Tag / Dan Piraro

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, August 25th, 2024

Unexpectedly, this was something of a minor CIDU, with comments disagreeing over which partner is actually the neatnik. (Also just a hint of Arlo speculation based on how the drawn legs bend at the knees.)

Nice to find the occasional clear-and-direct LOL from PMP!

For once we can let this stand as a LOL on its own, and not indulge a compulsion to track down the specific advice column it probably accompanied originally.

Mark H. notes “This Arlo is a Janis”.

Or maybe she’s just moving the drapes to give him a better view of the moon. Or of …

Thanks to both Darren and Phred who sent this one in, as mostly LOL but with enough of a factual background question to make it almost a CIDU. Why is it a matter for sticklers?

P.S. It turns out this comic was discussed at Comic Strip of the Day; but we ran across that after this post was already prepared.

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – August 03rd, 2024

I had been familiar with the Çedille Records label out of Chicago for quite some time before noticing that one reason for the name is that it would be pronounced much like “CD”.

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – June 29th, 2024

And I still maintain that the ugly Internet phenomenon of “trolling” started being called that from a metaphor on the fishing practice (dragging a baited hook behind a quiet small boat), and not the Scandinavian bridge-dwelling threateners.

Are we done with Bizarro for this post? Never say so!

I was preparing to protest that the expression is traditionally “strait and narrow” — which would be preferable despite its redundancy. The pattern of redundancy in rhetorical pairs remains hale and hearty, though some may wish it null and void.

But no! The useful sources recognize only “straight and narrow”, with just a nod to the echoes of “strait”. Here’s Etymonline f’ristance [in entry for straight (adj.2) = “conventional,” especially “heterosexual,” 1941]:

probably suggested by the stock phrase straight and narrow path or way, “course of conventional morality and law-abiding behavior” (by 1842), which is based on a misreading of Matthew vii.14 (where the gate is actually strait); another influence seems to be strait-laced.

No, let’s not get started on straight-jacket!

Et tu, Jeremy?

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – June 15th, 2024

Rather dumb word-argument. But it prompts memory of an assortment of senior-targeted advertising campaigns which for a while used the phrasing “age 50 or better” or “age seventy-and-a-half or better” etcetera. It was supposed to be obvious, yet a sort of joke, that better would mean older. At least one that I heard regularly for a while did change to older; but then later reverted to better ; so I guess there was some complaint but it got resolved, or just overruled.

Come to think of it, probably the word-level associations of squashing things must have played a role in my lifelong aversion to the vegetable of that name.

Chak notes “I’ve read En attendant Godot several times, and I still don’t have a clue.”

Could one expect Godot to comment? Waiting for your comments below.