(tiger – tiger – tiger, rather than rabbit- rabbit – rabbit) anticipating by a bit the new month tomorrow (February, holding the promise that — in the Northern Hemisphere — winter will in fact come to an end) and also the (lunar) new year, the Year of the Tiger
Meanwhile, this morning’s e-mail brings me a Wayno/Piraro Bizarro with the excellent POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) portmanteau truck = portmanteau + tow truck, the truck in question being a brunch (breakfast + lunch) truck where you can get Tofurkey (tofu + turkey) with Dijonnaise (Dijon + mayonnaise) dressing and a cronut (croissant + doughnut), which you can eat with a spork (spoon + fork).
At the same time, a Daily Jocks ad that’s at once charming and raunchy, featuring a model wearing a garment I would call a moosinglet, a moose singlet, that is, a wrestling singlet in which the model is displaying a moose-knuckle, a penis (especially an erect one) that is visible though the wearer’s clothing.
And then portmanteau truck will lead us to portmanteau jam as a name for a POP chain.
The Bizarro cartoon. A feast of portmanteauing, maybe enough to give you portmanptomaine poisoning:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)
Wayno’s title: “Mix Well Before Serving”.
The DJ ad. At the gym: a complex self-assured come-on half-smile and a flagrant moose-knuckle (also an invitation) — plus a lean, nicely muscled body:
(#2) The mail header: “Get ready to rumble”; the ad copy (unedited): “Gear up, pick your team & get ready to wrestle with Varsity’s Scrimmage wrestling suits. Available in Black, White & Blue”
As items of homowear (rather than athletic wear), wrestling singlets serve, like harnesses, as what I think of as nipnpec displays, showing off the wearer’s nipples and pectoral muscles. As here.
(I don’t know the name of the model or the photographer, but they deserve credit for the composition, including the sharp focus in the foreground and the softer focus in the background.)
The portmanteau jam. From poster Buckle_Sandwich on Reddit a month ago, the suggestion of this portmanteau term for playful POP chains, in which a series of POPs are chained together as a game. Two of my inventions taking off from the ridiculous portmanteau jam (portmanteau + toe jam) itself:
portmanteau jam and Jelly Roll Morton’s saltwater Taffy was a Welshman (note: the brand name Morton’s salt; the scurrilous folk rhyme “Taffy was a Welshman / Taffy was a thief”)
portmanteau jam football like a baby’s breath of Spring Byington (note: toe jam football from the Beatles song “Come Together”; bawl like a baby; the flower commonly known as baby’s breath)
Despite its ridiculous source, portmanteau jam does nicely suggest the noun jam ‘an informal gathering of musicians improvising together, especially in jazz or blues’, a playing together; and also the verb jam ‘squeeze or pack tightly into a specified space’, as in portmanteauing (both definitions from NOAD).