In the 3/16 New Yorker, this cartoon by Jack Ziegler:
(#1)
Giant buttocks instead of giant heads. And the outrageous pun keister on the rhyming Easter.
This is not the only exploitation of the keister/Easter relationship. There is, in particular, keister bunny, as in ornaments available from Cafe Press:
(#2)
And on the Cop Slang website, we find an entry for keister bunny ‘an inmate who hides contraband in his/her rectum’.
On the slang term keister, from NOAD2, two senses:
1 a person’s buttocks. 2 dated a suitcase, bag, or box for carrying possessions or merchandise. ORIGIN late 19th cent. (in the sense ‘suitcase, bag’): of unknown origin.
Very cautious. The Online Etymological Dictionary, assembled by a lexicographically enthusiastic amateur, is willing to speculate, though carefully:
“buttocks,” 1931, perhaps transferred from underworld meaning “safe, strongbox” (1914), earlier “a burglar’s toolkit that can be locked” (1881); probably from British dialect kist (northern form of chest) or its German cognate Kiste “chest, box.” The connection may be via pickpocket slang sense of “rear trouser pocket” (1930s).
(As for Ziegler, his cartoons have appeared on this blog four times before, with discussion of the cartoonist here.)
