I just want y’all to know that *I* did NOT submit it twice ‘-)
XKCD alt text: ‘When Salvador Dali died, it took months to get the all the flagpoles sufficiently melted.’
Which makes me ask: Why would American flags be lowered (or flagpoles melted) for a Spaniard?
Can we get any more surrealistic than that?
Andréa’s evil clone Andrea submitted it the second time. You can understand how I got confused.
I liked all of these, but I must ask–is the “2” on the barber’s tie another one of those Bizarro things?
Not “2” but “O2” (with the next dot).
The number over the signature lets you know how many. Besides the O2, there’s a stick of dynamite under the chair back and an eyeball near the edge of the clown’s top.
Andréa: Remember when Picasso died and they had to put all the stars on the same side of the flag?
(Because of his pictures of women with eyes on the same side of their nose. My quips aren’t always funny.)
I liked the first two, and am very glad that Pete pointed out why I had this feeling of déjà vu about the last one. I didn’t think XKCD’s flags were that funny at all, in part because Walt Kelly delivered a better joke on the subject nearly half a century ago. I could not find a linkable version of the “Pogo” strip anywhere, so everyone here will have to suffer through (or ignore) the following recap: A travelling bear (with a face that looks like Spiro Agnew) sees Bun Rabbit and another character parading past, holding an upside-down flag on a short stick. After a short, but irrelevant quip, the bear objects: S.A.: “You’re displaying the flag improperly. It’s upside down!” B.R.: “It’s a signal of distress. For our country.” S.A.: “Don’t you realize that signal is only supposed to be used when one is completely at sea?” B.R.: “So?!?”
Wait! Was there anything French here?
No, Mitch; but Des Bandes Dessinées Que Je Ne Comprends Pas always acknowledges our Independence Day, so it seemed only polite.
Kilby — I recall the Agnew-clone in POGO as a hyena, not a bear. (He was also dressed in a cliched ‘tinpot military dictator’ type jacket.)
Weirdly the character began on Groundhog’s day of a character running away of a groundhog, Churchy laughs and then the see the character chasing and Churchy shouts “A Bear!” which is weird as he comes to resemble a hyena.
The ‘tinpot military dictator’ jacket arrived (after the strip with the flag) in mail addressed to “the new guy” and the hyena assumed it had to mean him.
@ Shrug & woozy – That’s exactly the character I meant. The “bear” identification was repeated several times in the strips before and after his initial “Groundhog Day” appearance; he was never actually identified as a hyena, even though he looked like one. His entire appearance (and disappearance) is collected in the paperback “Impollutable Pogo“.
Do the French hang their flag upside down when in distress?
:-)
What about the UK?
The UK flag is not symmetrical, so they can hang it upside down:
@ Olivier – It depends on how you define “symmetric”. It wouldn’t work to hang the “Union Jack” upside down, because it doesn’t have a “plane” of symmetry anywhere. What it has is a 180° axis of symmetry, perpendicular to its surface at the center. This means that you could twist the flag around and hang it upside down from the opposite edge (or wind direction).
Indeed, but you’d need attachment rings on both sides of the flag. As to wind direction, flags are always read pole-side to free-side.
@ Olivier – I’ve seen stylized American flags that were applied symmetrically to aircraft. The one on the left side is “normal” (because the “wind” goes from nose to tail, so the flag’s “pole” is on the leading edge). The flag on the other side is flipped (right to left), so that it appears to be “flying” from the leading edge: the “stars” are then in the upper right corner, not the upper left.
Exactly: because in aviation (international convention) the painted flag is represented as if it were a real flag, thus, it is mirrored on the right side from its presentation on the left as if it were flying from a pole.
I mean, what you see on the right side of the plane is not a backward flag but the obverse side of the flag painted on the left side (as if the plane were transparent).
If you’ve seen uniforms with a flag patch on the shoulders, many of them put one shoulder patch with the flag seemingly backwards (l-r flip), presumably for the reasoning given above. But it does look weird if all you’re seeing is the right shoulder.
