A cartoon from the Speculative Grammarian site, passed along on Facebook by John Lawler:
Linguists, wearied of being asked how many languages they speak, now get their revenge.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The linguists’ revenge
January 7, 2016Morning name: Kakadu
December 27, 2015I see that WQXR (classical music in NYC) played Beethoven’s Kakadu Variations very early in the morning, while I was still sleeping, so the name probably seeped into my unconscious from the radio. In any case, the trio is a favorite of mine.
Barsotti dogs, plus
December 11, 2015From a Facebook friend, this dog cartoon by New Yorker artist Charles Barsotti for Christmas:
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The Christmas connection: who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.
Barsotti (who died last year, after doing nearly 1400 cartoons for the New Yorker) did an enormous number of dog cartoons, reliably showing great sympathy for the dogs — many of them puppies, as here, and some of those weeping , as here.
You’re done
November 25, 2015Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm (Thanksgiving edition):
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So this turkey comes into a bar…
And sits down next to the Boston terrier Ralph, who cuts off the turkey’s drinks, announcing to him that he’s done (finished drinking). — because. pointing to the pop-up timer in his breast, he’s done (cooked thoroughly).
Four from the New Yorker
November 19, 2015In the November 16th New Yorker, four cartoons that made me consider, once again, what you need to know to understand what’s going on in a cartoon and what you need to know to understand why the cartoon is funny. Two cartoons by artists who have appeared on the blog before (Harry Bliss, Shannon Wheeler) and two by newcomers to this blog (Kaamran Hafeez and Tom Chitty). The cartoons:
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How can we help, caller?
November 18, 2015Today’s Bizarro, with a hotline for the threatened:
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
Advice hotlines are a specialized form of conversation by telephone. The callers seek advice about something that is troubling them (sometimes desperately so), and the staffers try to guide the callers towards useful responses to their situation.
Of course, the idea of dinosaurs using telephones is wonderfully absurd.
Fischli & Weiss
November 18, 2015In the front section of the November 16th New Yorker, under the heading “Winter Preview” (by Andrea Scott):
Conceptualism takes a comic turn at the Guggenheim with “Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better,” a career survey of the two Swiss artists, who met in Zurich in 1977 and collaborated until Weiss’s death, in 2012. Their first project was a series of irreverent photographs, featuring gherkins and sausages as dramatis personae; their most famous is the live-action film “The Way Things Go,” a spectacular chain reaction of unspectacular objects. For more than three decades, Fischli and Weiss uncovered hilarity, and pathos and mystery, in the workaday world. Don’t miss “Suddenly This Overview,” an installation of scores of small, unfired-clay sculptures whose subjects range from the Biblical to the cultural to the banal: the parting of the Red Sea, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones feeling satisfied after writing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” a wedge of cheese. (Opens Feb. 5.)
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At the Carpet Shop from the 1979 sausage series
The news for penises: omnibus edition
November 18, 2015On AZBlogX, a series of five postings with penises as the unifying theme. All five are highly X-rated, not for the kiddies or the sexually modest.
11/17/15: Cockfest #1: the basic offer (link): offer of an erect penis to suck
11/17/15: Cockfest #2: jacking off together (link): two men jacking off together: competition or collaboration or both?; sickling or winging the foot in ballet
11/17/15: Cockfest #3: Josman boy on boy (link): two cartoons by gay cartoonist Josman, showing boy-on-boy action
11/17/15: Cockfest #4: penis-to-penis (link): on a still from the gay porn flick Splash (naked men kissing and sharing their erections)
11/17/15: Cockfest #5: cum guzzling (link): on the gay porn flick The Cum Guzzler Club, with comments on cum play
Alaskan-cod-pieces
November 17, 2015An entertaining photo that’s been floating around the Internet for some time:
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In speech, the intended parsing
(1) [ Alaskan cod ] [ pieces ]
is indistinguishable from the humorous parsing
(2) { Alaskan ] [ codpieces ]
In writing, the conventional spelling distinguishes the two and enforces parsing (1). But if you’re not aware of the item of apparel the codpiece (more on that to come), or if the possibility of an ambiguity hadn’t occurred to you, you might be tempted to the spelling codpieces instead of cod pieces.
Novelty ties
November 17, 2015On the penguin watch.
On the front page of yesterday’s NYT, a color-splash of an ad for Salvatore Ferragamo ties, one of which clearly had litte penguins on it. Ferragamo novelty ties, 100% silk, selling for $190 each (fashion doesn’t come cheap) from Ferragamo, somewhat less at fine men’s clothing stores. The fish and penguin tie, in a thumbnail:
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