They hang out a lot. One would presume Caulfield knows how Frazz’s mind works and also saw the goofy grin.
But why are they picking up toads? I know people who do that during mating season to get the toads out of high traffic areas, but why do it when there’s no threat to them?
“why do it when there’s no threat to them?”
You don’t consider the foreshadowing aura of a incipient bad pun to be a “threat”?
(Actually, this is the first FRAZZ I can ever remember almost laughing at. I’m a sucker for bad puns, either boffo or bufo ones.)
They’re picking up toads because they’re one of the few wild animal you can safely touch. If that’s not enough explanation, then it might be that “you ain’t never gonna understand”.
Yeah, but it stresses the toad for no reason. Bad form, I say.
They are picking up toads because they can. Also, it was required for the punchline. Picking up iguanas would have been less successful.
“Dunkel ist das Leben, is der … Toad?”
Toads are not completely safe to handle. They emit toxins that are actually dangerous for pets. Humans can experience skin irritation and you don’t want to get it in your eyes. You’ll need to wash your hands after handling them, but it is fun to do so.
They’re picking up toads
Just picking up toads
Manhandling things that’s better left alone
They redirecting bufos
From an era dead and gone
Country toads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mamma
Take me home, country toads
But to answer Bill’s question…
Some jokes, especially puns, are thought to be better if they’re semi-telegraphed. Having Caulfield react before the punchline is given lets the punchline be the last thing you read. It’s the opposite of Pearls characters hitting Pastis after a convoluted pun.
Got a toad again
But it seems he just dropped his load again
Though nature sometimes isn’t friendly-like and clean
I just can’t wait to hold another toad again
Arthur, interesting that you should mention Pastis. Did you notice that on the same day Jef Mallett cracks a Pastis-style pun, Pastis is busy harassing Jef in the Pearls strip?
I had never paid attention to the name of the arrogant cyclist. Thanks for pointing that out.
@ Mitch4 – I enjoyed the fractured quote even before I tracked down the source to Mahler’s “Lied von der Erde” (of which I previously knew nothing, except that it was mentioned in Tom Lehrer’s song “Alma”).
P.S. Part of the subtle “telegraphing” that Arthur mentioned is achieved by the forked path in the first (framing) panel; that would even be a credible explanation for why Caulfield saw the pun coming before it was delivered.
God, I can’t believe I’m defending Caulfield but… it’s possible he didn’t anticipate the exact pun (it *was* tortured and imprecise) but merely knew by the grin that *some* painful joke was coming.
That actually happens a lot.
Conversation my family had at the Cape Breton Bog trail:
Mother: I hear a frog.
Me: It’s probably really important not to remove frogs from their natural environment.
Sister: Well, duh.
Me: I hear there once was a frog in this bog that had been been caught up by a passing blue heron.
Sister: Oh, god no…. Mother: Mmm-hmmm…..
Me: And the heron flew far away and the frog struggled and fell out and landed in the Mohave dessert.
Sister: Just stop… Mother: That’s a heck of a range for a heron. Me: It was a heck of a heron.
Me: So there was nothing to it but for the frog to walk home thousands of miles on foot….
Sister: We don’t care…. Mother: poor frog…
Me: the trek was long and the frogs legs got chapped and blistered and when he finally got back to Bog Trail..
Sister: Are you almost done.
Me: They all said “Look, the frog comes in on little chapped feet”.
Mother: …ugh…. Sister: .. okay… that was actually pretty good.
Me: You know the ticks here are a recent introduction to this old habitat and once folks tried to poison them with bleach and….
I like woozy’s theory. (Better than his joke.)
Mallett missed a possibility that could have led to a more precise pun: by replacing the adjective “agitated” in the third panel with “wound up“, then in the fifth panel, the other toad would be “less ravelled“.
P.S. This is what I get for taking a summer seminar in APL programming.
Actually I had a hard time seeing that key word correctly. I thought it might be razzled but that didn’t help the quote/pun.
Toad ya so…
Ah yes, APL, the world’s greatest write-only computer language. The language where you can code the Sieve of Eratosthenes in four symbols (so I’m told).
APL is certainly a finalist for best (worst) write-only language. Did you ever try to read an RPG program – the old original RPG that is?
“the old original RPG that is?”
Ultima?
The quirky thing about “ravel” is that it can be used to mean both “entangle” as well as “disentangle”. The problem is that the word is just not common enough to qualify for a Sunday comic pun.
P.S. The symbol used in APL for the “ravel” function is “,” (yes, that’s right, a comma). As previously implied, APL code is incredibly dense, and difficult to disentangle.
Here I am, On the toad again
There I am, Up on the stage
There I go, Playin’ star again
There I go, Turn the page
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I never used RPG but I knew someone who would just sit down at the keypunch and punch up an RPG program without writing down on the coding sheets first. In RPG, things have to be in specific columns of the card so I don’t think I could ever read an RPG program without transcribing it onto the coding sheets, even if I knew RPG.