A simple reversal would not work for Oregon’s Air National Guard (if they had one): Oregon has the only flag I know of that has two completely different sides.
P.S. I learned that silly piece of trivia in the Kennedy Center’s “Hall of States” during a school field trip (over four decades ago). As I tell my kids: be careful what you put into your brain, you may not be able to get rid of it later.
The flag of Japan has a red circle (rising sun) in the center of a solid color (white) background, which must make it impossible to determine if it is or is not being flown upside down (as a sign of distress or for any other eason). I guess that makes things simpler for some. . . .
“which must make it impossible to determine if it is or is not being flown upside down “
I recently gave in to some click-bait and read an article with an interview with an early USB designer. The headline / bait had been asking “Why do people so often try the USB plug both ways before figuring it out on a third or fourth try?” in some paraphrase. (They were clearly talking about the Type A connector.)
I found it very frustrating because I thought they took a wrong focus on what this question implies. He actually gave a nice defense of not making it reversible. But for me the solution to trying it the wrong way would not necessarily be making it reversible. It could instead be making it obviously, visually, asymmetric. If you remember the very old15-pin and 9-pin “D plugs” for analog video and for PC serial connections, they were so distinctly trapezoidal that you would immediately see and feel if you were starting to match it up the wrong way — the trapezoid shape was the reason for the “D plug” nickname.
Heck, right in the original USB plans there was the Type B plug (which went into the remote device sometimes, or the upstream port of a USB hub). This has a distinct shape, six sides but not like a regular hexagon — it’s a small square with two adjacent corners cut off. It’s not impossible to get it wrong visually as you start to plug it in, but you will notice the bad fit immediately, and see how it should be turned. Why couldn’t the Type A do something like that?
I always put a dot of red nail polish to indicate ‘this side up’ or ‘this side faces me’.
“His entire appearance (and disappearance) is collected in the paperback “Impollutable Pogo“.”
Not quite. He is prominent in the collection “We have met the enemy and he is us”. He actually appears off and on for the remaining few years of the strip. In “We have met the enemy and he is us” he hangs out with a Bulldog version of J.Edgar Hoover.
For anyone who is still reading this thread, here’s another piece from Pogo that is still relevant today, despite having been written over half a century ago:
Porky: Did you actual[ly] throw your hat into the ring?
Pogo: Not really. Besides, there’s so many hats being flung, they’re going to need three rings.
Porky: What other country could have a three-ring election?
P.S. This strip was one (of many) Pogo strips that Kelly knew might not fly with newspaper editors, for which he prepared a less provacative “bunny rabbit” strip as an alternative.
“For anyone who is still reading this thread, . . .”
What I like about email notifications of comments is that even if the original posting was months ago, anything added gets sent to me . . . and of course, I’ll go back to the original posting if I don’t remember what the comic was.
@ woozy – Thanks for the correction. I have both books, but lost track of their respective ages. His departure at the end of the “TV seance to fight air pollution” had a finality about it that made me think it was a permanent exit.
“I always put a dot of red nail polish to indicate ‘this side up’ or ‘this side faces me’.”
That really is rather clever.
It helps if you already have nail polish in the house.
Oh, and thank you for the compliment.
Of course, the new USB-C connectors are reversible.
That previous comic seems to be a redoing of an earlier one from SMBC, so I want to give credit to the possible originator:
“His departure at the end of the “TV seance to fight air pollution” had a finality about it that made me think it was a permanent exit.”
….
How many of him was there?
@ woozy – Not just the rhetorical question, but the distracted “Fackeltanz” soliloquy as he walks “offstage” (although not actually into the sunset). I never had the chance to read Pogo in a newspaper, but if I had, I would not have expected to see him again after that.
P.S. I was about to say that it would have been interesting to compare the dates of the comic character’s appearances with Agnew’s resignation in October 1973, but it’s unlikely that Kelly ever had a chance to compose a reaction in a strip: he died just a week later.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I suppose the one with the bears is funny enough to show twice.
