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Steak bombs
Yesterday’s Zippy: (#1) Steak bomb as the name of a type of steak sandwich was new to me. Steak sandwiches in general are torpedo-shaped, hence bomboid, but the point of the name is probably to assert...
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From marbles and barbats to challah
… via Greek-American food in Old Saybrook CT. A Zippyesque journey in today’s strip: (#1) Marbles. Having all of them, lacking some, losing them. From NOAD2: noun marble: 3 (one’s marbles) informal...
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One-hit grinders
The Zippy from September 30th, featuring Mary’s Coffee Shop, which also offers grinders: (#1) Plays on several senses of grind, plus the idiom one-hit wonder (with its phonological play on /wʌn/). The...
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Noodling with formulaic language
Today is National Noodle Day. Yes, an event fabricated by people in the food indusry to showcase their products and sell them, on a date no doubt chosen only because it hadn’t already been claimed by...
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Swords up on Friday the 13th
Today is the baleful day Friday the 13th, and in the Halloween season to boot, so the Michael Lucas gay porn film company has packaged a $13 membership offer featuring Friday the 13th‘s Jason, in his...
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Political wagyu
The gustatory-political text for today: Rage against the media is political Wagyu for the president’s base. (NYT, “[REDACTED]’s Attacks on the Press: Telling Escalation From Empty Threats” by Michael...
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Household gifts
Assembled in a group photo, three pleasingly thoughtful household gifts: (#1) A penguin tea towel and a purple plant mister flanked by two hand-blown flared glasses The tea towel with penguin slogan...
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Revisiting 9: ¡-ola!
A comment on the vulgar noun crapola in yesterday’s posting “A portmantriple”, from David Preston: [cited by AZ] “-ola, a suffix used humorously to extend standard words.” Wasn’t the original ‘ola’ the...
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Smearing and taunting
(Adapted and expanded from a Facebook comment of mine a while back. Some coarse sexual language, notably from American newsmakers, but also enough about sexual bodies and mansex from me to make the...
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Exulting in Pride
This afternoon my grand-daughter Opal arrived at my house (dutifully standing about 7 feet away and wearing a mask (as I was) to deliver two items: the DVD of Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run (“It...
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Caterpillars spinning platters
Yesterday’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, with songs you just can’t get out of your head: (#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)...
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gone to seed
Today’s morning name, the PSP form of the English idiom go to seed, originally botanical, then metaphorically extended to use for people. From NOAD: go (or run) to seed: [a] (of a plant) cease...
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Parallelism, metaphor, chiasmus
On the slogan in my posting yesterday “Come a long way, long way still to go” (A), a chiastic formula conveying: Things have improved, but still we’re far from the goal (and there are constant threats...
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wazoo
Today’s morning name. Briefly, from NOAD: noun wazoo: US informal the anus. PHRASES up (or out) the wazoo US informal very much; in great quantity; to a great degree: he’s insured out the wazoo | Jack...
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goon squad goon squad goon squad
Somewhere in the first Presidential “debate”, or its immediate surrounding net discussion, the phrase goon squad appeared and seized my attention, so that I repeated it like a mantra. I was in the grip...
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No offense (intended)
From the American tv series Emergency! S7 E11 “The Convention” (from 7/3/79), a tv movie following the regular series. Two women end up serving as a paramedic team together — female paramedics were a...
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A New Yorker trio
Three cartoons from the 10/26 New Yorker: two of linguistic interest (by Amy Hwang and Roz Chast), one (by Christopher Weyant) yet another Desert Island cartoon. Hwang: jam beans. On p. 28: (#1)...
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An old hand, and two young hands
In the latest (12/21) New Yorker, two cartoons that especially caught my eye: one by a very old hand in the business, George Booth (now 94); the other by two young women (roughly 30), Sophie Lucido...
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Collocation restriction
Today’s Ada@Home cartoon by Rob Harrell exemplifies the restriction of lexical items to specific collocations: (Hat tip to reader Verdant on my Twitter account.) From NOAD: verb stub: [with object] 1...
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Frequently asked questions
A Roz Chast cartoon in the latest (2/1/21) New Yorker: Questions asked often enough that they border on clichés. They’re frequently asked questions — but they’re not Frequently Asked Questions,...
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