So the aliens are shaped like tombstones, they landed in a cemetery . . . and then . . . ??
The aliens tried to “rescue” all of their brethren, and the widow took exception at gravestone theft. She then explained what was going on, punctuated with violence.
So they have antenae because…. aliens have to have antenae? … even if the joke is they look like tombstones… that don’t have antenae?
It almost looks like lip marks on that one tombstone. They were trying to mate with it? And it is the tombstone of the woman’s husband, although the aliens assume it IS her husband even though she does not look like a tombstone herself. And the widow was visiting the cemetery at night. Looks like she beat the tar out of them with her purse.
There never seems to be a #@!% 🐿 around when you need one.
Mona, they’re an extremely sexually dimorphic species.
Um, well, and the space explorers are usually gay….
Strange Brew
Mona for the emoji win!
(How the #@!% does she even get that to show? When I copy and paste it, it’s a square… 🐿️🐿)
🖕
They seem to have been making out with the grave stone, yes. But they doubtful think the grave stone is her husband – she would have disabused them of the notion that they’re people when driving them off. ‘Get away from my husband’s gravestone, you creepy aliens!’
Folly, I’ve been doing this for TWENTY-TWO YEARS, and I still manage to type “Strange Brew” when my brain is saying “Speed Bump,” and vice versa. It isn’t that I don’t know which is which, just that I seem to have a wire crossed.
So…. the cartoonist thinks aliens trying to f$$$ tombstones is a straightforward enough scenario to not require an explanation… ?
Okay….. just tiptoeing away here….
Regarding emojis…I’ll let y’all in on my big secret.
They are on my tablet keyboard. Not my laptop or my phone. So if I want to use them I have to use my tablet.
They don’t necessarily look the same online as they do when I type them. The 🐜🐜🐜 I posted under CDB’s is an example. On my tablet they do look like ants, online they just look like bugs. So it’s kind of a crapshoot. Sometimes what shows up online is not at all what I intended.
😎😍😉😘💋
Well, those turned out ok, except the one in the middle is supposed to be the winking emoji and it just looks like it has something in its eye. I think now I remember it did that once before. The winking kissing one also looks weird.
Note to self: do not use the winking emojis on CIDU.
How any of those display is a function of the browser used to view the site and not the site itself. Some sites have their own emoji images they send, but apparently not wordpress.com.
I thought maybe she was kicking her husband’s tombstone and maybe the alien tombstones too. The aliens are sorry that her husband was so abusive when he was alive?
“I thought maybe she was kicking her husband’s tombstone” That’s more align with what I was thinking except… why would she be kicking other unknown people’s tombstones?
I’ve been through a couple of different variations, but nothing that coalesced into a “yes, that’s it!”
There are marks of some kind on the stone that is to the lady’s left. Presumably, it was Mr. lady.
The aliens look vaguely like tombstones, with antennae, two of them also have stars, which usually indicate emotion of some kind… consternation, frustration, embarrassment.
The scene is set near the end of their interaction… the aliens are leaving, for whatever reason, and they’ve been informed that Mr. lady is no longer with us.
This is my best guess.
The aliens interrupted her during an emotional moment. She mistook the aliens for gravestones, and thus didn’t realize that she wasn’t alone in her bereavement. The aliens are embarrassed for her, and are trying to slink away to avoid having to interact with her further. She’s angry… partly at the aliens, for interrupting her alone moment and seeing her in what she thought was a time of privacy and seclusion, partly at herself for not being composed.
“usually indicate emotion of some kind… consternation, frustration, embarrassment.”
Or pain. I think it’s a fairly safe (although not foregone) assumption that the woman just beat the crap out of the aliens.
The real question is … why?
I assume they were doing something to here husband’s tombstone that is reasonable for aliens. (No idea what) However from a human perspective it looked like something inappropriate. (Again no idea what.) The beats the crap out of them. One of them cowed tries to apologize. Another says “let’s just get out of here”.
I’m kind of amused that the cartoonist seems to think what the aliens were doing and what it looked like would be evident.