Comics I Don't Understand 
They hang out a lot. One would presume Caulfield knows how Frazz’s mind works and also saw the goofy grin.
But why are they picking up toads? I know people who do that during mating season to get the toads out of high traffic areas, but why do it when there’s no threat to them?
“why do it when there’s no threat to them?”
You don’t consider the foreshadowing aura of a incipient bad pun to be a “threat”?
(Actually, this is the first FRAZZ I can ever remember almost laughing at. I’m a sucker for bad puns, either boffo or bufo ones.)
They’re picking up toads because they’re one of the few wild animal you can safely touch. If that’s not enough explanation, then it might be that “you ain’t never gonna understand”.
Yeah, but it stresses the toad for no reason. Bad form, I say.
They are picking up toads because they can. Also, it was required for the punchline. Picking up iguanas would have been less successful.
“Dunkel ist das Leben, is der … Toad?”
Toads are not completely safe to handle. They emit toxins that are actually dangerous for pets. Humans can experience skin irritation and you don’t want to get it in your eyes. You’ll need to wash your hands after handling them, but it is fun to do so.
They’re picking up toads
Just picking up toads
Manhandling things that’s better left alone
They redirecting bufos
From an era dead and gone
Country toads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mamma
Take me home, country toads
But to answer Bill’s question…
Some jokes, especially puns, are thought to be better if they’re semi-telegraphed. Having Caulfield react before the punchline is given lets the punchline be the last thing you read. It’s the opposite of Pearls characters hitting Pastis after a convoluted pun.
Got a toad again
But it seems he just dropped his load again
Though nature sometimes isn’t friendly-like and clean
I just can’t wait to hold another toad again
Arthur, interesting that you should mention Pastis. Did you notice that on the same day Jef Mallett cracks a Pastis-style pun, Pastis is busy harassing Jef in the Pearls strip?
I had never paid attention to the name of the arrogant cyclist. Thanks for pointing that out.
@ Mitch4 – I enjoyed the fractured quote even before I tracked down the source to Mahler’s “Lied von der Erde” (of which I previously knew nothing, except that it was mentioned in Tom Lehrer’s song “Alma”).
P.S. Part of the subtle “telegraphing” that Arthur mentioned is achieved by the forked path in the first (framing) panel; that would even be a credible explanation for why Caulfield saw the pun coming before it was delivered.
God, I can’t believe I’m defending Caulfield but… it’s possible he didn’t anticipate the exact pun (it *was* tortured and imprecise) but merely knew by the grin that *some* painful joke was coming.
That actually happens a lot.
Conversation my family had at the Cape Breton Bog trail:
Mother: I hear a frog.
Me: It’s probably really important not to remove frogs from their natural environment.
Sister: Well, duh.
Me: I hear there once was a frog in this bog that had been been caught up by a passing blue heron.
Sister: Oh, god no…. Mother: Mmm-hmmm…..
Me: And the heron flew far away and the frog struggled and fell out and landed in the Mohave dessert.
Sister: Just stop… Mother: That’s a heck of a range for a heron. Me: It was a heck of a heron.
Me: So there was nothing to it but for the frog to walk home thousands of miles on foot….
Sister: We don’t care…. Mother: poor frog…
Me: the trek was long and the frogs legs got chapped and blistered and when he finally got back to Bog Trail..
Sister: Are you almost done.
Me: They all said “Look, the frog comes in on little chapped feet”.
Mother: …ugh…. Sister: .. okay… that was actually pretty good.
Me: You know the ticks here are a recent introduction to this old habitat and once folks tried to poison them with bleach and….
I like woozy’s theory. (Better than his joke.)
Mallett missed a possibility that could have led to a more precise pun: by replacing the adjective “agitated” in the third panel with “wound up“, then in the fifth panel, the other toad would be “less ravelled“.
P.S. This is what I get for taking a summer seminar in APL programming.
Actually I had a hard time seeing that key word correctly. I thought it might be razzled but that didn’t help the quote/pun.
Toad ya so…
Ah yes, APL, the world’s greatest write-only computer language. The language where you can code the Sieve of Eratosthenes in four symbols (so I’m told).
APL is certainly a finalist for best (worst) write-only language. Did you ever try to read an RPG program – the old original RPG that is?
“the old original RPG that is?”
Ultima?
The quirky thing about “ravel” is that it can be used to mean both “entangle” as well as “disentangle”. The problem is that the word is just not common enough to qualify for a Sunday comic pun.
P.S. The symbol used in APL for the “ravel” function is “,” (yes, that’s right, a comma). As previously implied, APL code is incredibly dense, and difficult to disentangle.
Here I am, On the toad again
There I am, Up on the stage
There I go, Playin’ star again
There I go, Turn the page
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I never used RPG but I knew someone who would just sit down at the keypunch and punch up an RPG program without writing down on the coding sheets first. In RPG, things have to be in specific columns of the card so I don’t think I could ever read an RPG program without transcribing it onto the coding sheets, even if I knew RPG.