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On the pun watch
Today’s Rhymes With Orange: Groan. Ate for hate, sounding Cockney. As always, understanding the cartoon requires all sorts of cultural and factual knowledge, in this case about the practice of marriage...
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Double entendres
Just watched a re-run of a Psych episode — I’m a fan of this silly show — on the USA network, where the program was repeatedly interrupted by an ad for the film Little Fockers, which will soon play on...
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Body language and Lithuanians
Today’s Zippy returns to the topic of facial expression and gesture in Dingburg: Five stances (or gestures), each with an absurdly specific meaning (some of which suggest, in snowclonish way, proverbs...
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Four more obits
Just in the past two days, four more deaths of people who have given me pleasure through their work: Ed Fisher and Peter Workman in the NYT yesterday, Jonathan Winters and Maria Tallchief today....
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ship my pants
Passed on by Karen Chung on Facebook, a HuffPo piece (with video) about a Kmart ad with ostentatious taboo avoidance: ‘Ship My Pants’ Kmart Ad: For The 12-Year-Old In All Of Us Looks like Kmart has...
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The Sturgeon General
Periodically I’ve posted the Bizarro Sunday Punnies, always a set of three pun panels. Last Sunday’s (#29) led with one that amused me a lot: The title is a punning portmanteau: sturgeon (the fish) +...
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Indirect pun
Today’s Bizarro: This isn’t really a pun conveyed wordlessly — the caption “First sign of spring” is crucial to understanding the cartoon — but the pun is conveyed indirectly. For the cartoon to work,...
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Liz Climo
In snail mail from Chris Ambidge on Thursday, a print of this cartoon by Liz Climo: (#1) To get this cartoon, you need to know a good bit about the children’s book Charlotte’s Web — and then to...
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Brief mention: the probably unintentional pun
From today’s “Metropolitan Diary” in the national edition of the NYT (apparently printed in NYC on the 16th). “Proust at the Morgan Library” by Tom Hughes: The scene: the Morgan Library exhibition in...
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Acronymic pun
John Gintell, just back from the NEFFA festivities, has posted this Pearls Before Swine cartoon from January 27th on Google+: Big GROAN (great roar of acronymic nausea).
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Reduplicative compounds
Today’s Rhymes With Orange: Hippy-dippy, artsy-fartsy. Compound-like combinations with parts that aren’t semantically independent but are related phonologically, in this case by rhyme. In addition to...
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Blue pun
On Facebook this morning, Wilson Gray posted this Rotten eCard with a double entendre: A pun on the verb come. Not that a responsible mother would commit this pun to her child. I’ve posted a fair...
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Palindrome time
Today’s Bizarro: The famous version is ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA — purported to be a report of Napoleon Bonaparte’s sentiments late in life. If Napoleon had written in English and had been given to...
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Spoonerisms for fun
Over on ADS-L, Gerald Cohen and Joel Berson have been enjoying recollections of Shel Silverstein’s Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook (2005). Delightful childish pleasure in the (intentional) transposition of...
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oobleck
Following on my posting about Shel Silverstein, on to another children’s book author, Dr. Seuss, this time through an article in NewScientist (print edition of April 20th): “Miracle mix looks like...
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Orange and apple
From various sources on Facebook, but most directly from Engrish.com: A pun on mandarin, and an allusion to the idiom comparing apples and oranges. The pun. Mandarin Chinese and the Mandarin orange. On...
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Nick Danger: an appreciation
My iTunes woke me this morning with “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye” (from Firesign Theatre’s How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All (1969)). It’s packed...
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Zippymorphs
Today’s Zippy, with morphological play from Dingburgers: One attested derived nominalization, contemplation from the verb contemplate; one over-extended derived nominalization, ingestation (rather that...
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A multiplicity of uses
… for the verb look, especially in combination with the particle up, in yesterday’s Zippy:
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The 12-inch pianist
Today’s Scenes From a Multiverse: Size doesn’t matter. Or: Size matters. In any case, an allusion to an old joke. Wikipedia on the bar joke, with the relevant part boldfaced: A bar joke is a very...
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