Two of today’s cartoons: a Dilbert and a Pearls Before Swine, both with elaborate puns:

(#1)

This turns on the verb weasel, plus the legal phrase (beyond a) reasonable doubt (plus the derivation of adjectives in -able from verbs).

(#2)

And this one turns on the noun and verb hex, plus the food compound Tex-Mex.

In each case, “getting” the comic requires two pieces of information, from different spheres. (And both beyond weaselable doubt and Hex Mex could be viewed either as elaborate imperfect puns or as complex portmanteaus:  weaselable + beyond reasonable doubt, hex + Tex-Mex.)

weasel. From NOAD2 on the verb weasel:

achieve something by use of cunning or deceit: she suspects me of trying to weasel my way into his affections.

• behave or talk evasively.

(presumably from the proverbial ability of weasels to escape from tight places and, in general, to evade capture).  Note that this is a verbing of the noun weasel.

reasonable doubt. From Wikipedia:

Beyond reasonable doubt is the standard of evidence required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems.

… The use of “reasonable doubt” as a standard requirement in the Western justice system originated in medieval England.

hex. From NOAD2:

verb [with obj.]   cast a spell on; bewitch: he hexed her with his fingers.

noun   a magic spell; a curse: a death hex.
• a witch.

ORIGIN mid 19th cent. (as a verb): from Pennsylvania Dutch … from German

OED2 marks these as “chiefly U.S.” and tracks the senses as follows: the verb (intransitive ‘to practise witchcraft’ and transitive ‘to bewitch, to cast a spell on’), with first cite in 1830, then the noun ‘witch’ (or transferred ‘witch-like female’), with first cite in 1856, then the noun ‘magic spell or curse’, with first cite in 1909.

[Digression on hex signs. From Wikipedia:

Hex signs are a form of Pennsylvania Dutch folk art, related to fraktur, found in the Fancy Dutch tradition in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Barn paintings, usually in the form of "stars in circles," grew out of the fraktur and folk art traditions about 1850 when barns first started to be painted in the area. By the 1940s commercialized hex signs, aimed at the tourist market, became popular and these often include stars, compass roses, stylized birds known as distelfinks, hearts, tulips, or a tree of life. Two schools of thought exist on the meaning of hex signs. One school ascribes a talismanic nature to the signs, the other sees them as purely decorative, or "Chust for nice" in the local dialect. Both schools recognize that there are sometimes superstitions associated with certain hex sign themes, and neither ascribes strong magical power to them.

... the term "hex sign" was not used until the 20th Century, after 1924 when Wallace Nutting's book Pennsylvania Beautiful was published.]

Tex-Mex. The (copulative) compound involves the clipping of both Texan and Mexican. OED2 has it as an adjective –

Designating the Texan variety of something Mexican; also occas., of or pertaining to both Texas and Mexico. [1949 Texmex Spanish; 1973 Tex-Mex cooking; 1976 Tex-Mex integration; 1977 the ‘Tex-Mex style’ [of music]

and a noun –

The Texan variety of Mexican Spanish. [first cite 1955]

and in the draft additions of April 2004, it expands on the culinary specialization (as in #2) and the musical specialization:

Also Texmex. A Texan style of cooking using Mexican ingredients, and characterized by the adaptation of Mexican dishes, frequently with more moderate use of hot flavourings such as chilli; food cooked in this style. [first cite 1963]

Also tex-mex. A broad genre of folk and popular music associated with Mexican-American inhabitants of Texas, characterized by use of the accordion and guitar, and often incorporating elements of Czech and German dance music; (occas.) spec. the more traditional form of this music, typically played by small dance bands, and more recently by rock and blues-influenced performers, as distinguished from a modern, more commercial form strongly influenced by pop and jazz. Cf. Tejano n. and adj. and musica norteña n. [first cite 1968]

Then from Tex-Mex to Hex-Mex (or Hex Mex)!

Today’s Rhymes With Orange:

O Tanning Balm, O Tanning Balm / We groove in Dinah’s bladders …

On the song, from Wikipedia:

“O Tannenbaum” (“O Christmas Tree”) is a German song. Based on a traditional folk song, it became associated with the Christmas tree by the early 20th century and sung as a Christmas carol.