(you had it last week)
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2019/07/07/sunday-funnies-lol-july-7-2019/
I just want y’all to know that *I* did NOT submit it twice ‘-)
XKCD alt text: ‘When Salvador Dali died, it took months to get the all the flagpoles sufficiently melted.’
Which makes me ask: Why would American flags be lowered (or flagpoles melted) for a Spaniard?
Can we get any more surrealistic than that?
Andréa’s evil clone Andrea submitted it the second time. You can understand how I got confused.
I liked all of these, but I must ask–is the “2” on the barber’s tie another one of those Bizarro things?
Not “2” but “O2” (with the next dot).
The number over the signature lets you know how many. Besides the O2, there’s a stick of dynamite under the chair back and an eyeball near the edge of the clown’s top.
Andréa: Remember when Picasso died and they had to put all the stars on the same side of the flag?
(Because of his pictures of women with eyes on the same side of their nose. My quips aren’t always funny.)
I liked the first two, and am very glad that Pete pointed out why I had this feeling of déjà vu about the last one. I didn’t think XKCD’s flags were that funny at all, in part because Walt Kelly delivered a better joke on the subject nearly half a century ago. I could not find a linkable version of the “Pogo” strip anywhere, so everyone here will have to suffer through (or ignore) the following recap: A travelling bear (with a face that looks like Spiro Agnew) sees Bun Rabbit and another character parading past, holding an upside-down flag on a short stick. After a short, but irrelevant quip, the bear objects:
S.A.: “You’re displaying the flag improperly. It’s upside down!”
B.R.: “It’s a signal of distress. For our country.”
S.A.: “Don’t you realize that signal is only supposed to be used when one is completely at sea?”
B.R.: “So?!?”
Wait! Was there anything French here?
No, Mitch; but Des Bandes Dessinées Que Je Ne Comprends Pas always acknowledges our Independence Day, so it seemed only polite.
Kilby — I recall the Agnew-clone in POGO as a hyena, not a bear. (He was also dressed in a cliched ‘tinpot military dictator’ type jacket.)
https://tinyurl.com/yxawlp9o
Shrug.
Weirdly the character began on Groundhog’s day of a character running away of a groundhog, Churchy laughs and then the see the character chasing and Churchy shouts “A Bear!” which is weird as he comes to resemble a hyena.
The ‘tinpot military dictator’ jacket arrived (after the strip with the flag) in mail addressed to “the new guy” and the hyena assumed it had to mean him.
@ Shrug & woozy – That’s exactly the character I meant. The “bear” identification was repeated several times in the strips before and after his initial “Groundhog Day” appearance; he was never actually identified as a hyena, even though he looked like one. His entire appearance (and disappearance) is collected in the paperback “Impollutable Pogo“.
Do the French hang their flag upside down when in distress?
:-)
What about the UK?
The UK flag is not symmetrical, so they can hang it upside down:
@ Olivier – It depends on how you define “symmetric”. It wouldn’t work to hang the “Union Jack” upside down, because it doesn’t have a “plane” of symmetry anywhere. What it has is a 180° axis of symmetry, perpendicular to its surface at the center. This means that you could twist the flag around and hang it upside down from the opposite edge (or wind direction).
Indeed, but you’d need attachment rings on both sides of the flag. As to wind direction, flags are always read pole-side to free-side.
@ Olivier – I’ve seen stylized American flags that were applied symmetrically to aircraft. The one on the left side is “normal” (because the “wind” goes from nose to tail, so the flag’s “pole” is on the leading edge). The flag on the other side is flipped (right to left), so that it appears to be “flying” from the leading edge: the “stars” are then in the upper right corner, not the upper left.
Exactly: because in aviation (international convention) the painted flag is represented as if it were a real flag, thus, it is mirrored on the right side from its presentation on the left as if it were flying from a pole.
I mean, what you see on the right side of the plane is not a backward flag but the obverse side of the flag painted on the left side (as if the plane were transparent).
If you’ve seen uniforms with a flag patch on the shoulders, many of them put one shoulder patch with the flag seemingly backwards (l-r flip), presumably for the reasoning given above. But it does look weird if all you’re seeing is the right shoulder.
