An antic cartoon by Tom Gauld in the latest New Scientist magazine. combining surrealist images with a famous ethical dilemma from the philosophical literature:
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Ethical Surrealism
February 2, 2021
Out at college, sent home by the pandemic
February 1, 2021A story that has surely been repeated at many colleges in the past year. This is Stanford’s story, as told in the Stanford Daily, “They were out at Stanford. Then the pandemic sent them back home.” by Kate Selig on 1/28/21:
Two parrots and a pear tree
February 1, 2021On Pinterest recently, a board devoted to Bizarro cartoons, including a fair number relevant to this blog but not previously posted here — from which, the three below (all the work of Dan Piraro alone, without Wayno’s collaboration). Two are about parrots and crackers (the first is also an instance of the Psychiatrist cartoon meme); the third offers a groaner pun on a sexual idiom previously discussed on this blog. (I’ll start with a digression on the most common way parrots figure in cartoons, as adjuncts to pirates.)
Frequently asked questions
January 31, 2021A Roz Chast cartoon in the latest (2/1/21) New Yorker:
Questions asked often enough that they border on clichés. They’re frequently asked questions — but they’re not Frequently Asked Questions, Frequently Asked Questions being an idiomatic expression usually reduced to an alphabetic abbreviation, the noun FAQ.
Don’t ask!
January 31, 2021Today’s morning name, but it comes with crucial context. The Don’t ask! in question is not the neutral use of the negative imperative, advising the addressee not to ask someone about something (Don’t ask them about the ducks in the kitchen; that just makes them crazy), but instead is a formula of Yiddish-influenced English, normally used only by (American) Jews (or gentiles culturally close to this community), when someone has in fact just asked about the matter in question (the tsuris / tsores ‘troubles’); the speaker doesn’t go on to avoid this sensitive matter, but instead embraces it, launching into kvetching ‘complaining’ about it.
The formula Don’t ask! then serves as an announcement — a kind of alarm bell, if you will — that the speaker is about to go off on a (perhaps extended) kvetch.
Two cartoons on the 30th
January 30, 2021… in today’s comics feed, both connecting to earlier postings on this blog: a Rhymes With Orange on an ambiguity in the verbing to dust; and a Zippy on Magritte’s painting The Son of Man.
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Cologne tease
January 30, 2021Having recently posted on colognes / men’s fragrances (especially those with homoerotic ad campaigns), I’ve been inundated with offers for more colognes along these lines. Today’s haul included some remarkable cock tease advertising for the fragrance Fierce, from Abercrombie & Fitch.
(Given the subject, this posting isn’t recommended for kids or the sexually modest.)
Bert and Ernie’s 51st anniversary
January 30, 2021Artist Tom Taylor’s portrait of B&E on the occasion:
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As puppets on the tv show Sesame Street, B&E haven’t aged at all in 51 years; but the characters B&E are human, so of course they have changed and developed over time. They were kids in 1969 (when Sesame Street started, 51 years before 2020, when Taylor drew this portrait); became a (closeted) gay couple about 15 years later (when writer Mark Saltzman, a partnered gay man, joined the show’s staff); and then came out and explored a new life as macho queers — there are many varieties of homomasculinity — with Ernie taking a more dominant role in the relationship (the t role, in my writing on role differentiation in couples; see the Page on b/t roles on my blog); note Ernie’s proprietary hand on Bert’s shoulder when they pose as a couple.
The sexual essence of a jockstrap
January 29, 2021(Very much about men’s bodies as sexual objects, so clearly not for everyone.)
Today’s Daily Jocks sale ad, carefully posed and quite steamily direct, also with an anatomical feature I don’t recall having seen in real life: a blood vessel running down the outside of the model’s leg, quite prominently visible on the surface of his leg (presumably because the model has so little bodyfat to conceal it):
True or false in Mushroomland
January 29, 2021Yesterday on Gina Zwicky’s Twitter account (@GinaGoesOutside):
(#1) Gina Z: I thought this was a death cap and excitedly sent pictures to my friends. it is a false death cap. I have been juked by a mushroom and now I must go
Three things: Gina Z; true and false death caps; the informal, slangy verb juke‘deceive, outmaneuver’.