In begins with (the wildly hyperbolic) jockstrap frenzy (in an ad featuring notable male buttocks), followed by some playfulness that treats jockstrap frenzy as a laughable absurdity, turns to raw, terrifying frenzy, then the specialized zones of murder frenzy / frenzy murder and feeding frenzy, concluding with the ecstatic state of sexual frenzy (in a section not suitable for kids or the sexually modest; I’ll issue a warning when we get to the really raunchy stuff — though from the outset this posting is suffused with sexual matters not to the taste of some of my readers).
Extremely famous in a very small world
May 27, 2024In my Friday (5/24) appointment with my rheumatologist, David Fischer, the doctor reported that he had found me cited as a distinguished linguist, in writing by a lexicographer whose name he couldn’t quite recall, except that it had a K in it. (It’s always a good thing when your doctors treat you as a knowledgeable person of consequence.) I allowed that I hung out with lexicographers and that I was in fact extremely famous in a very small world. We then had to press on to my arthritic gout and its treatment, in the brief time for the appointment, but afterwards I e-mailed him with two suggestions about the identity of the lexicographer:
most likely: Kory Stamper, author of Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries (2017), though I didn’t recall her having cited me
also possible: Arika Okrent, author of In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language (2009), who certainly did cite me
The answer is: KS, in Word by Word. On page 196:
Further adventures in Arnoldia
May 26, 2024From my 10/7/15 posting “Adventures in Arnoldia”, on Arnold as a name:
Wikipedia also has a list about Arnold as a given name. Real people [a list that, of course, doesn’t include me]: Arnold Stang [the actor], Arnold Palmer [the golfer], Arnold Scharzenegger [the bodybuilder and politician]. [add: Arnold Bennett the novelist, Arnold Schoenberg the composer, and Arnold Toynbee the historian] And fictional Arnolds: Arnold Rimmer (a hologram character in Red Dwarf), Arnold Ziffel (Fred Ziffel’s pig on Green Acres), Arnold Zeck (the villainous character in the Nero Wolfe books). Imagine them together as the Three Arnolds — a singing group, or a comedy team, or a gang, or whatever. Arnold Stang, Palmer, and Schwarzenegger, together for your listening enjoyment. Arnold Rimmer, Ziffel, and Zeck, the dreaded Enforcers for the Mob.
And now Arnold Peck the Human Wreck:
(#1) The fictional Arnold Peck, as drawn by Willy Murphy
On the cartoonist, from Wikipedia:
Willy Murphy (October 2, 1936 – March 2, 1976) was an American underground cartoonist. Murphy’s humor focused on hippies and the counterculture. His signature character was Arnold Peck the Human Wreck, “a mid-30s beanpole with wry observations about his own life and the community around him.”
… Murphy’s work was of the “bigfoot” style of cartooning, with characters having long, droopy noses; and was characterized by strong, humorous writing.
The joy is in the playing
May 26, 2024Schroeder to Lucy in a Peanuts comic strip from 1/27/73 (passed along on Facebook yesterday by Jeff Bowles), providing a motto that speaks to me very deeply:
“The joy is in the playing”. As it was once for me (my right hand has long been too disabled for piano-playing). Meanwhile, in Sacred Harp singing, the joy is in the singing, which I can still sort of do, and in the joining with others to sing, which I can now do only remotely, but it’s a great pleasure anyway,
Sacred Harp singing brings with it an explicit ethic of doing for its own sake and of community; the joy truly is in the singing. Which (in our ordinary custom) we do with and for one another, not for an audience (which would provide external appreciation and perhaps a kind of fame) and not for monetary reward.
The marine biologist on duty
May 25, 2024Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro is a little treasure chest of interesting morphosemantics, all from a pun on marine biologist, whose everyday use is to refer to a scientist specializing in marine biology:
But instead we get, unexpectedly, a biologist who is a marine, assigned to duty monitoring aquatic animals (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)
The pun has the USMC noun marine; its base has the sea adjective marine. But that’s just the beginning of the fun.
