Archive for the ‘Slang’ Category
October 8, 2018
… in the 10/3 Wayno/Bizarro collab entitled “Off the wall”:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
A little festival of formulaicity. In the title, the (informal) idiom off the wall and an allusion to the idiom fly on the wall. In the interviewee’s remark, the (colloquial) idiom fly in the buttermilk and perhaps an allusion to the song “Ole Buttermilk Sky” [10/9: but see the comment below on “Skip to My Lou”]; an allusion to a family of “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup” jokes; and the idiom fly in the ointment. Plus a pair of excellently anthropomorphic houseflies on a tv talkshow; if it’s a late-night show, it could be Fly By Night (with the idiom fly-by-night).
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Posted in Books, Formulaic language, Idioms, Jokes, Language and race, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Slang | 2 Comments »
October 6, 2018
Passed on by friends on Facebook, a French dildo / vibrator in the shape of La Tour Eiffel:
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Yes, you can pleasure yourself (vaginally or anally) with a replica of this world-famous landmark. While enjoying its punning name (La Tour Est Folle lit. ‘The Tower is Crazy’, but see below — with the pun pairing Eiffel – est folle).
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Posted in French, Gender and sexuality, Language of sex, Language play, Movies and tv, Phallicity, Puns, Slang | Leave a Comment »
August 4, 2018
Three recent cartoons in my feed that depend on their readers supplying crucial bits of background cultural information: a Rhymes With Orange from the 1st (the eating habits of Japanese movie monsters); a Mother Goose and Grimm from the 1st (the His Master’s Voice dog); and today’s Bizarro/Wayno collab (clergy visiting parishioners).
In each case, the cartoon shows some situation from everyday life (which you have to know about) juxtaposed with, or translated into, another more remarkable world (which you also need to know details of).
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Posted in Clothing, Comic conventions, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Slang, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
July 30, 2018
Caught on re-run tv yesterday, in the Law & Order S19 E10 episode “Pledge” (from 1/21/09):
Your entire case rests on this girl’s testimony. If her only impetus to cooperate is greed, you’re in trouble. Who dangled money in front of her in the first place?
The cops. They knew she was in debt, so they pressed her pretty hard.
It’s going to look like we bought her testimony. What a mud sandwich this is turning into.
And only a few months before that, in an emotional 9/29/08 speech on the floor of the U.S. Congress by Rep. John Boehner in support of the TARP bill bailing out big banks:
None of us came here to have to vote for this mud sandwich!
(You can watch it here.)
Yes, mud sandwich. A euphemism for shit sandwich.
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Posted in Catchphrases, Euphemism, Idioms, Language and food, Language and race, Language in politics, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Music, Race and ethnicity, Slang, Taboo language and slurs | 1 Comment »
June 15, 2018
The spur: this brief moment from the NYT obit for chef, author, tv personality, and social critic Anthony Bourdain, by Kim Severson, Matthew Haag, and Julia Moskin, on-line on the 8th as “Anthony Bourdain, Renegade Chef Who Reported From the World’s Tables, Is Dead at 61”, in print on the 9th as “Anthony Bourdain, Renegade Chef, Dies at 61; Showed the World How to ‘Eat Without Fear'”:
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He first became conscious of food in fourth grade, he wrote in “Kitchen Confidential.” Aboard the Queen Mary on one of the family’s frequent trips to France, he sat in the cabin-class dining room and ate a bowl of vichyssoise, a basic potato-leek soup that held the delightful surprise of being cold. “It was the first food I enjoyed and, more important, remembered enjoying,” he wrote.
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Posted in Language and food, Language of sex, Memory, Movies and tv, My life, Names, Phallicity, Slang, Vaginality | 4 Comments »
June 4, 2018
About the N bro, used first as an address term and then as a referential N with several senses, and available as an element in N + N compounds: as the first element in Bro Code and bro subculture, as the second element in code bro (roughly) ‘guy into coding’ and (hat tip to Tyler Schnoebelen) the academic-cool character named Philosophy Bro. Then, thanks to Ben Barrett on ADS-L (on May 23rd), on to crypto bro / cryptobro, which looks like it might be a portmanteau of cryptocurrency (or cryptocoin(age)) and bro, but is probably better analyzed as a straightforward compound of the clipping crypto and the N bro.
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Posted in Address terms, Books, Compounds, Gender and sexuality, Masculinity, Movies and tv, Philosophy, Portmanteaus, Slang, Slogans, Social interactions, Sociocultural Roles | Leave a Comment »
May 12, 2018
(Talk about mansex in street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest — or, for that matter, Facebook the Prudish.)
From the TitanMen gay porn studio, for Mothers Day this year:
(#1) Cropped ad; the full ad can be viewed on AZBlogX, in the 5/12 posting “Mothers / Muthuhs Day 2018”
That’s Dirk Caber and Daymin Voss in New Rules: two hot muthas, and muthas — a variant of the vulgar slang mothers, a clipping of the vulgar slang motherfuckers, an epithet that can be either deprecatory or (as here) celebratory — is the link to Mothers Day.
So we end up with gay porn for Mothers Day — a holiday I’m now tickled to think of, alternatively, as Motherfuckers Day. Or, possibly, Samuel L. Jackson Day, for the great cinematic motherfucker-wielder.
As a bonus, half the men in the cast of New Rules are not only mothers / muthuhs, but also daddies, in one of the gay senses of daddy: ‘attractive older gay man’. In fact, they’re muscle daddies.
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Posted in Abbreviation, Art, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Language and poitics, Language of sex, Movies and tv, Shirtlessness, Slang, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
May 10, 2018
(Guys in sexy underwear, yes, but no more than that. Plus a recent slang idiom.)
Daily Jocks yesterday:
(#1) SLIDE IN OUR DM’S!
We are looking for hot new influencers to promote DailyJocks products, follow us & like our most recent post for the chance to become a DailyJocks influencer.
We will be sending out products for you to take pictures in & share with the world!
Lots of smiling — I’m big on smiles — in these amateur underwear photos, as compared to the sturdy studly pro shots.
The slang initialism DM (for direct message) I already knew, but the larger idiom slide in(to) (y)our DMs was new to me (but I’m so far from plugged into new things that I should be treated as permanently unplugged).
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Idioms, Initialisms, Language in advertising, Rainbow clothing, Slang, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