“Or pain. I think it’s a fairly safe (although not foregone) assumption that the woman just beat the crap out of the aliens.”
Pain is three stars with circular swoozles.
There are scuff marks on the one gravestone to the lady’s left. None on the retreating aliens. If we’re supposed to get “the lady just beat the crap out of the aliens”, it’s poorly executed. (As opposed to just not funny).
Any reasonable explanation as to the widow being in the cemetery at night? Around here the cemeteries all have fences around them and they lock the gates at dusk.
Ooo, ooo! I think I’ve got it! There seem to be human lip marks on husband’s tombstone. Widow was kissing husband’s tombstone. Tombstone looking aliens thought she was a very friendly person and tried to get very friendly with her. A bit of a cultural misunderstanding. She womped the tar out of them. Oops, sorry, ma’am. Let’s just get out of here.
Thank you, thank you very much.
“Any reasonable explanation as to the widow being in the cemetery at night?”
Because nobody wants to argue with a widow?
Mr. Deering is sending mixed signals with his emanata. JP is correct that pain is usually indicated with multiple stars (not sure it has to be exactly three) floating in a swalloop (let’s get the nomenclature correct, here.), it is also clear that the three aliens have been thrashed by the little old lady – there are hatch marks, and some seriously crinkled antennae, along with the fact that they are retreating. The gist of the joke, IMHO, is that the aliens thought the tombstone was one of them, interacted with it, but were caught by the widow. Exactly HOW they were interacting, I don’t even want to contemplate. The “sorry about your husband..” line is kind of like “Sorry, lady, we mistook him for someone else… didn’t mean to hurt him.” It’s curious that the husbands’s tombstone also has an emanata.. Usually when it is just a squiggly line with no icon of any sort (star, heart, dagger, etc) it indicates frustration, possibly in this case “Why me?” Having said all of this, I still have to admit I don’t understand the comic. But the real question is: Why is she scratching her shoulder blades?
” The ‘sorry about your husband..’ line is kind of like ‘Sorry, lady, we mistook him for someone else… didn’t mean to hurt him.”'”
Nah. It’s what you say to the widow when you don’t know what else (if anything) to say.
“it is also clear that the three aliens have been thrashed by the little old lady – there are hatch marks, and some seriously crinkled antennae, along with the fact that they are retreating.”
You see hatch marks, I see shading. All the gravestones have some, not just the aliens. And crinkled antennae may be how headstone-looking-aliens-with-antennae express emotion generally or sorrow specifically. So the lady-thrashing-aliens theory is plausible, but not “clear”. Still stuck on “poorly executed”.
If alien-thrashing is an important element of the cartoon, the precise moment illustrated should have included some alien-thrashing, rather than just an angry power-pose.
“Why is she scratching her shoulder blades?”
Hands balled against your hips, elbows out, is the standard angry/dominance/threat pose.
She is clearly pissed off at the aliens and has just whomped them. Any other explanation is just too convoluted and weird.
An Ewww possibility: maybe the scuff marks (or whatever) on the husband’s tombstone indicates that the aliens were ineptly trying to do a Traditional Alien Anal Probe ™ on it? (But the tradition is that Little Grey Aliens only do those on us humans, who do not look much like them, and not on critters who are dead ringers for them, so I don’t think that’s it either. But I just had to get an Ewww in here.)
The aliens do not look “just like” the gravestones. The gravestones are all different types, and none of them are equipped with antennae.
Imagine the human space-exploration trip. The Enterprise has found a planet covered in little fuzzy monkey-looking things… so they try to catch one or two for observation… We were just talking about first-contact stories.
A good one, and episode from the new Outer Limits series, involves the human spaceship exploring that finds a PERFECT planet. The air is breathable, the water is drinkable, the weather is awesome, the land is verdant. Huge bonuses for everyone when we get back home. There’s just one catch. Just over the hill are some primitive, stone-age aliens, and inhabited planets can’t be claimed as colony worlds. But wait! There’s literally no signs of any other aliens, except for this one batch making crude dwellings out of tree branches and starting fires by striking flint. If we kill these aliens, pretend we never saw them… all the other information we have suggests this is a prime colony world. With any luck, nobody will find out there’s sort-of intelligent life already on this planet until AFTER we’ve cashed our bonus checks! Let’s go kill the natives, quick. They go out and do so. But one of the aliens was carrying a doodad, and closer examination shows its super-advanced technology. Where’d that come from? Then the doodad starts beeping and lighting up. WTF?
