Zippy’s dark art

January 19, 2025

In today’s Zippy strip, our zany, happy-go-lucky Pinhead finds himself drawn to dark imagery in art: in the wartime horrors of Picasso’s Guernica, in the monster within Albright’s Dorian Gray:


(#1) The Albright is especially unsettling for Zippy; what if his goofy exterior is only a mask for such a monstrous being within him? (Am I a monster?)

These musings on dark art follow immediately on Zippy’s anxiety yesterday, in my posting “Tell a joke, go to jail”, in which

Z confronts a pair of clay wraiths, lifeless in body and dead in soul, and tries desperately to interject fun …  into the conversation; to counterpose silliness, play, and sheer joy against the dead weight of the world’s pain, suffering, and injustice; to plead for humanity over humorlessness; to advocate for delight, even in the smallest everyday things

A few notes on the two paintings, then a quick view of the ideas that made the Albright so disturbing to Zippy.

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Posted in Art, Identities, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv | Leave a Comment »

Hats off to the vampires!

January 19, 2025

For yesterday, 1/18, in Bizarro, the 6th and I suppose last Waynoratu Nosferamanteau:


The male nosferatu (holding a wineglass of what is presumably blood, and chatting with his young female companion at some sort of vampiric meet-and-greet) seems to be wearing a Canadian toque (= tuque), with pom-pom, to warm his head during the cold dark nights in his coffin (yes, it’s very silly) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

The nosferamanteau is Nosferatoque = Nosferatu + toque. As for the hat, from NOAD:

noun toque: [a] a woman’s small hat, typically having a narrow, closely turned-up brim. [b] historical a small cap or bonnet having a narrow brim or no brim. [c] Canadian a close-fitting knitted hat, often with a tassel or pom-pom on the crown. [variant of tuque] [d] a tall white hat with a full pouched crown, worn by chefs.

(The heart tattoo with A B O in it, for the blood types A B AB and O, is a nice touch.)

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Posted in Clothing, Events and occasions, Hats, Holidays, Linguistics in the comics, My life, People, Portmanteaus, Puns | 3 Comments »

Tell a joke, go to jail

January 18, 2025

In the 1/17 Zippy strip, Z confronts a pair of clay wraiths, lifeless in body and dead in soul, and tries desperately to interject fun — levity — into the conversation; to counterpose silliness, play, and sheer joy against the dead weight of the world’s pain, suffering, and injustice; to plead for humanity over humorlessness; to advocate for delight, even in the smallest everyday things:

In English, Belgium is a funny word, odd, darkly edgy, and absurd all at once; Lewis Carroll picked the name boojum for his ridiculously dangerous creature in The Hunting of the Snark to capture this strange blend of resonances.

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Posted in Art, Jokes, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Play, Poetry | 2 Comments »

Fangs for the memories

January 17, 2025

Very briefly: in entry 5 in the Waynoratu Nosferamanteau marathon, today, two anti-establishment vampires greet one another:


A 1960s-style hippie on the right (peace symbol, long hair, headband, etc.), a 1970s-style Johnny Rotten punk rocker on the left (anarchist symbol, spiky hair, studded collar. etc.)

Meanwhile, the punmanteau is a complex one: Johnny Rotten wrapped around nosfer– (representing Nosferatu)

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Posted in Clothing, Identities, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Portmanteaus, Puns, Signs and symbols, Social life | Leave a Comment »

The Brutalism of the Urinals

January 17, 2025

From Will Leben in Zuckie’s Playroom on 1/15, this image from the Weird Wheels group:


(#1) Comment by Todd Ivler in the group: Due to lagging Cybertruck sales Tesla branches out…

Now: a bit of background on the Tesla Cybertruck, whose style inspired the mensroom accessory in #1; and my reaction to this accessory.

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Posted in Allusion, Books, Furnishings and tools | Leave a Comment »

The homoerotic lure

January 17, 2025

From Tim Evanson on Zuckie’s Playroom this morning, this snapshot from the superhero archives:


It’s a come-on, promising surprises, offering to show the boy delightful things; homoeroticism shimmers beneath his words

The lexical background, from NOAD:

noun come-on: informal a gesture or remark that is intended to attract someone sexually: she was giving me the come-on.

