Of course, the way Keith draws his character, the “guns” couldn’t possibly mean “bulging biceps” — but the “drawn” is still the operative pun.
She’s one of the Rainy Day Women #s 12 and 35
Have you any Blagues?
An OY-LOL. All three -less words are real, though fernless doesn’t have any common use beyond “lacking a fern”.
Umm, oy … no comment!
Two Pearls!
From Andréa.
An Oy-Meta!
Th-th-that’s all folks!
Or isss it??
Comics I Don't Understand 
I guess (in terms of which I would be least bothered continuing to see) I would go with the simplest, most unassuming of the dividers. Like the first one, the thin blue line that goes only partway across. Or the three small dots
I agree with Dana K (though I suppose eventually I could and would get used to any choice — First World Problems. . . .)
As I no longer read dead-tree newspapers, I was wond’rin’ if the first PEARLS actually was IN them . . . anyone?
If that’s what we’re doing today ..? I would prefer to see the big ole wide red stripe! Let my plate have a divider that will really keep the peas apart from the gravy-and-mash.
A little unhappy with the Señor Moment portrayals.
Well, they’ll stone you when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll stone you just like they said they would
They’ll stone you when you’re trying to go home
And they’ll stone you when you’re there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned
I’ll join Dana K & Shrug: I like “The Thin Blue Line” best, even if the series wasn’t Atkinson’s strongest.
Yes, that Pearls strip about sexual orientation was printed in my dead-tree paper.
And the PEARLS strip also ran in my deadtree (the Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE).
Andréa, were you thinking it might be dropped from some papers? For content?
All three -less words are real, though fernless doesn’t have any common use beyond “lacking a fern”
Yes, but I think “gorm” and “feck” do not have independent word status, except maybe as humorous back-formation.
“Feck”, in “feckless”, is a Scots shortening of “Effect”. So, it kind of has an independent word status, as a dialect. “Gaumr” didn’t really make it out of Old Norse on its own, and only managed to sneak into British dialect with “-less” already attached.
I thought it’d be a definite ‘Arlo Award Winner’, having gotten something past editors (altho, it IS rather blatant, don’t you think?).
I really like the word ‘gormless’, for which I don’t think there is an American equivalent. Neither for ‘git’.
The Señor Moment reminded me of a shtick Pat Paulsen did as a folk singer.
“I’d like to do a song which I feel is particularly appropriate at this time.”
“Try to remember the … um … “
The Fantasticks (the musical from which that song “Try to Remember” comes) had a fantastically long original run Off-Broadway. After a while, the New Yorker magazine stopped repeating weekly their capsule review in the front-of-the-book events listings, and started filling that space with the text, sentence by sentence, of Ulysses. Not recognizing what that was, my cousin wrote to them asking what was going on. They replied and sent her a copy of the book!
Is there any evidence that any of the Arlo Award nominees actually “slipped by” any editors, and that the editors weren’t completely aware of and just fine with the content?
Can anyone name any example post Rick and Joanie of comic editor nixing anything for mature context. (other than the “f*** t****” of “Non Sequiter”)
…….
I was going to say in was nice to see Teresa do a straightforward pun….. but then I realized that type of word play in not a pun… is there a name for that type of word play?
Andrea: I thought it’d be a definite ‘Arlo Award Winner’, having gotten something past editors (altho, it IS rather blatant, don’t you think?)
Yes, and in fact I don’t see how to reconcile the two parts of your comment. I’m not sure what you are thinking they “have gotten past the editors”. Now, if it had been “The form is asking about my orientation” with the word unmodified, and followed by their discussions of geographical or physical orientations, then I could see a reader going: Aha!, that was coded reference to sexual orientation! But it isn’t done like that. As you say, it is blatant — the first panel says “sexual orientation”, twice. So, what is sneaking by?
In blog-sync, The Comics Curmudgeon used “feckless” today.
https://joshreads.com/2020/11/there-should-be-a-feature-in-gmail-where-marys-kind-yet-stern-face-appears-and-says-it-looks-like-youre-writing-something-you-shouldnt/
Blagues? CIDU (Comment I Don’t Understand)
I got the original comic, quite liked it!
‘Blague’=joke. The French word for this kind of wordplay based on homophony and polysemy (baguette/bague/blague) is ‘calembour’.
I think ‘baguette'(=stick) comes from the Italian: the French were fascinated with Italy towards the XVth century onward: we brought back lots of souvenirs. But I’m pretty sure baguette bread is a French invention that did not appear until the end of the XIXth century.
Anyway, baguette is not etymologically related to ‘bague’=ring.
The joke is cute because the suffix ‘ette’ is a diminutive: a bague could be a big baguette. It’s the kind of question a French young child could ask.
“Blagues? CIDU (Comment I Don’t Understand)
I got the original comic, quite liked it!”
I think that might have been a typo. As I’m sure most of you are aware, baguette means “little stick” so …..
Actually the italian is more accurate: baculum is Latin for “staff” or “big-ass stick” and “bachio” is Italian for “staff” (whereas the French is “Baton”) and “bachetto” is Italian for “little staff” (so…. I guess a stick) and that is what they called those long thin loafs. The French franclocized it to “baguette”.