Then realization: The doodad is the equivalent of a pocketknife, for a very, very advanced race of beings. A race of beings that sends its young for a campout on the uninhabited wilderness planet near their own star. An alien signal is received by the spaceship… the computer is accessed… navigation records are being scanned… oh, dear, tracing back where the ship has been will lead back to the point of origin, Earth.
It turns out the super-aliens consider the slaughter of children to be a crime worthy of the death penalty… for the race that would do such a thing.
for a bit of synchronicity . . . just finished the book, ‘Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void’, by Mary Roach. Highly recommended, even tho it seems we WON’T be packing for Mars, or anyplace else in space, any time soon (book was written in 2010). ALL of Mary Roach’s books are highly recommended.
Perhaps she caught them giving her husband some “libation”?
I think of this as at the end of the Memorial Day parade our reenactment unit men will climb cemetery hill (women generally stand at the bottom and gossip – stays make the climb up even harder) and do the ceremony honoring the original members (well, the Revolutionary War era ones – not the original, original 1600s ones) members of our unit are buried. Since the cemetery was dug up during the war (If interested look up Fort Golgotha+ revolution) they are mostly buried together in one group grave. One year I got stuck, err, was honored to carry the unit flag and had to schlep up with them. Part of the ceremony is each “man” pours a bit of libation out of a (single) beer bottle for the forefathers.
Maybe they were doing something similar for what they thought were ancestors buried there?
Comics I Don't Understand 
So the aliens are shaped like tombstones, they landed in a cemetery . . . and then . . . ??
The aliens tried to “rescue” all of their brethren, and the widow took exception at gravestone theft. She then explained what was going on, punctuated with violence.
So they have antenae because…. aliens have to have antenae? … even if the joke is they look like tombstones… that don’t have antenae?
It almost looks like lip marks on that one tombstone. They were trying to mate with it? And it is the tombstone of the woman’s husband, although the aliens assume it IS her husband even though she does not look like a tombstone herself. And the widow was visiting the cemetery at night. Looks like she beat the tar out of them with her purse.
There never seems to be a #@!% 🐿 around when you need one.
Mona, they’re an extremely sexually dimorphic species.
Um, well, and the space explorers are usually gay….
Strange Brew
Mona for the emoji win!
(How the #@!% does she even get that to show? When I copy and paste it, it’s a square… 🐿️🐿)
🖕
They seem to have been making out with the grave stone, yes. But they doubtful think the grave stone is her husband – she would have disabused them of the notion that they’re people when driving them off. ‘Get away from my husband’s gravestone, you creepy aliens!’
Folly, I’ve been doing this for TWENTY-TWO YEARS, and I still manage to type “Strange Brew” when my brain is saying “Speed Bump,” and vice versa. It isn’t that I don’t know which is which, just that I seem to have a wire crossed.
So…. the cartoonist thinks aliens trying to f$$$ tombstones is a straightforward enough scenario to not require an explanation… ?
Okay….. just tiptoeing away here….
Regarding emojis…I’ll let y’all in on my big secret.
They are on my tablet keyboard. Not my laptop or my phone. So if I want to use them I have to use my tablet.
They don’t necessarily look the same online as they do when I type them. The 🐜🐜🐜 I posted under CDB’s is an example. On my tablet they do look like ants, online they just look like bugs. So it’s kind of a crapshoot. Sometimes what shows up online is not at all what I intended.
😎😍😉😘💋
Well, those turned out ok, except the one in the middle is supposed to be the winking emoji and it just looks like it has something in its eye. I think now I remember it did that once before. The winking kissing one also looks weird.
