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Two political cartoonists
To link to a posting on Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, some notes on Watterson’s favorite political / editorial cartoonists, Pat Oliphant and Jim Borgman. On Oliphant, from Wikipedia: Patrick...
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Sources and saucers
Today’s One Big Happy, with Ruthie once again rummaging in her mental lexicon: The homey and familiar saucers takes over for the rarer sources, in the idiom have one’s sources.
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A truncated idiom
From the 5/30 Economist, in “Republicans in name aussi” on Nicolas Sarkozy: Even if the relaunch succeeds, however, Mr Sarkozy will have his work cut out. Pretty clearly, the intention here is to...
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the old college try
Today’s Calvin and Hobbes: As on other occasions, Calvin asks his father an information question and gets a less than useful response. In this case, the meaning of the old college try is clear, but its...
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Setting up a pun
Today’s One Big Happy, with a setup for a pun on the idiom level playing field: Hard to believe that Ruthie would have come to this on her own; she’s just serving as a channel for the cartoonist’s...
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All things shark
Heavy advertisement on cable tv for the summer-end event Shweekend (Shark Weekend — somehow, sharks provoke portmanteaus) on the Discovery Channel. (#1) (The poster plays on the film title Sharknado 3:...
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Caring
On the 11th, Mark Liberman returned to the expression could care less on Language Log, thanks to an xkcd cartoon that day, which I reproduce here: He uses the expression as an implicitly negative...
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Two New Yorker cartoons
Two recent cartoons: a Zach Kanin on the male body in cartoons (in the 9/28 issue), a Liam Francis Walsh on social media (in the 10/5 issue): (#1) (#2) #1: The Tin Woodman and his missing penis. Here...
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Morning: the call of nature
Yesterday’s morning expression on awakening (with a need to answer the call of nature) was not exactly a name, but, well, the NP the call of nature. That led to the product Serutan — that is a name —...
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cowboy up!
Recently run across by accident, a reference to a Kindle “book” (apparently a self-published manuscript) entitled “How to cowboy up and stop being such a pussy” by “Max Powerz”. The author’s...
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motion-goal BE
Overheard at lunch a few days ago: (1) We’re going to Puerto Rico for the holidays; I’ve never been. My first interpretation of the (elliptical) second clause was as (2) I’ve never been to Puerto Rico....
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Rhyme or reason
Today’s Bizarro, with an idiom and a nursery rhyme: (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Don Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.) So we have Humpty Dumpty, recently...
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Like Father, Like Son
Over on AZBlogX, a long and fairly intricate posting about the gay porn flick Like Father, Like Son (LFLS), which came up as the focus of the Titan Cyber Monday sale. There are 19 images in the...
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Unintended
Heard in a tv commercial for Scratch-Aide: Let’s face it: if you’ve got wood, you’ve got scratches. Unintendedly, with an ambiguity in got wood: the literal ‘have wood’ and the idiomatic ‘have an...
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butt/booty, dial/call
Yesterday’s Rhymes With Orange: The nouns butt and booty overlap in their uses, and so do the verbs dial and call, and so do the related nouns dial and call. However… the compound nouns butt dial and...
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Ruthie v. idioms
Yesterday’s One Big Happy has Ruthie coping with idiomaticity: The whole idiom here is (be) out of sorts (with two somewhat different senses), and Ruthie understands something of its meaning as a...
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Your money’s no good here
Today’s Bizarro, exploiting an ambiguity in pragmatics, use in discourse contexts: (#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this...
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Look who’s talking!
Interplay between the characters (Richard) Castle and (Kate) Beckett in a re-run from the show (season 1 epsode 8, “Ghosts”, originally broadcast 4/27/09) when they come across a suspect’s room...
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Ain’t it the truth?
In today’s feed, this One Big Happy from 3/7: (#1) The linguistic point: Ruthie’s mother’s “Ain’t it the truth?” — ain’t in the speech of someone who almost surely isn’t otherwise a user of this...
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Punch in the presence of the passenjare
About the British humo(u)r magazine (my cartoon/comics library has two anthologies from the publication; the second has the Ed Fisher cartoons I posted about yesterday) and about its long history...
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