A simple reversal would not work for Oregon’s Air National Guard (if they had one): Oregon has the only flag I know of that has two completely different sides.
P.S. I learned that silly piece of trivia in the Kennedy Center’s “Hall of States” during a school field trip (over four decades ago). As I tell my kids: be careful what you put into your brain, you may not be able to get rid of it later.
The flag of Japan has a red circle (rising sun) in the center of a solid color (white) background, which must make it impossible to determine if it is or is not being flown upside down (as a sign of distress or for any other eason). I guess that makes things simpler for some. . . .
“which must make it impossible to determine if it is or is not being flown upside down “
I recently gave in to some click-bait and read an article with an interview with an early USB designer. The headline / bait had been asking “Why do people so often try the USB plug both ways before figuring it out on a third or fourth try?” in some paraphrase. (They were clearly talking about the Type A connector.)
I found it very frustrating because I thought they took a wrong focus on what this question implies. He actually gave a nice defense of not making it reversible. But for me the solution to trying it the wrong way would not necessarily be making it reversible. It could instead be making it obviously, visually, asymmetric. If you remember the very old15-pin and 9-pin “D plugs” for analog video and for PC serial connections, they were so distinctly trapezoidal that you would immediately see and feel if you were starting to match it up the wrong way — the trapezoid shape was the reason for the “D plug” nickname.
Heck, right in the original USB plans there was the Type B plug (which went into the remote device sometimes, or the upstream port of a USB hub). This has a distinct shape, six sides but not like a regular hexagon — it’s a small square with two adjacent corners cut off. It’s not impossible to get it wrong visually as you start to plug it in, but you will notice the bad fit immediately, and see how it should be turned. Why couldn’t the Type A do something like that?
I always put a dot of red nail polish to indicate ‘this side up’ or ‘this side faces me’.
“His entire appearance (and disappearance) is collected in the paperback “Impollutable Pogo“.”
Not quite. He is prominent in the collection “We have met the enemy and he is us”. He actually appears off and on for the remaining few years of the strip. In “We have met the enemy and he is us” he hangs out with a Bulldog version of J.Edgar Hoover.
For anyone who is still reading this thread, here’s another piece from Pogo that is still relevant today, despite having been written over half a century ago:
Porky: Did you actual[ly] throw your hat into the ring?
Pogo: Not really. Besides, there’s so many hats being flung, they’re going to need three rings.
Porky: What other country could have a three-ring election?
P.S. This strip was one (of many) Pogo strips that Kelly knew might not fly with newspaper editors, for which he prepared a less provacative “bunny rabbit” strip as an alternative.
“For anyone who is still reading this thread, . . .”
What I like about email notifications of comments is that even if the original posting was months ago, anything added gets sent to me . . . and of course, I’ll go back to the original posting if I don’t remember what the comic was.
@ woozy – Thanks for the correction. I have both books, but lost track of their respective ages. His departure at the end of the “TV seance to fight air pollution” had a finality about it that made me think it was a permanent exit.
“I always put a dot of red nail polish to indicate ‘this side up’ or ‘this side faces me’.”
That really is rather clever.
It helps if you already have nail polish in the house.
Oh, and thank you for the compliment.
Of course, the new USB-C connectors are reversible.
That previous comic seems to be a redoing of an earlier one from SMBC, so I want to give credit to the possible originator:
“His departure at the end of the “TV seance to fight air pollution” had a finality about it that made me think it was a permanent exit.”
….
How many of him was there?
@ woozy – Not just the rhetorical question, but the distracted “Fackeltanz” soliloquy as he walks “offstage” (although not actually into the sunset). I never had the chance to read Pogo in a newspaper, but if I had, I would not have expected to see him again after that.
P.S. I was about to say that it would have been interesting to compare the dates of the comic character’s appearances with Agnew’s resignation in October 1973, but it’s unlikely that Kelly ever had a chance to compose a reaction in a strip: he died just a week later.