Is there something about coffee mugs I don’t understand?
Related
16 Comments
No, there’s something about mugs HE doesn’t understand.
If there is a decorative picture or text, that can break the symmetry of the mug, and force the handle to seem sided.
This is old joke. Left handed hot-dogs and baseball caps built with the bill in the back.
It was a dust off an old croaker for a deadline issue.
Thing is, so often this strip is Arlo making an obscure point about his Arlo-life where he has his…. well, his “winter clothes” are his coat and its on his hanger, or whatever… we don’t expect him to be *deliberately* making a smart-ass joke.
” we don’t expect him to be *deliberately* making a smart-ass joke.”
No? Look in on his interactions with the cat.
Mitch4 is right. The variables are: do you hold the mug with your left hand or your right hand, and do you want the picture facing in so you can see it or facing out so everyone else can see it?
FWIW, there are left-handed mugs.
Ah yes, there can be a variety of things that make it handed. Some kind of lip or spout. A moustache-guard! Finger indents on the handle itself.
And once handed, it can be left-handed as well as right-handed.
The left-handed mugs that Grawlix mentioned usually involve some sort of asymmetry that is supposed to make the mug more “ergonomic”, such as a slight change in the orientation of the handle, but I have seen a few extreme examples, in which the grip has been totally redesigned.
P.S. Then there is the anecdote about the carpenter’s apprentice who was nailing up panels on a wall. His boss asked him why he kept throwing every other nail into the trash, so he explained, “Those nails are defective, they have the point on the wrong end.” — To which his boss replied, “You idiot! Those nails are for the other side of the room!“
Reminds me of the only funny line on Mork & Mindy that was not spoken by Robin Williams. Pam Dawber’s character is working behind the counter of a (geezer alert) record store. Obnoxious teenager stomps in, slaps an album on the counter.
OT: You gotta give me a refund on this album, it’s defective.
Pam: How is it defective?
OT: I don’t like it.
Reminds me of an old Far Side: “Darrell suspected someone had once again slipped him a spoon with the concave side reversed.”
And my alphabet soup is full of Ws and has no Ms.
@padraig: that line was funny probably more for “it’s funny ’cause it’s true” than anything else: very few record stores would let you listen to the record before you bought it, so how could you know you would like a record before you bought it? Yes, you might hear a song on the radio, but how many times was that song only on a full album that then had purposely pure dross filler on it? I once bought an album that claimed to be “American Pie and other hits by Don McLean”, and when I got it home the “American Pie” faded out after 3.5 minutes… I went back and returned it, which required raising quite a fuss. I also remember returning an album of the Star Wars music, that when I got it home was not orchestral, but a really cheap, cheesy sounding synthesizer…
[ “The left-handed mugs that Grawlix mentioned usually involve some sort of asymmetry that is supposed to make the mug more “ergonomic”…” ]
I was thinking more along the lines of the graphic applied to the mug, and how it faces the drinker. Then I just now discovered in an image search that apparently “lefty” mugs can have their handle on either side.
Well, yes, to some people there is an importance on only using “their” coffee mug. He is justifying his statement by finding something wrong with this one because it is not his. He knows it is simply 180 degrees out of rotation for his preferred handedness and he also knows the coffee is perfectly fine. We readers can see it just needs to be reversed so that is the premise of the gag.
Maybe there’s a design on the other side that can only be seen by others if he carries it in his right hand. Kind of like the “This Might Be Whiskey” that’s scrawled across the mug I’m currently drinking from. And yes, it is whiskey. And yes, I’m at work. Today is our annual fall party, so we’re all sneaking sips.
Comics I Don't Understand 
No, there’s something about mugs HE doesn’t understand.
If there is a decorative picture or text, that can break the symmetry of the mug, and force the handle to seem sided.
This is old joke. Left handed hot-dogs and baseball caps built with the bill in the back.
It was a dust off an old croaker for a deadline issue.
Thing is, so often this strip is Arlo making an obscure point about his Arlo-life where he has his…. well, his “winter clothes” are his coat and its on his hanger, or whatever… we don’t expect him to be *deliberately* making a smart-ass joke.
” we don’t expect him to be *deliberately* making a smart-ass joke.”
No? Look in on his interactions with the cat.
Mitch4 is right. The variables are: do you hold the mug with your left hand or your right hand, and do you want the picture facing in so you can see it or facing out so everyone else can see it?
FWIW, there are left-handed mugs.
Ah yes, there can be a variety of things that make it handed. Some kind of lip or spout. A moustache-guard! Finger indents on the handle itself.
And once handed, it can be left-handed as well as right-handed.
The left-handed mugs that Grawlix mentioned usually involve some sort of asymmetry that is supposed to make the mug more “ergonomic”, such as a slight change in the orientation of the handle, but I have seen a few extreme examples, in which the grip has been totally redesigned.
P.S. Then there is the anecdote about the carpenter’s apprentice who was nailing up panels on a wall. His boss asked him why he kept throwing every other nail into the trash, so he explained, “Those nails are defective, they have the point on the wrong end.” — To which his boss replied, “You idiot! Those nails are for the other side of the room!“
Reminds me of the only funny line on Mork & Mindy that was not spoken by Robin Williams. Pam Dawber’s character is working behind the counter of a (geezer alert) record store. Obnoxious teenager stomps in, slaps an album on the counter.
OT: You gotta give me a refund on this album, it’s defective.
Pam: How is it defective?
OT: I don’t like it.
Reminds me of an old Far Side: “Darrell suspected someone had once again slipped him a spoon with the concave side reversed.”
And my alphabet soup is full of Ws and has no Ms.
@padraig: that line was funny probably more for “it’s funny ’cause it’s true” than anything else: very few record stores would let you listen to the record before you bought it, so how could you know you would like a record before you bought it? Yes, you might hear a song on the radio, but how many times was that song only on a full album that then had purposely pure dross filler on it? I once bought an album that claimed to be “American Pie and other hits by Don McLean”, and when I got it home the “American Pie” faded out after 3.5 minutes… I went back and returned it, which required raising quite a fuss. I also remember returning an album of the Star Wars music, that when I got it home was not orchestral, but a really cheap, cheesy sounding synthesizer…
[ “The left-handed mugs that Grawlix mentioned usually involve some sort of asymmetry that is supposed to make the mug more “ergonomic”…” ]
I was thinking more along the lines of the graphic applied to the mug, and how it faces the drinker. Then I just now discovered in an image search that apparently “lefty” mugs can have their handle on either side.
Well, yes, to some people there is an importance on only using “their” coffee mug. He is justifying his statement by finding something wrong with this one because it is not his. He knows it is simply 180 degrees out of rotation for his preferred handedness and he also knows the coffee is perfectly fine. We readers can see it just needs to be reversed so that is the premise of the gag.
Maybe there’s a design on the other side that can only be seen by others if he carries it in his right hand. Kind of like the “This Might Be Whiskey” that’s scrawled across the mug I’m currently drinking from. And yes, it is whiskey. And yes, I’m at work. Today is our annual fall party, so we’re all sneaking sips.