The modern lyrics are due to Leipzig organist, teacher and composer Ernst Anschütz, written in 1824. A Tannenbaum is a fir tree. The lyrics do not actually refer to Christmas, or describe a decorated Christmas tree. Instead, they refer to the fir’s evergreen qualities as a symbol of constancy and faithfulness.

That’s: O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum / Wie treu sind deine Blätter.

In the NYT Magazine on Sunday (July 28th), a “Who Made That?” column (by Pagan Kennedy) on the Loofah Mitt. That leads us to the Luffa plant, source of a vegetable and also loofah sponges. And that takes us to the incredibly multifunctional plant the Wompom, as celebrated in song by Flanders and Swann.

The beginning of Kennedy’s piece, with illustrations added:

“They were in great demand,” wrote a journalist named Nell Cusack in 1893 about a recent New York fad. Word had spread about a curious natural sponge that made the skin glow. Young ladies began using it to scrub their faces, often with so much enthusiasm that they turned as red as lobsters, Cusack joked. No one seemed able to agree on how to spell the name of that sponge, but it inspired such a craze, Cusack reported, that she expected to see “a ‘loafer,’ ‘luphar,’ a ‘loopa’ or a ‘loofah’ in every wash basin the land.”

(#1)

Only a few decades before, the loofah was used mainly to take the black off of teapots. Then came the late-century craze for “friction baths.” According to the medical wisdom of the time, vigorous scrubbing drew poisons out of the body. Women scoured their skin with tools like the “hair mitten” or the “Turkish mitten” (both of which were often made of mohair), as well as stiff-bristled “flesh brushes” that looked as if they belonged in a shoeshine box. The husk of the luffa gourd, which was harvested from a tropical vine, seemed particularly suited to the job — its tangled fibers could impart a healthy glow without chafing.

There was one problem: The loofah sponge, about the size of a rolling pin, was difficult to wedge into certain spots, like behind the ear. So a bit of ingenuity was needed. Judson S. Snyder, of Brooklyn, sewed fiber from the loofah into a device resembling a sock puppet and filed for a patent for the Improved Bathing Mitten in 1889. (Though Snyder patented the idea, he was not the first to innovate with loofah sponges — the plant had been used for centuries by people around the world.)

(#2)

Now, about the source of loofahs. From Wikipedia:

Luffa, Vietnamese luffa, Vietnamese gourd, or Chinese okra are a genus of tropical and subtropical vines classified in the cucumber (Cucurbitaceae) family. In everyday non-technical usage the name, also spelled loofah, usually refers to the fruit of the two species Luffa aegyptiaca and Luffa acutangula. The fruit of these species is cultivated and eaten as a vegetable. The fruit must be harvested at a young stage of development to be edible. The vegetable is popular in China and Vietnam. When the fruit is fully ripened it is very fibrous. The fully developed fruit is the source of the loofah scrubbing sponge which is used in bathrooms and kitchens as a sponge tool. Luffa are not frost-hardy, and require 150 to 200 warm days to mature.

The name Luffa was borrowed by European botanists in the 18th century from the Egyptian Arabic name … lūf.

(#3)

The Luffa plant is dual-purpose. Flanders and Swann’s Wompom is a true multi-purpose plant. A performance here:

 (#4)

The lyrics, for your appreciation:

You can do such a lot with a Wompom,
You can use every part of it too.
For work or for pleasure,
It’s a triumph, it’s a treasure,
Oh there’s nothing that a Wompom cannot do.

Now the thread from the coat of the Wompom
Has the warmth and resilience of Wool
You need never wash or brush it,
It’s impossible to crush it
And it shimmers like the finest sort of tulle.

So our clothes are all made from the Wompom;
Modern Gowns, Sportswear, Lingerie (Going up)
They are waterproof and plastic
Where it’s needed they’re elastic
And they emphasise the figure as you see.