Note to self: do not use the winking emojis on CIDU.
How any of those display is a function of the browser used to view the site and not the site itself. Some sites have their own emoji images they send, but apparently not wordpress.com.
I thought maybe she was kicking her husband’s tombstone and maybe the alien tombstones too. The aliens are sorry that her husband was so abusive when he was alive?
“I thought maybe she was kicking her husband’s tombstone” That’s more align with what I was thinking except… why would she be kicking other unknown people’s tombstones?
I’ve been through a couple of different variations, but nothing that coalesced into a “yes, that’s it!”
There are marks of some kind on the stone that is to the lady’s left. Presumably, it was Mr. lady.
The aliens look vaguely like tombstones, with antennae, two of them also have stars, which usually indicate emotion of some kind… consternation, frustration, embarrassment.
The scene is set near the end of their interaction… the aliens are leaving, for whatever reason, and they’ve been informed that Mr. lady is no longer with us.
This is my best guess.
The aliens interrupted her during an emotional moment. She mistook the aliens for gravestones, and thus didn’t realize that she wasn’t alone in her bereavement. The aliens are embarrassed for her, and are trying to slink away to avoid having to interact with her further. She’s angry… partly at the aliens, for interrupting her alone moment and seeing her in what she thought was a time of privacy and seclusion, partly at herself for not being composed.
“usually indicate emotion of some kind… consternation, frustration, embarrassment.”
Or pain. I think it’s a fairly safe (although not foregone) assumption that the woman just beat the crap out of the aliens.
The real question is … why?
I assume they were doing something to here husband’s tombstone that is reasonable for aliens. (No idea what) However from a human perspective it looked like something inappropriate. (Again no idea what.) The beats the crap out of them. One of them cowed tries to apologize. Another says “let’s just get out of here”.
I’m kind of amused that the cartoonist seems to think what the aliens were doing and what it looked like would be evident.
“Or pain. I think it’s a fairly safe (although not foregone) assumption that the woman just beat the crap out of the aliens.”
Pain is three stars with circular swoozles.
There are scuff marks on the one gravestone to the lady’s left. None on the retreating aliens. If we’re supposed to get “the lady just beat the crap out of the aliens”, it’s poorly executed. (As opposed to just not funny).
Any reasonable explanation as to the widow being in the cemetery at night? Around here the cemeteries all have fences around them and they lock the gates at dusk.
Ooo, ooo! I think I’ve got it! There seem to be human lip marks on husband’s tombstone. Widow was kissing husband’s tombstone. Tombstone looking aliens thought she was a very friendly person and tried to get very friendly with her. A bit of a cultural misunderstanding. She womped the tar out of them. Oops, sorry, ma’am. Let’s just get out of here.
Thank you, thank you very much.
“Any reasonable explanation as to the widow being in the cemetery at night?”
Because nobody wants to argue with a widow?
Mr. Deering is sending mixed signals with his emanata. JP is correct that pain is usually indicated with multiple stars (not sure it has to be exactly three) floating in a swalloop (let’s get the nomenclature correct, here.), it is also clear that the three aliens have been thrashed by the little old lady – there are hatch marks, and some seriously crinkled antennae, along with the fact that they are retreating. The gist of the joke, IMHO, is that the aliens thought the tombstone was one of them, interacted with it, but were caught by the widow. Exactly HOW they were interacting, I don’t even want to contemplate. The “sorry about your husband..” line is kind of like “Sorry, lady, we mistook him for someone else… didn’t mean to hurt him.” It’s curious that the husbands’s tombstone also has an emanata.. Usually when it is just a squiggly line with no icon of any sort (star, heart, dagger, etc) it indicates frustration, possibly in this case “Why me?” Having said all of this, I still have to admit I don’t understand the comic. But the real question is: Why is she scratching her shoulder blades?
” The ‘sorry about your husband..’ line is kind of like ‘Sorry, lady, we mistook him for someone else… didn’t mean to hurt him.”'”
Nah. It’s what you say to the widow when you don’t know what else (if anything) to say.
