What’s your number?
I am late for the Rosh Hashanah / New Year train; my life is overfull, but I press on, with brevity to the max: 5787 Shana Tovah! And then my free-associating mind excavates this passionate...
View ArticleTwo language-wranglers on a label hunt
On Facebook (substantially edited down): Horton Copperpot on 8/26, with this lead-in to a longer piece: — HC: We all know AI slop. TikTok is branching out into a bunch of areas, including shopping and...
View ArticlePresenting myself
In conversation with a local friend, whose identity I will conceal because I’m going to say some nice things about them that might embarrass them … I’m trying to think of ways to tell people that I aim...
View ArticleBlues for Mr. Arnold
It’s happening again. The staff where I live now have mostly taken to addressing me as Mr. Arnold — because to lots of Americans (of whatever origins), Mr. Zwicky seems to be simply unpronounceable, a...
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Aaron Broadwell, the sequel
rabbit rabbit rabbit to inaugurate August, with a leporine shout-out to remember 1291, the traditional date of the formation of the Swiss federation: Hail, Helvetia! Now to dive into today’s topic in...
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Griffy grapples with Muffler Man on the masculinity mat
Yesterday, in my posting “Sir, I bring you a token of my subservience”, a Zippy strip in which Griffy addresses a Muffler Man, offering the fiberglass giant a phallic offering to his superior...
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Toxic, resilience, Rizzler
Whoa: toxic, resilience, Rizzler — all cry out to Zippy as he makes his critical way along a forest path, deprecating — despite their (respective) colorfulness, exactness, and freshness — the way these...
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The SIR shirt
(plenty of references to a wide rage of sexual practices, mostly between men (though not in street language), so dubious for kids and not for the sexually modest) A e-mail ad today for a new t-shirt...
View ArticleOver-sensitive ambiguity alarms
As I regularly point out on this blog: if you look for it, ambiguity is everywhere; almost any expression can be understood in multiple ways, especially if you’re willing to entertain preposterous or...
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Annals of derogation: homo
An example on the hoof, complete with the libelous myth of gay recruitment: “These homos are interested in recruiting new members,” Rev. Benjamin Bubar, leader of the fundamentalist Christian Civic...
View ArticleChecking out
A standard notice from the Instacart home-delivery service about a grocery order in progress from the Safeway supermarket: You’ve still got time to shop Add items until your shopper checks out The...
View ArticleAt the zeugmoid laundry
A tv commercial for the laundry detergent Tide, heard this morning: If it’s got to be clean, then it’s got to be Tide [1] (with the deontic modal of obligation have got to, roughly ‘must’). At this...
View ArticleBy their remnants you shall know them
It’s penultimate November and the day after Black Friday, and the leftovers from Thanksgiving — my leftovers, being quirkily Korean, are surely not much like yours, but I have them and they are...
View ArticleQuiet Piggy
11 … 2 … 3 it’s Fibonacci day today; the omens foretell 5 in your future, and then 8, and then 13, and then 21, leaping upward in ever-greater jumps, in an elegant spiral of numbers (I used to be a...
View ArticleLike a Spanish cow
Very briefly noted, this morning’s morning name, the stock insult in French: parler français comme une vache espagnole, literally ‘to speak French like a Spanish cow’, conveying ‘to speak French badly’...
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Revolt against the bad guys
From Joelle Stepien Bailard on Facebook on 10/5, passing on material from Tony Michaels’s Facebook page (“The Tony Michaels Podcast: Considered ‘The Rush Limbaugh of the Left’”), also from 10/5: A Tony...
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From the annals of NAA
The most recent Stephan Pastis Pearls Before Swine strip: A classic NAA (non-apology apology): if you take offence, it’s your problem (in the strip: I’m sorry you were offended; ramped up: I’m sorry...
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Can I help?
rabbit rabbit rabbit for the new month, which is coming in locally with October showers (a tiny amount of rain, but always an excitement in what is still the dry season in this part of the world)...
View ArticleAn armed gunman
From John McIntyre on Facebook today: — JM: Today’s Pleonasm Award goes to outlets that referred to Thomas Jacob Sanford, who attacked the Mormon church in Michigan, as an armed gunman. My response: —...
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The risks of pedantry
This Chris Hallbeck cartoon came by me on Facebook this morning — a strip packed with matters of science (paleontology, specifically), lexicography and usage (the senses of the noun dinosaur, and the...
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