Hail, to thee blithe Wompom.
Hail, to thee O Plant!
All-providing Wompom.
Universal Aunt!

You can shave with the rind of a Wompom,
And it acts like a soapless shampoo.
And its root in little doses
Keeps you free from halitosis
Oh, there’s nothing that a Wompom cannot do,
Nothing that a Wompom cannot do,
Nothing that a Wompom cannot do.

Now the thick inner shell of a Wompom
You can mould with a finger and thumb.
Though soft when you began it
It’ll set as hard as granite
And it’s quite as light as aluminium.

So we make what we like from the Wompom,
And that proves very useful indeed.
From streets full of houses
To the buttons on your trousers
With a Wompom you have everything you need.

Gaudeamus Wompom,
Gladly we salute!
Vade mecum Wompom,
Philanthropic Fruit!

Oh, the thin outer leaf of the Wompom
Makes the finest Havana cigar
And its bottom simply bristles
With unusual looking thistles
But we haven’t yet discovered what they are.

You can do such a lot with a Wompom,
You can use every part of it too.
For work or for pleasure,
It’s a triumph, it’s a treasure,
Oh there’s nothing that a Wompom cannot do.

Oh, the flesh in the heart of a Wompom
Has the flavour of porterhouse steak.
And its juice is a liquor
That will get you higher quicker
And you’re still lit up next morning when you wake.

Wompom! Wompom!
Let your voices ring!
Wompom! Wompom!
Evermore we sing!

To record what is what in a Wompom
Needs a book twice as thick as Who’s Who
I could tell you more and more about this fascinating flora
You can shape it, you can square it,
You can drape it you can wear it,
You can ice it, You can dice it,
You can pare it, You can slice it,
Oh there’s nothing that a Wompom cannot do!
Nothing that a Wompom cannot do!
Nothing that a Wompom cannot do!

Delightful stuff.

Three cartoons for today: a Pearls Before Swine on insults; a Mother Goose and Grimm meta-cartoon; and a One Big Happy on tongue twisters;

(#1)

(#2)

(#3)

In #3, Ruthie attends to the sense of the tongue-twister, treating it as it it set forth a claim about the real world.

Commenting on Facebook on my Anthony Weiner posting of yesterday, Dennis Lewis alerts me to the gay porn parody flick Anthony’s Weener (Jet Set Men, 2011). I suppose it was inevitable.

The front cover of the DVD, cropped so as to remove Anthony’s wiener; the full X version will appear in a posting on AXBlogX:

Brian Moylan on Gawker, 10/7/11, “Anthony Weiner Gets the Gay Porn Parody He Deserves”:

Jet Set Studios, the gay porn company behind such comedic gems as Getting Levi’s Johnson and To Fuck a Predator, has just released Anthony’s Weener. It’s the story of what happens when a gay Congressman accidentally tweets a picture of his penis. Don’t worry, the trailer above is safe(ish) for work.

It has everything: drama, intrigue, politics, abs, jokes about politicians who turn out to be gay, a sweet message about marriage equality, 10-inch cocks, and the Boehner joke you always wanted to make. What’s not to love? And because I know you people are perverted enough to watch it but too lazy to find it on your own, you can watch the hardcore version here. Just, you know, don’t send around pictures of yourself watching it.

The synopsis of the plot:

Anthony’s Weener is the most anticipated gay adult parody of the year! It stars Lucky Daniels as Congressman Wheiner [Weiner], Angel Rock as right wing blogger Andrew Breitpart [Breitbart], Ricky Sinz as Speaker Bohner [Boehner] and Marc Dylan as Senator David Litter [Vitter]. Co-starring Jacob Durham, Jackson Klein, A.J. Monroe, Cameron Foster and Trevor Knight as former Senator Harry Craig [Larry Craig, of "wide stance" fame], Anthony’s Weener is sure to rock the halls of Capitol Hill.

Following on a Zippy and a Mother Goose and Grimm, the day continues with three more cartoons: a Bizarro with sluggish portmanteaus (and a pop culture allusion); a Pearls Before Swine with a preposterous elaborate pun; and a Dilbert on expectations about conversational interactions.

