Playful variations

More Far Side cartoons from Gary Larson’s Wiener Dog Art (though not involving wiener dogs): three playful variations on formulaic expressions.

First, a very silly variation on the compound wharf rat:


from Wikipedia:

The brown rat, common rat, street rat, sewer rat, Hanover rat, Norway rat, brown Norway rat, Norwegian rat, or wharf rat (Rattus norvegicus) is one of the best known and most common rats.

Such wharf rats hang around wharves, as do seafarers of all sorts (so that wharf rat is also slang for someone who frequents wharves).

Then a larger fixed expression, a famous quote:


A line from Lauren Bacall’s character in To Have and Have Not (1944):

You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.

Finally, a still more complicated, punning, one, based on a proverb:

People who live glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, as the proverb has it. Or in the more complicated pun (which requires some lead-up), people who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.

 

 

 

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One Response to “Playful variations”

  1. Stan Says:

    “Just put your coils together and squeeeeze” has an additional murderous connotation in that squeeze is often the verb used in instructions on how to shoot a gun: “Just put your finger on the trigger and squeeze.”

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