Does he or doesn’t he?
May 23, 2024On Pinterest this morning, this entertaining vintage ad, from the site Envisioning the American Dream (“A visual remix of the American Dream as pictured in Mid-Century media”), in “Unintentionally Gay Ads — Does He or Doesn’t He?” by Sally Edelstein on 6/12/13:
(#1) A 1944 ad for Wilson Wear pajamas and shorts; SE’s comment: Boxers, bedrooms and pajamas were a natural setting for a romp among “roomates”
What makes this one so funny (because unintentionally gay) is something the ad agency surely never considered. They wanted to advertise a Wilson Wear line by showing both the pajamas and the boxer shorts. So they depicted two guys in intimate menswear in the same pattern — suggesting that they’re boyfriends in His and His clothing, guys who are, as they say, in each other’s pants.
Me, I think it’s sweet.
Kiss me, handsome!
May 23, 2024Caught on Pinterest this morning, this hot man-on-man kiss, from the illustrator Noah:
(#1) One of a great many of Noah’s gay cowboy drawings; the flowers in the holster are an especially nice touch
Regular readers of this blog will know that images of men kissing men are some of my favorite things; meanwhile, cowboys are a major theme of gay male fantasy. Noah celebrates the fact that, as Ned Sublette’s song has it:
Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other
What lies ahead
May 23, 2024Stability was the theme of my 5/15 appointment with Luis Alvarez (my nephrologist — who, since advanced kidney disease is my most salient affliction, has been in effect serving as my main physician). He was delighted with the most recent lab tests (everything holding at a good level) and with what he saw by examining and feeling various parts of my body and by observing my speech and behavior. He said to go on doing what I was doing and get an appointment in, wow, six months.
I allowed that I’d gotten used to the idea that death wasn’t very far off (every day is a surprising gift, to be treasured; my motto has been the Pythonic Mary Queen of Scots cry: Not Dead Yet), and he said that was reasonable before, but not now, since I probably had a long life still in front of me. And then we chatted for a while about the nature of diagnosis and prediction, as he and I are inclined to do.
The cocktail of the absurd
May 22, 2024Breezed past me on Facebook this morning, this Benjamin Schwartz cartoon (from the 5/6/19 issue of the New Yorker) that made me laugh out loud at its absurdity:
(#1) So festive! Transform any cocktail, in any kind of cocktail glass (the one in the cartoon is a coupe /kup/, a good glass for, say, a daiquiri), into a shrimp cocktail, by hanging some shelled, chilled cooked shrimp (such as anyone might just happen to have a pocketful of on them — this is where I dissolved in laughter) all around the lip of the glass
Even better: the classic shrimp cocktail is already an antic hors d’œuvre, a preposterously elaborate presentation of shrimp, sauce, and sourness (most often, from a lemon slice) that might have been served more simply on a tasty bit of bread, or in a small bowl or cup. With a name — shrimp cocktail — that’s a pun.
So what we see in #1 is in fact goofy-squared.
More Kix on Route 66
May 21, 2024Passed along by two friends on Facebook recently, this Manchild Manor cartoon, deploying Kix breakfast cereal in a pun on the title (of the theme song for a tv show) “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”:
(#1) If you don’t know the song, this cartoon is incomprehensible
(I don’t know where or when this cartoon first appeared, and I couldn’t find it on the (sizable) Instagram page for the strip; I’ve appealed to the cartoonist, but in my experience, most artists view such queries as just a nuisance drag on their time, so they’re not inclined to reply. If he gets back to me, I’ll add his information to this posting.)
[Added on 5/22. Never assume. The cartoonist — Tim Thavirat, now living in San Diego CA after some time in Austin TX — has now replied, and even thanked me for sharing his work on my blog. This cartoon is from 10/25/18, early in the days of his cartoon page — a silly pun that tickled his fancy.]