Clik here to view.
Queen for a King
Benita Bendon Campbell writes: The dominant grocery chain in Denver – a subset of Kroger Foods – is called King Soopers. Their very popular market branch in the gayest neighborhood of our town is known...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The news for, um, monkeys
Today is Super Bowl Sunday, but tomorrow is a real holiday: the Lunar New Year, ushering in the Year of the Monkey (next week we get a Valentine’s Sunday then for Americans on Monday, Presidents Day)....
View ArticleClik here to view.
A passion for pickles
Note: this posting is about pickles (in the American sense: pickled cucumbers) and uses of the word pickle, especially in proper names; my main theme is that pickles and the word pickle tend to be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fruit loops
My posting on breakfast cereals for kids and the way they are marketed focused on Kellogg’s Froot Loops, an extraordinarily sweet cereal in the shape of small rings (or loops), whose rhyming name was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The dubious commercial names files
Following on my posting earlier today on “Dubious commercial names” (about Hand Job Nails & Spa on Castro St. in San Fracisco, whose name might be dubious but was transparently intended as a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Orifices for talk
Today’s Dilbert has the pointy-headed boss talking to Dilbert about listening to his gut instincts: The covert punch line is prefigured in the first panel, with the word analysis. Then in the third...
View ArticleClik here to view.
nookie
(On sexual vocabulary and its uses, but not in street language.) Back a few days, in my sexy-playful posting “Magnitude boys” (underwear with captions), the Rocky character calls out (to two other...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bad bro days
The story of the address term bro in relatively recent years begins with its use by black men to black men, roughly (but not exactly) like the widely used American buddy — a term of male affiliation....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old fashioned Super Duck
Today’s Zippy brings modern comics fans back to 1955 and good old-fashioned Super Duck: (#1) The contrast here is between the conventions and content of American comics in their classic period and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gross and flying penguins, Barsotti and flying squirrels
Unearthed in today’s clearing out of material piled up in a cabinet, two New Yorker cartoons: a Sam Gross (published in the 9/4/95 issue) in which a penguin achieves flight, a Charles Barsotti...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Morning name: The Right Honourable The Lord Rees-Mogg
… as Baron Rees-Mogg of Hinton Blewitt was to be properly addressed (from 1988 until his death in 2012). Before that, he was just William Rees-Mogg, of The Times: (#1) From Wikipedia, some snapshots...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“What you done, sunshine, is criminal damage”
The 1975 quotation (in Green’s Dictionary of Slang) is from a (British working-class) policeman, who “levelled a finger at” a man and made this accusation. My interest here is in the address term...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Julian and Sandy
(Some coarse sexual slang, so it might not be to everyone’s taste.) From the August issue (pp. 37-39) of The Advocate, “Speaking Lavender” by Chadwick Moore, about Bill Leap and the Lavender Languages...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hipsters, beats, and raconteurs
Zippy has recently run through a series of five strips on these characters, with capsule biographies: Harry “The Hipster” Gibson (9/19), proto-beatnik Lord Buckley (9/20), jazz dj Symphony Sid (9/21),...
View ArticleClik here to view.
jackhole
Television report. From The Mysteries of Laura, S1 E20 (5/7/15), “The Mystery of the Crooked Clubber”: So, he’s not our killer, he’s not on the getaway squad, he’s just some jackhole throwing himself...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Smuggle me budgie down, sport
In recent sporting news, from the Financial Times on the 4th, a story by Primrose Riordan on a minor scandal in Malaysia, where Australians have been arrested for wearing Malaysian flag-themed budgie...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Zippy goes out to catch a bite
… in two recent strips, first at Dippin’ Donuts and then at the Sugar Shack. Looks like sweet tooth days for our Pinhead. Both strips are strewed with allusions of all kinds, of course. (#1) (#2)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Workin’ Blue at the Car Wash
Clay Colwell on Facebook today: I just saw a guy holding a sign saying “HAND JOBS $10”. He was outside a car wash, so I’m sure it was for hand-wash service, but ya never know. We’ve visited the world...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Montage montage
(Plenty of language stuff, about English and French, but also quite a bit about man-man sex, sometimes in very plain language, so use your judgment.) Over on AZBlogX, the posting “A fucktage”, with an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Grab It While You Can
(Necessarily, discussion of (female) body parts and plain talk about them. A warning if you’re especially sensitive about these matters.) In today’s mail, a piece of mail art by Ryan Tamares: (#1) An...
View Article