Illustrators go to war:
(#1) Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion, Stanford, 4/5/17 – 9/2/17
Visited on July 19th, with Juan Gomez. Extensive report follows.
Words as weapons, images as ideas
August 6, 2017This way to the regress
August 5, 2017xkcd #1872, Backup Batteries:
Like many instances of threatening infinite regress in real life, this one is cut off at some point for practical reasons. There are only so many batteries you can carry around in your bag.
Don’t put your cat in a hat
August 5, 2017Today’s Bizarro:
(#1)
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
You put the hat on the cat, he goes berserk.
The clean-gasm
August 5, 2017Friday’s Zits:
(#1)
The playful libfix –gasm, extracted from orgasm and suggesting great satisfaction (akin to orgasm). Here attached to clean (either Adj or V, probably Adj),
WaynoPOPs
August 4, 2017In my e-mail, a nice note from cartoonist Wayno about a type of wordplay that he likes to indulge in, exemplified by this Waynovision cartoon:
(#1)
The title is a portmanteau combination of two overlapping phrases, Checkpoint Charlie and Charlie Parker. And the content of the cartoon involves combining Checkpoint Charlie the place in Berlin and Charlie Parker the jazz saxophonist.
Back in 2011, Wayno mused on his blog about such word play, suggesting the name streptonym for it. On this blog, I’ve used the descriptive label phrasal overlap portmanteau (POP, for short) for such expressions as denoting a hybrid of the referents of the two contributing expressions. So #1 is a Wayno POP.
Cartoon comprehension on a hot August day
August 4, 2017From Bob Eckstein:
(#1)
What do you need to know to understand this (wordless) cartoon and why people might find it funny?
Easy stuff: you need to recognize that the cartoon is set in a subway car, and (given the way the guy on the left is dressed) that it’s warm, probably summertime.
Hard thing: you need to recognize the green tree thing hanging on the middle guy’s neck.
A stay in medical Antarctica
August 4, 2017Yesterday’s medical adventure, set off by my shortness of breath during exertion, especially in hot weather (which we’ve been having a lot of; my symptoms became worrisome on a weekend in May when the temperature in Palo Alto reached 107 F). I was referred to a cardiologist; alarmed, she set up yesterday’s myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) test, specifically via single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). Details to follow.
The test involved hours at Palo Alto Medical Foundation, much of it sitting around between its parts. The actual imaging parts of the test took place in astonishingly icy rooms — which I came to refer to as medical Antarctica — so that I was shivering with cold when I left after 5 hours.
In the sitting-around parts of the event, I read through most of the latest (August 7th and 14th) issue of the New Yorker. To leaven the stark medical details, I’ll report on one of the pieces (Lauren Collins’s “Identity crisis: Notes from a names obsessive”), one of the cartoons (by Joe Dator), and a set of “spots”, small illustrations by Nishant Choksi sprinkled throughout the issue.
Annals of sweetness
August 2, 2017Now showing on tv, a brief ad spot “Tea Party with Dad & Mr. Bentley” for Minute Maid Premium Fruit Punch, with the — um — punch line:
Minute Maid is born from the goodness of fruit.
Dumb questions
August 2, 2017Yesterday’s Dilbert:
There are dumb questions. There are even several different kinds of dumb questions.