(#1)

The allusion is to the monster film Mothra vs. Godzilla, with King Kong replacing Godzilla in a contest with Mothra. That enables Don Piraro to locate the confrontation on the Empire State Building,.

Piraro also chose to replace the giant moth and the giant gorilla with notably slow-moving creatures, a sloth and a panda, respectively, so that the confrontation becomes absurd (and terminally boring).

And then he combined the names: sloth plus Mothra gives Slothra, panda plus King Kong gives Panda Kong.

(#2)

In the spirit of the Pearls strip in “Return to Oz”, Pastis has the characters build to an elaborate outrageous pun of the “immortal porpoises” type — this time on supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, from the 1964 film version of Mary Poppins. And then, as in that earlier strip and some others, things go meta as Rat confronts the cartoonist and threatens him for his misdeed.

(#3)

The boss’s expectation of group conversational interaction (like a conference call) is that it will lead to a mutually agreed-on result, but Dilbert’s expectations are much, much lower than that.

Today’s Scenes From a Multiverse:

It’s the first two panels, with a play on the name of the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un — interpreted as if the un was French for ‘one’. So after Kim Jong Un comes Kim Jong Deux.

… in today’s cartoons: Mother Goose and Grimm, with a perfect pun; and Bizarro, with an imperfect pun (or perhaps a portmanteau):

(#1)

(#2)

#1 plays on the ambiguity of beyond, as a preposition (in the shop name Bed Bath & Beyond, with an ellipted object, as in We drove to the border, but we couldn’t go beyond) or as a noun (as in the Great Beyond ‘the afterlife’).

#2 has iProd, either an imperfect pun on iPod (with an allusion to anal probing, or prodding, by aliens), or a portmanteau of iPod and prod ‘probe’.

There’s a Wikipedia article on anal probing by aliens, a pop culture joke that the entry says originated in the 1987 book Communion: A True Story by ufologist Whitney Strieber.

Posted by Hott Box on Facebook, and passed on to me by Mike Reaser:

I see this as a portmanteau (of Batman and fan), but it could also be seen as an imperfect pun on Batman.

The Batman theme (alluded to above) can be heard in a video in my 2012 posting “Batmaaaan”, along with a discussion of the mock chemical element Batmantium. In another posting of that year, “A batmanteau”, you can find the portmanteau batarang (Batman + boomerang).

Today’s Zippy:

Zippy is musing about Richard Widmark on the streets of Dingburg; note the sign for Poindexter Bar Bats. The movie he’s musing about is Don’t Bother to Knock (1952).

(Downtown Dingburg MD from a different viewpoint is here.)

On Widmark:

Richard Weedt Widmark (December 26, 1914 – March 24, 2008) was an American film, stage and television actor.

He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, Kiss of Death… Early in his career Widmark specialized in similar villainous or anti-hero roles in films noir, but he later branched out into more heroic leading and support roles in westerns, mainstream dramas and horror films, among others. (Wikipedia link)

And, on the cast of the movie:

Lyn Lesley (Anne Bancroft), the bar singer at New York’s McKinley Hotel, wonders if airline pilot Jed Towers (Richard Widmark) will show up. She had ended their six-month relationship with a letter. When Jed does register at the hotel, she explains that she sees no future with him because he lacks an understanding heart.

Meanwhile, elevator operator Eddie (Elisha Cook Jr.) introduces his shy niece, Nell Forbes (Marilyn Monroe), to guests Peter (Jim Backus) and Ruth Jones (Lurene Tuttle) as a babysitter for their daughter Bunny (Donna Corcoran).  (Wikipedia link)

Finally, notice the word play in the strip’s title, “Way off the Widmark”.

Passed on to me by Doug Wyman, yesterday’s Get Fuzzy:

Ouch. Habitat for Huge Manatees. A pun on Habitat for Humanity.

On the strip:

Get Fuzzy is an American daily comic strip written and drawn by Darby Conley. The strip features the adventures of Boston advertising executive Rob Wilco and his two anthropomorphic pets: dog Satchel Pooch and cat Bucky Katt. Get Fuzzy has been published by United Feature Syndicate since September 6, 1999. It appears in over 700 newspapers worldwide.

