Crash blossoming: Doctor Who as abortionist

November 5, 2022

A headline sighting reported on Facebook yesterday

— Wendy Thrash:
(#1)

— AZ > WT: A lovely garden-path example (as they are known in the trade) — made worse by the line break in your posting (Doctor Who / Performed Abortion …)

Newspaper headlines, with their compressed, trimmed-down format, make a rich ground for garden pathing; garden-path headlines are then some of the most remarkable specimens of the type — so remarkable that they’ve gotten their own label: crash blossoms (after an exemplary species).

I will explain.

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Posted in Headlines, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Parsing, Processing | Leave a Comment »

Booth, and two great-grand-Booths

November 4, 2022


(#1) Mrs. Ritterhouse, and her cat, mourn with us

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Posted in Comic conventions, Death notices, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Science | Leave a Comment »

The mythological John Singer Sargent

November 4, 2022

A very brief note set off by Pinterest postings of artwork (some paintings, some sketches) on mythological themes by John Singer Sargent (who appears every so often on this blog). In particular, two remarkable paintings from a hundred years ago (both in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston):


(#1) The Judgement of Paris (1920)


(#2) Perseus on Pegasus Slaying Medusa (1921)

Remarkable formal compositions, with subtle use of color. With muscular bodies — male, female, equine — as a focus.

I haven’t been able to find anything on-line about the history of these two paintings. The great age of painting on themes from classical mythology was from the 14th through the 19th centuries, so Sargent’s 20th-century gods-and-heroes works are something of a surprise, even in such a stylistically conservative artist; surely they were commissioned, but by whom, for what purpose?

Posted in Art, Language and the body | 2 Comments »

Zwicky logos

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 »

Prof. Dr. Monica Elisabeth Zwicky

November 2, 2022

In academia, she’s noted for her research on sex determination in insects and her more recent career in training biology teachers; meanwhile, through her Zwicky father, she’s in the line of the sewing-thread Zwickys (going back to 1840 — made memorable through Donald Brun’s Zwicky-silk cat poster, Soie à coudre) and is now the CEO of the real-estate development firm that evolved from that enterprise.


Prof. Dr. Monica Elisabeth Zwicky (Professor of Developmental Biology, Department of Molecular Life Sciences, Univ. of Zurich [so listed on the English versions of its pages; it’s Zürich on the German pages]); photo from the Molecular Life Sciences website

The thumbnail sketch from this website:

Monica Zwicky was born to a Swedish mother and Swiss father in Zurich and grew up in Lausanne. She has two grown-up children, is in charge of training aspiring biology teachers and is an Adjunct Professor of MNF [die Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, the Faculty of Science, the larger division to which Molecular Life Sciences belongs]

This is then followed by an interview with her about her interest in natural science, her life as a woman in biology, her drive for independence and authority, and her recognition that the role of mentor and nurturer of students comes easily to her as an extension of her maternal role. It’s a complex and self-reflective piece, also something of a surprise on a Molecular Life Sciences site.

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Posted in Academic life, Art, Biology, Gender and sexuality, Switzerland and Swiss things, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

The Tale of Raunchy Appetizers

November 1, 2022

A gripping adventure, begun yesterday in my posting “Invitation to the groaning phallic board”, which was temporarily abandoned due to illness. The final chapter in the story of this raunchy appetizer board:


(#1) From a Facebook ad for a wooden appetizer board in the outline shape of the male genitals (head with frenulum and urethral cleft, gently bent shaft, and testicles) — highly stylized, highly schematic, but with these quite specific details; shown here with the compartments filled with appetizers of various sorts, and with accompanying bowls of other appetizers

The photo appears to be a scam come-on, created either by photographic manipulation or by the crafting of a single wooden model for advertising purposes.

My interest was in both the appetizer board (so called) and in the foodstuffs — the appetizers (though they sometimes go by other names) — that fill such boards. On appetizer boards in general, and then

some reflection on the modes of phallicity, extending my thoughts in two earlier postings, “Enhanced phallicity” of 12/10/21 (about things that are not merely phallic by nature, but (also) deliberately designed to resemble penises in some detail) and “Plush life” of 9/11/22 (about four modes of phallicity). What, in this world, are we to make of the raunchy appetizer board?

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Posted in Furnishings and tools, Language and food, Language in advertising, Names, Phallicity | 1 Comment »

Every meme is better with a pumpkin in it

November 1, 2022

🐇 🐇 🐇 (NOVEM! NOVEM! N-O-V spells VON! Von who? No, No, that’s Doctor Von Who! Doctor Von Who’s on first? Doctor Von Who’s on first of November, oh god this is where we came in)

Bob Eckstein’s charming cartoon-trope cartoon (a new cartoon for Halloween this year @AltaJournal, also posted yesterday on Facebook along with a trick-or-treating story; and note that National Pumpkin Day went by on 10/26):


(#1) Three cartoon memes (I will no longer attempt to distinguish memes from tropes, given the extraordinary variation in the usage of the two terms): Sisyphus, Desert Island, Seeker and Seer

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Posted in Comic conventions, Language and religion, Latin, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Parody | 1 Comment »

Invitation to the groaning phallic board

October 31, 2022

(Below is the introduction to what was intended to be the fourth and final posting — “The groaning phallic board” — in what I’ve come to think of as The Tale of Raunchy Appetizers. But I was felled, once again, by hours of irrestistible exhausted sleep (no, I don’t know why, but my life has been very unpleasant for a while). Back in the world to get some dinner, but I’ll never get this posting done today. Think of this as a Halloween teaser; save it for its eventual continuation, along the lines promised below

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Posted in Language and food, Language and the body, My life, Phallicity, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

The inevitable holiday porn pun

October 31, 2022

(Transparently, celebratorily, crude and graceless, not for kids or the sexually modest.)

🧛‍♂️ 🧛‍♂️ 🧛‍♂️ (the Day of the Vampire) Very briefly, today’s holiday greetings from the rampant sexpigs at Fort Troff:

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Posted in Holidays, Homosexuality, Language of sex, Puns | Leave a Comment »

On the cheese ball watch

October 30, 2022

(There will be some digressions into vulgar sexual slang and explicit descriptions of sex acts, so some sections of this posting are not recommended for kids or the sexually modest.)

Adventures on Facebook that start with cheese balls and then branch to the coinages giggalicous and snickerfacient. So things are pretty much all over the map. I set things off on FB with this message, which mingles all three topics :

— AZ on 10/26: I find it giggalicious that some company is offering “dairy-free cheese balls”. But I am admittedly easily amused, to the point where I have always found “cheese balls”, all by itself,  to be snickerfacient.

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Posted in Double entendres, Figurative language, Language and food, Language and the body, Language of sex, Libfixes, Style and register, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »

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