posting “Big sexy prime birthday gay ice cream”:
A man of enormous physical courage who took up the family military career at the age of 13 and later pursued an extraordinary public career devoted to advocating for democracy and human rights in two countries [mine and his], and managed somehow to live to the age of 76.
Then on the day after came sweet messages from people apologizing for having missed the day itself. But as I said to one of these (an old friend, an admirable person, and one of the small core of my regular readers — so someone whose good words were especially important to me):
I’m inclined to view my birthday as a fairly large region in time, not just one day. The net congratulations largely achieve the purpose of maintaining and reinforcing relationships, and that doesn’t have to happen on just one day.
And from one of the Aging Life Care of California folk (who, among other things, take me to medical appointments, of which I have a great many), who recently began reading this blog. Full of apologies for having missed the actual day, which I countered with the Region Theory of Birthday Time (above), and then bearing a gift box of four Sprinkles muffins, from the company’s Palo Alto store (in Stanford Shopping Center). A box notably including
dark chocolate (Belgian dark chocolate cake with bittersweet chocolate frosting, in curls)
carrot (walnut-studded carrot cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting)
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language and food, Mascots, My life, Palo Alto, Rainbow, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
August 30, 2022
Today’s Piccolo / Price Rhymes With Orange strip is a play on specific American tv commercials (with some gentle old-age mockery folded in), so will be baffling to any reader who doesn’t recognize the Kool-Aid Man mascot or know the wall-breaking “Oh Yeah!” tv ads featuring KAM:
(#1) There is, however, a hint to the reader in the “So not kool” (with kool instead of cool) in the title panel; note also the generational disparity reinforced by the GenX so there (see my 11/14/11 posting “GenX so“)
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Posted in Ambiguity, Context, Language and food, Language in advertising, Linguistics in the comics, Logos, Mascots, Technical and ordinary language, Understanding comics, Variation | 1 Comment »
August 18, 2022
Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, requiring a boatload of popcultural knowledge to understand:
(#1) The easy part: these are three anthropomorphic peanuts, M, M, F from left to right, and they are sitting at a bar, with drinks in front of them (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
Somehow the meeting of these three exemplifies the N1 + N2 compound N wingnut / wing-nut / wing nut (which has 4 senses in NOAD, plus a bunch more you can imagine). But how?
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Posted in Ambiguity, Language and food, Language of sex, Libfixes, Linguistics in the comics, Logos, Mascots, Masculinity, Metaphor, Metonymy, Portmanteaus, Signs and symbols, Snowclonelet composites, Understanding comics | 4 Comments »
June 18, 2022
(This is obviously going to go where no kids or sexually modest people should go, and it’s going to get there fast.)
The commercial names Doggie Diner and Mr. Whippy, both surely conceived in all innocence, but, to the prepared mind, easily evoking sexual images (as it happens, my mind is prepared for man-on-man sexual images, so that’s where I’m inclined to go): the doggie / doggy position for anal intercourse; and a leatherman master whipping a leatherman slave.
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Posted in Double entendres, Homosexuality, Language and food, Language and the body, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Logos, Mascots, Music, Parody, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Trade names | Leave a Comment »
May 17, 2022
Yesterday’s wry Rhymes With Orange strip, wordless and spare-looking, but packed with tons of meaning on two fronts, the dairy and the managerial; meanwhile, it presents a challenging exercise in cartoon understanding.
(#1) If you see that there’s something sweetly funny about a dairy cow managing a business, well, that will do — but the pleasure of the cartoon is in the details
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Posted in Abbreviation, Initialisms, Language and animals, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Mascots, Names, Nicknames, Puns, Signs and symbols, Toys and games, Understanding comics | 14 Comments »