The strip’s humor comes from the conflict between Bucky’s and Satchel’s personalities, which are extreme stereotypes of cats and dogs. Sweet, trusting, naïve Satchel is routinely subjected to the exploitation of cruel, self-centered Bucky, who is always torturing the poor canine. Rob, the middleman, is often frazzled from dealing with them, or more specifically, from dealing with Bucky’s destructive nature and overall nastiness. The three characters live in an apartment on Boston’s Longwood Avenue. Get Fuzzy often eschews the traditional “setup-punchline” format of most funnies, instead building on absurd dialog between characters. (Wikipedia link)

From Tom Limoncelli, a link to this Cyanide and Happiness strip:

Oh my. What I’ve called elsewhere a word avalanche.

(On the strip, see here.)

In today’s Pearls Before Swine, Rat tricks Goat into saying something that gets him in trouble:

Shades of the mantra “Oo watta na Siam”.  (There used to be a Thai restaurant called Watana Siam in Park Slope, Brooklyn, but it seems to have morphed into a completely different Thai restaurant.)

In any case, is asking someone if they want to get high a punishable offense? Does it count as an offer of drugs?

Today’s Zippy has Zerbina strumming her version of death metal on the ukulele:

(#1)

Where to start? There’s Cannibal Corpse and the song “Evisceration Plague”; the source for Zerbina’s burlesque version; and the ukulele as an instrument. Certainly, death metal on a ukulele is risible.

Ok, Cannibal Corpse is a real band (Bill Griffith wouldn’t make such a thing up, at least not when there are gems like this to be found in real life):

Cannibal Corpse is an American death metal band from Buffalo, New York. Formed in 1988, the band has released twelve studio albums, one box set, and one live album. Throughout the years the band has been established, they have had little radio or television exposure, although a cult following began to build behind the group with the release of albums such as 1991′s Butchered at Birth and 1992′s Tomb of the Mutilated which both reached over one million in worldwide sales by 2003, including 558,929 in the United States by 2003, making them the top-selling death metal band of all time in the US.

… Evisceration Plague, Cannibal Corpse’s eleventh studio album was released February 3, 2009, to a highly positive response from fans.

… In May 1995, then-US Senator Bob Dole accused Cannibal Corpse — along with hip hop acts like the Geto Boys and 2 Live Crew — of undermining the national character of the United States. A year later, the band came under fire again, this time as part of a campaign by conservative activist William Bennett, Senator Joe Lieberman, then-Senator Sam Nunn, and National Congress of Black Women chair C. Delores Tucker to get major record labels — including Time Warner, Sony, Thorn-EMI, PolyGram and Bertelsmann — to “dump 20 recording groups…responsible for the most offensive lyrics.” [In fact, the band and its recordings have been banned in several jurisdictions.]

… Cannibal Corpse prides itself on overtly violent-themed songs and album artwork, which it sees as nothing more than an extreme form of over-the-top entertainment. In the film Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, George [“Corpsegrinder”] Fisher [of the bands Monstrosity and Cannibal Corpse] said death metal is best viewed “as art”, and claimed that far more violent art can be found at the Vatican, saying that such depictions actually happened. Some of Cannibal Corpse’s most controversial song titles include “Meat Hook Sodomy”, “Entrails Ripped from a Virgin’s Cunt”, “Necropedophile”, and “Fucked with a Knife”. (Wikipedia link)

The lyrics for the song “Evisceration Plague” are nothing like Zerbina’s burlesque version. But they are based on something on the Evisceration Plague album, namely this verse of the song “To Decompose”:

Cadaver filled carcasses flood the land
Methodically emptied of bone and blood
Left to be one with the dirt again
To decompose
It will all end in the dirt again

(Meanwhile, lavender and dill for cadaver filled provides a distant echo of the folk song “Lavender Blue”, with the line “Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green”. And scone and snood is a nice nonsensicalization of bone and blood.)

