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Signage
Yesterday’s Bizarro: (#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Don Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.) But all bits of language have to be understood in context —...
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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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Ambiguity and vagueness
… in the comics. Specifically in today’s revival of a Calvin and Hobbes strip: Just what sort of description is called for? It depends on the context. NOAD2 on the verb describe: give an account in...
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deontic+, deontic-
(On the semantics and pragmatics of deontic should.) I have a real-life example in mind here, from the NYT Magazine on the 17th, but I’m going to inch up to it, starting with these simpler examples:...
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Annals of cartoon understanding
Here’s a cartoon I once came across: “If the recount doesn’t work, it’s up to us.” How do we understand what the cartoon is about? I haven’t told you anything about when and where I came across it, and...
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“an infamous pincher of ladies’ bottoms”
(Eventually about a set of social practices and the vocabulary — mostly transparent — referring to them.) A standout phrase from a moving, and also wryly funny, Gail Collins op-ed column in the NYT on...
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re-up syntax
From Jon Lighter on ADS-L early in the month: CNN advises us … to “get re-upped on” our MMR [measles / mumps / rubella] vaccinations. I.e., join the crusade against vaccine avoidance: get the kids...
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NO PENGUINS
A generic penguin ban sign (sold on Amazon, a CD Visionary no-penguins button): (#1) What’s banned? Spheniscid birds. Why? Who knows. (They smell. They steal fish. They get underfoot. Whatever.) and a...
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Where is the fishmonger?
(On facial expression and gaze in sexual negotiations between men, definitely mansexually raunchy, so not for kids or the sexually modest.) Yesterday’s ad from Next Door Studios (specializing in...
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Our reclusive pangolinists
On the dangler watch, a report by Ben Zimmer on 4/29 about this Reddit posting, which seems to have appeared without any preceding context: TIL [Today I Learned] Due to their reclusive nature,...
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The library hookers and booze joke
The joke, which was new to me and entertained me enormously: (#1) Then, passed on my a friend yesterday, from Facebook, the joke supplied with a photo, the result then labeled as a “meme” (in my terms,...
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this
A Boxing Day cartoon by Wayno (with Dan Piraro at Bizarro studios North): (#1) Wayno’s title:”New Year, New Symbol: Introducing the Pipe of Ambiguity” Here, this picks out, or points to, the image just...
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The elephant and plum
Not Frog and Peach, but Elephant and Plum, in a kid joke as told by Ruthie in the One Big Happy strip from 2/22 (in my comics feed on 3/21): (#1) Four things: kid jokes, of which the Elephant and Plum...
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Pictographs for dogs
A Mark Stivers cartoon from 4/20/19 (first encountered in the Funny Times for May 2021): (#1) Dogs also can’t interpret pictographs, certainly not such abstract ones as the slash of prohibition, the NO...
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A comic gem from the very first episode (“Give Me a Ring Sometime”) of the American tv show Cheers (S1 E1 9/30/82). An exchange (call it the D&C exchange) between the character Diane — at this...
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Romper buddies
Taking off from a delightful ad for Romperjacks on Facebook back in November and December: Here I give you the ad photo, and inventory some of the things it inspires me to write about in future...
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The compounds of commerce and the comics
A little study in N + N compounds in English, their great utility and versatility (they pack a lot of content into two-word expressions), and their consequent massive potential ambiguity (so that...
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Breaking through the wall
Today’s Piccolo / Price Rhymes With Orange strip is a play on specific American tv commercials (with some gentle old-age mockery folded in), so will be baffling to any reader who doesn’t recognize the...
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CalWord: the Calvin Theory of Word Use
(the commencement of September) The Calvin and Hobbes comic strip from 9/1/92, reprised in my comics feed on 8/30: (#1) We can achieve intergenerational incommunicability! Yes we can! Calvin...
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Where to door knock and cold call
… and, eventually, how to abracadabra things out of sight. Yes, it’s Verbing Day on AZ Blog! Politics and real estate: to door knock. It started on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC on 10/11, with the...
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