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pain in the X
A recent One Big Happy: Higher vs.lower, in several senses. The two families of pain in the idioms are high vs.low on the body and high vs. low in tone. (They’ve been around for about a hundred years,...
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The trophy boys park the beef bus in tuches town
(The title tells the story. Racy topic, unquestionably alluding to hard-core mansex, but indirectly and playfully. Use your judgment.) The Steam Room Stories video that came by me yesterday morning:...
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Three more Reapings
The latest bulletin from Pinterest featured a Reaper Jokes board maintained by Kathy-Lynn Cross. More Grim Reaper cartoons, including one that especially caught my eye because of the two idioms in the...
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New Yorker artwork 4/17/17
(Not primarily about language, but there is a bit in there.) From this issue: a Flatiron Building cover by Harry Bliss; a Rob Leighton cartoon on the Dear John letter, nit-picking, and self-awareness;...
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Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit: three cartoons for the 1st
It’s May Day, an ancient spring festival — think maypoles and all that — so, the beginning of the cycle of the seasons. (Everybody knows the Vivaldi. Try listening instead to the Haydn, here.) And it’s...
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Ruthie faces the unfamiliar, again
The One Big Happy in my comics feed today: Rockefellers / rocky fellows. How was Ruthie to know her grandmother was using a proper name? And fellers is a familiar dialect variant for fellows – and an...
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Squid Pro Quo
This Non Sequitur cartoon by Wiley Miller: (#1) squid / quid. And squid as a source of ink, squid as food. . Hat tips to Chris Hansen and Josh Simon. On the cartoon, see this Page. Two crucial pieces...
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Rodeos and sword dances
(Warning: there will be talk of penises and mansex.) On The Hill site on 5/21, “Tillerson: ‘Not my first sword dance’ in Saudi Arabia”, by Jill Manchester: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday...
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Macho Muffler Man vs. the elite geek
Today’s Zippy pits Griffy against a familiar figure in the strip, a Muffler Man roadside fiberglass figure — in this case a lumberjack figure, selling tires rather than mufflers, but still part of an...
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The word came down on Pentecost
Four language-related strips in my comics feed on Sunday the 4th, which this year was Pentecost, the Christian festival celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples of Jesus after his...
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An old resultative joke
From Wilson Gray on ADS-L on the 6th, in a discussion of a joke that turns on a structural ambiguity, a totally different joke of this sort: A drunk is staggering along the sidewalk muttering to...
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You can dress a fox in hen’s clothing, but…
… you’ll do better dressing a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Rhymes With Orange from the 9th: Wolves and sheep share a basic body pattern (four legs, tail, etc.), but foxes and chickens diverge...
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Put a sock on it in parade season
(There will be discussions of men’s naughty bits and pictures of these barely covered. Sometimes celebratory, sometimes silly, but not at all (I think) arousing. Still, if that’s not you want to read...
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Today’s idiom blend
An exchange reported on Facebook this morning, by one of the participants, EF: JK: It’s a matter of which came first, the horse or the egg. EF: [stares at him] Do you realize what you just said? JK:...
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Ostentatious euphemisms
A recent tv commercial for Jack Link’s beef jerky builds up to the punch line, the claim that the jerky beats the snack out of other snacks ostentatiously using snack as a euphemism for shit....
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On offer at Daily Jocks
(Men’s bodies, underwear, snarky captions, and some slang.) A recent offer from Daily Jocks, SUP BRO t-shirts from the Australian company Supawear: (#1) That’s my shirt bro It comes from A U I’m Buster...
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Today’s comic comprehension test
A recent cartoon by Wayno, passed on to me by Chris Hansen: To understand this cartoon, you need to recognize that the setting — one or two people on a small, otherwise uninhabited, island with a lone...
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A stay in medical Antarctica
Yesterday’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...
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Bosco 3
In the August 28th New Yorker‘s “Goings On About Town” section, announcing the end of this year’s HVSF season: Beautiful natural vistas, drama, and history come together at Boscobel House and Gardens,...
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Rubber ducks, by the bag
When you explore something on the net, your searches come back to you in messages of all sorts. So when I looked around at rubber ducks / duckies — for a posting on the 9th — I set off duck alarms in...
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