Now, the ukulele:

The ukulele …, sometimes abbreviated to uke, is a member of the guitar family of instruments; it generally employs four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings.

The ukulele originated in the 19th century as a Hawaiian interpretation of the machete, a small guitar-like instrument related to the cavaquinho, braguinha and the rajao, taken to Hawaii by Portuguese immigrants. It gained great popularity elsewhere in the United States during the early 20th century, and from there spread internationally. (Wikipedia link)

Some people think of the uke as a silly plinking instrument, and Bill Griffith has evoked it at least once before, in a strip in which Zippy burlesques “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” on the ukulele.

Bonus: looking up ukulele sites led me to a Ukulele Hunt posting with a cartoon inspired by Cyanide and Happiness:

(#2)

(Julie Strietelmeier is a gadgeteer and ukulele player.)

For the Uke Hunt joke, compare Mike Hunt and York Hunt in this posting.

From Chris Ambidge, two New Hampshire license plates, taking advantage of the moose on the plate, here and here:

  (#1)

  (#2)

Wonderful silliness. #1 has a reference to Rocky & Bullwinkle:

The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show (known as Rocky & His Friends during its first two seasons and as The Bullwinkle Show for the remainder of its run) is an American animated television series that originally aired from November 19, 1959, to June 27, 1964, on the ABC and NBC television networks. Produced by Jay Ward Productions, the series is structured as a variety show, with the main feature being the serialized adventures of the two title characters, the anthropomorphic moose Bullwinkle and flying squirrel Rocky. The main adversaries in most of their adventures are the Russian-like spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. Supporting segments include Dudley Do-Right (a parody of old-time melodrama), Peabody’s Improbable History (a dog and his pet boy Sherman traveling through time), and Fractured Fairy Tales (classic fairy tales retold in comic fashion), among others.

Rocky & Bullwinkle is known for the quality of its writing and humor. Mixing puns, cultural and topical satire, and self-referential humor, it was designed to appeal to adults as well as children.

  (#3)

Delightful show, which I posted about here.

#2 turns to the moose knuckle, that outward and visible sign of an inward male package. Frequent postings, most notably on AXBlogX and on this blog.

Considering mashups of different artistic genres, Josh Millard offers Mary Worth’s Howl:

Mary Worth’s Howl, by Al “Screwball” Ginsberg [8/15/13]

So, Lauren LoPrete‘s Peanuts + Smiths Lyrics mashup blog, This Charming Life, has been making the rounds; it ended up on Metafilter yesterday, which led to much riffing on other possible comic/band juxtapositions, and I saw someone mention Mary Worth and joked that it should in fact be: Mary Worth and excerpts from Howl.

In seven panels:

(#1)

(#2)

(#3)

(#4)

(#5)

(#6)

(#7)

On Mary Worth, from Wikipedia:

Mary Worth is a newspaper comic strip, which has had a seven-decade run since it began in 1938 under the title Mary Worth’s Family. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, this pioneering soap opera-style strip had an influence on several realistically drawn continuity strips that followed.

… As scripted by Saunders, each story (and its cast) was independent, with little continuity to the next, and Mary generally made only brief appearances to react and give her matronly advice. A former teacher and widow of Wall Street tycoon (Jack Worth), Mary formerly lived in New York and later moved to the Charterstone Condominium Complex in fictional Santa Royale, California. Mary serves as an observer of and adviser to her fellow residents, tackling issues such as drug and alcohol abuse, infidelity and teen pregnancy. Only in recent decades (after Saunders retired) has the strip centered more on the title character, along with a regular cast of her closest friends, most of whom were introduced to the strip after 1980

From the Inquisitr site:

Kraft’s Zesty Guy Back Thanks To Million Moms Protest

Kraft’s Zesty Guy raised the hackles of One Million Moms, a group known for its continual harassment of America’s Sweetheart Ellen DeGeneres and fear of ambient bestiality in network commercials. So how did One Million Moms affect Kraft’s Zesty Guy marketing campaign? It seems, if Jezebel is correct, that their anger served only to get us more of the naughty pinup boy.