“it is also clear that the three aliens have been thrashed by the little old lady – there are hatch marks, and some seriously crinkled antennae, along with the fact that they are retreating.”
You see hatch marks, I see shading. All the gravestones have some, not just the aliens. And crinkled antennae may be how headstone-looking-aliens-with-antennae express emotion generally or sorrow specifically. So the lady-thrashing-aliens theory is plausible, but not “clear”. Still stuck on “poorly executed”.
If alien-thrashing is an important element of the cartoon, the precise moment illustrated should have included some alien-thrashing, rather than just an angry power-pose.
“Why is she scratching her shoulder blades?”
Hands balled against your hips, elbows out, is the standard angry/dominance/threat pose.
She is clearly pissed off at the aliens and has just whomped them. Any other explanation is just too convoluted and weird.
I do like Mona’s explaination, though.
Now, THIS is a gravestone joke that’s 1) understandable; and 2) funny . . .
https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2018/07/19
. . . and Bill Holbrook’s gravestone jokes are always both . . .
http://onthefastrack.com/comics/july-19-2018/
I like Mona’s explanation, too.
An Ewww possibility: maybe the scuff marks (or whatever) on the husband’s tombstone indicates that the aliens were ineptly trying to do a Traditional Alien Anal Probe ™ on it? (But the tradition is that Little Grey Aliens only do those on us humans, who do not look much like them, and not on critters who are dead ringers for them, so I don’t think that’s it either. But I just had to get an Ewww in here.)
The aliens do not look “just like” the gravestones. The gravestones are all different types, and none of them are equipped with antennae.
Imagine the human space-exploration trip. The Enterprise has found a planet covered in little fuzzy monkey-looking things… so they try to catch one or two for observation… We were just talking about first-contact stories.
A good one, and episode from the new Outer Limits series, involves the human spaceship exploring that finds a PERFECT planet. The air is breathable, the water is drinkable, the weather is awesome, the land is verdant. Huge bonuses for everyone when we get back home. There’s just one catch. Just over the hill are some primitive, stone-age aliens, and inhabited planets can’t be claimed as colony worlds. But wait! There’s literally no signs of any other aliens, except for this one batch making crude dwellings out of tree branches and starting fires by striking flint. If we kill these aliens, pretend we never saw them… all the other information we have suggests this is a prime colony world. With any luck, nobody will find out there’s sort-of intelligent life already on this planet until AFTER we’ve cashed our bonus checks! Let’s go kill the natives, quick. They go out and do so. But one of the aliens was carrying a doodad, and closer examination shows its super-advanced technology. Where’d that come from? Then the doodad starts beeping and lighting up. WTF?
Then realization: The doodad is the equivalent of a pocketknife, for a very, very advanced race of beings. A race of beings that sends its young for a campout on the uninhabited wilderness planet near their own star. An alien signal is received by the spaceship… the computer is accessed… navigation records are being scanned… oh, dear, tracing back where the ship has been will lead back to the point of origin, Earth.
It turns out the super-aliens consider the slaughter of children to be a crime worthy of the death penalty… for the race that would do such a thing.
for a bit of synchronicity . . . just finished the book, ‘Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void’, by Mary Roach. Highly recommended, even tho it seems we WON’T be packing for Mars, or anyplace else in space, any time soon (book was written in 2010). ALL of Mary Roach’s books are highly recommended.
Perhaps she caught them giving her husband some “libation”?
I think of this as at the end of the Memorial Day parade our reenactment unit men will climb cemetery hill (women generally stand at the bottom and gossip – stays make the climb up even harder) and do the ceremony honoring the original members (well, the Revolutionary War era ones – not the original, original 1600s ones) members of our unit are buried. Since the cemetery was dug up during the war (If interested look up Fort Golgotha+ revolution) they are mostly buried together in one group grave. One year I got stuck, err, was honored to carry the unit flag and had to schlep up with them. Part of the ceremony is each “man” pours a bit of libation out of a (single) beer bottle for the forefathers.
Maybe they were doing something similar for what they thought were ancestors buried there?