And then the great homoerotic come-on to a boy in film:

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Masculinity, Movies and tv, My life | 2 Comments »

Bite my punmanteau!

January 16, 2025

Continuing Bizarro‘s theme from Monday through Wednesday, today’s Waynoratu Nosferamanteau — a Wayno punmanteau based on the film title Nosferatu — examines Transylvanian dentitions:


(#1) In the tradition of Nosferattoo, Nosferachoo, and Nosferatoon, a Nosferatooth X-ray; I must say that that’s a truly splendid vampiric X-ray (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page)

(I was going to wait to see what Friday and Saturday would bring us on Bizarro before posting this strip, but it brings up an issue in visual symbolism, manifested in Wayno’s adaptation of the two-serpent caduceus (surmounting a tooth) to serve as a symbol of dentistry.)

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Posted in Jokes, Language and medicine, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Logos, Movies and tv, Portmanteaus, Puns, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

Waynoratu Nosferamanteaus

January 15, 2025

It’s not only the worst week of the year (as I detailed in a posting yesterday), but in the Bizarro cartoon world, Wayno has made it Nosferatu Punmanteau Week (Nosferamanteau Week, for short), exploiting the success of the 2024 movie to commit a series of punmanteaus (puns based on a portmanteau, presented visually as well as linguistically — these are, after all, cartoons) of a special, self-incorporating, type: puns on the model Nosferatu that are portmanteaus of Nosferatu + W, where W is, so far this week : tattoo (in Nosferattoo), achoo (in Nosferachoo), and cartoon (in Nosferatoon). The Waynoratu Nosferamanteaus might well continue through the week. Wayno could even specialize in creature Nosferamanteaus, like the crested parrot Nosferacatoo and the bare-bottomed monkey Nosferaboon; we might even get a whole zoo.

While we wait: about the movie; about the three strips so far; and earlier punmanteau postings of mine.

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Posted in AI, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Portmanteaus | 2 Comments »

The worst week of the year

January 14, 2025

On Susie Bright’s substack today, 1/14:

Today is the Clinically-Proven Worst Day of the Year

It’s not just you — January’s third week contains the Worst Day of the Year. You’re probably in pretty tough shape.

According to the brightest publicists and mathematical statisticians, today sucks. The Clinically Proven Worst Day of the Year is Blue Monday, also known as the start of the third week in January. Terrible Tuesday isn’t far behind. And WTF Wednesday . . .  you’re not getting out of it until February 1st.

I can verify that I’m in pretty bad shape, just barely managing, with things going wrong left and right, and with my hands barely working (I lose control of them and drop stuff; and can’t manage to pick up and hold books of any size, which is a real problem for someone in my business). Meanwhile, I’m deaf in my left ear again, and there’s a rat on my patio.

I’m on my third caregiver in a week — I can’t tell you how time-consuming and exhausting it is to get acquainted with and break in a new caregiver, instead of freeing me up to do my work it eats up all my time — and the third one is now half an hour late, oh god is he even coming at all? (Answer: no. He has a family emergency, so caregiver #2 is coming back just for this day, though she has barely learned about my house and how it works and what help I need.)

And the wider world? The juggernaut of the incoming Grabpussy administration, Los Angeles neighborhoods in flames.

I despair.

But I already knew about the awfulness of this time of the year.

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Posted in Events and occasions, Music, My life | 2 Comments »

“I am th’ skee-ball”: Zippy’s arcade poem

January 12, 2025

In today’s Zippy strip, the muu-muued Pinhead is at the arcade, celebrating the game of skee-ball in verse in which he identifies with — becomes one with — inanimate objects, the material elements of the game:


(#1) Zippy’s self-reflective poem, which I’ll title I Am Th’: three quatrains — of metered but unrhymed verse — that steadily build in complexity, to end in a self-reflective version of Zippy’s tag line Are we having fun yet?

Now: a few words on the poetry of I Am and then on to skee-ball, skee-ball machines, and the games of my childhood and adolescence.

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Posted in Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, My life, Poetry, Semantics, Toys and games, Trade names | Leave a Comment »

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