Some samples from the new campaign will follow below, along with a Kraft scheme for creating Zestygrams for personal use.

The background: material on the previous playful campaign (with photos) is in “Zesty Anderson Davis”. On the One Million Moms’ ravingly hyperbolic response, from Inquisitr:

One Million Moms Cause Kraft Ad Controversy

The group of conservative mothers is outraged because Kraft has gone and used a nude man, covering his important “parts” simply with a blanket. The fact that the man is sprawled out rather leisurely in the Kraft ad only adds fuel to the One Million Moms’ fire. Their site goes on to say, “Christians will not be able to buy Kraft dressings or any of their products until they clean up their advertising. “The consumers they are attempting to attract – women and mothers – are the very ones they are driving away. “Who will want Kraft products in their fridge or pantry if this vulgarity is what they represent?”

They objected to the indecency of that picnic photo (which is in the previous posting). Kraft has responded with this new offering, using sand rather than the corner of a picnic blanket:

(#1)

A montage of some other ad images in the new series:

(#2)

On to Zestygrams, on Kraft’s Let’s Get Zesty site. Here’s an example:

(#3)

There are two stages in composing a Zestygram. First, you pick onej of six images:

(#4)

Then, you get a template message to fill in using pull-down menus. For Thanks, the template looks like this:

OH HEY
[pull-down menu]
NO ONE
[pull-down menu]
QUITE LIKE YOU.
JUST WANTED TO SAY
THANKS
[pull-down menu]

(The pull-down menus ensure that Kraft, which provides the options, isn’t associated with anything truly raunchy — suggestive, yes; dirty, no.)

Today’s Zippy, on Dingburger hair styles, with an outrageous pun in the middle of it:

Requires topknots Dingburg. Rejects other hair styles the law.

VOS word order — attested, but rare. Certainly harsh for speakers of English.

Today’s Pearls Before Swine, with a word avalanche:

Pearls toilet-talk, which manages to avoid pissy while strongly suggesting it.

[Oh yes, and the reference to pity party.]

(Yes, a pun, but a lot of (homo)sexual content as well.)

In my e-mail this morning, an ad for this gay porn flick:

A cheap pun — grease/Greece, allusion to greek (anal) sex, which is prominently featured in the flick — but still entertaining to me; maybe it’s just a cheap Monday thrill.

In the photo, Adrian Long on the left, Edji Da Silva on the right. The Lucas puffery:

Lucas Entertainment’s forty-seventh round of auditions features some of the sexiest Lucas Men overseas, and they’re all ready to “Greece” their “Holes”! Marco Sessions begins the interviews by working on Rafael Carreras’ uncut Cuban cock with his mouth and hole. Vito Gallo and Trenton Ducati flex their Greek-god bodies as they flip-fuck each other. Lucas Entertainment’s exclusive Arab power-top Edji Da Silva bends Tony Axel over and shows him who is boss. Adrian Long and Miles Racer blow wads of cum after a long round of sex. And Adam Killian and Jessy Ares work and wear out each other’s muscular asses. Once these hot guys “Greece” up their “Holes,” there’s no stopping them!

These are in so sense auditions, but performances by experienced Lucas pornstars, all of them written up on AZBlogX.

The cast is notably international. By birth:

Marco Sessions: Romania
Rafael Carreras: Cuba
Vito Gallo: U.S. (Buffalo) – of Italian ancestry
Trenton Ducati: U.S. (Houston)
Edji Da Silva: France – of Arab descent
Tony Axel: France
Adrian Long: Canada
Miles Racer: U.K.
Adam Killian: U.S. (California)
Jessy Ares: U.S./Germany

Writeups on AZBlogX:

2/15/13: “Trenton Ducati” (link)
3/30/13: “Jesse/Jessy Ares” (link)
4/26/13: “Sex in suits” (link): Da Silva
5/21/13: “Adam Killian” (link)
6/14/13: “Face Fuckers” (link): Sessions, Carreras, Gallo, Axel, Racer

Axel and Racer are notable bottoms (a relevant classification for this flick); the others are versatile or mostly tops.