Also it sounds like “blog”.
As for the lines, I’m partial to Purple, but the thinnest red one is a good thickness and size. I prefer the bar to go all the way across like the bars in the comments do.
Violence baguettes violence.
““Feck”, in “feckless”, is a Scots shortening of “Effect”. ”
Say ‘Feck’ in front of your Irish grandmother and see what happens. If you don’t get a stern look, I’d be surprised.
Re: the Senõr Moment comic:
Ray Jessel, “Short Term Memory Loss Blues”:
@woozy Italian has “bacchio”, an old term for a long stick used to hit olive trees when you collect olives, and “bacchetta” a little stick like the one used by conductors or little annoying wizards… both come from baculus , which also is the name of the bone in the penis of some animals….
I thought the “Do you have any blagues?” line was an Eddie Izzard reference.
And would “feck” really offend an Irish grandmother? You can say it on TV.
Every other word Mrs. Brown of Mrs. Brown’s Boys says ‘feck’.
Add the word ‘is’ after ‘says’ to the above comment when you read it, please.
Yes, I wasn’t sure when somebody posted that it sounds like “blog” — that may be for the French-influenced usage, but as a fully english word I thought it might, as suggested here, rhyme with “flag”.
Well, in French, ‘blog’ (blɔɡ) sounds like dog (or… blog!), and ‘blague’ (blaɡ) like far (fɑr) (and not exactly like flag flæg)).
Thanks Olivier! The (blaɡ) or (blɑg) pronunciation is what I use in English for the word “blog”; and is what I was guessing was close to the French way of saying “blague”. In English it’s unclear how people say “blague” as an English word, and may depend on meaning, or on who and where they are. One version would be same as “blog” (blɑg), but that clip suggested rhyming “flag” (blæg).
I have slightly different vowels for “dog” and “fog”. None of “blague” versions nor “blog” matches “dog” for me, but “blog” is not far from “fog”.
The latest Lincoln Project advert uses ‘feckless’; I wonder how many who see it knows what it means.
Phonetics are another rabbit hole, I see.
The seamless variation from ‘a’ to ‘o’ has a weird consequence : in the UK, when people call my name, I react immediately ; but in the US, I don’t because the shift towards ‘a’ has gone too far away from the original ‘o’ for me.
What, do you get called Oliver?
Yep, and in the UK, it works. But in the US, it sounds like ‘Aliver’ to me and it doesn’t register at all. Embarrassing when I’m waiting to be handed my order at a fastfood place, blissfully oblivious to the frantic efforts of the cashier to get my attention.
Where in the US? Around here it’s not an ‘a’ sound at all.
Brian, which word are you asking about?
If you mean “blog”, the ‘a’ sound I assumed Olivier meant is like the word “ah”.
I’m just now catching up with some of the videos. Pinny, that “Short Term Memory Loss Blues” is quite hilarious! I especially liked the moments when the forgotten “key” changed from meaning a physical key in some pocket and became the musical key he was meant to be playing in.
“Oliver”. We don’t pronounce it the way the French do, but I wouldn’t think it would be much different than in the UK.
@Brian . Ah, I see the problem. “Aliver” has that capital letter because it is [standing in for] his name. But if it were lowercase, and he was still using the standard symbols, then the /a/ would be an “ah” sound, and /alIver/ or something like it (I am way out of practice) would be my Midwest U.S. pronunciation of “Oliver” — just like the noun “olive” of course. Is that not how you say it, down the river a bit?
The UK pronunciation, which he finds easier to handle, would make that first vowel more rounded, maybe not the /o/ of the word “oh” but something like it.
Oh, and my previous comment is only applicable to “Oliver”. For “Olivier” I have a rounded /o/ at the beginning.
I don’t know if there is a generation gap in knowing of Sir Laurence Olivier, but that is certainly why “Olivier” seems like a familiar name to me.
And someone who enjoys eating the inner organs of beasts and fowl might step into the kitchen to see what’s cooking and say “Ah! Liver!”.
Deety, that sounds offal!
Another instance of a/o problem: when I ask for a glass of water. I’m used to pronouncing it ‘wahder’ in California, but in the UK, it doesn’t work: I’ve got to ask for ‘wohter’ (as I was taught in school). I remember that in SC, people made fun of my way of asking ‘what’: it sounded like ‘woht’ to them.
In my college residence house in southern California, there were two students from Boston who both had very noticeable accents. I was told that when they first arrived (the year before), one of them sometimes had to “translate” for the other one.
When my dad wanted a martini, he would always ask for a Charles Dickens martini: no olive or twist.
Then there’s the martini that Trapper John was offered when he arrived at MASH:
Olivier – around here. Long Island, NY, water is pronounced wart-er.
(Yes, I am back – my usual laptop turned into a brick last month and we just got it back. I was stuck using my old WP laptop and it took so long to read comics that by the time I got to CIDU it was long past bedtime, so tonight I am trying to catch up.)
Hey, Meryl! Yes, we’ve been looking for your Tuesday check-ins!
AND HERE I THOUGHT WE’D LOST YOU!!!
No, still here.
I actually normally read my comics for the week starting what is late night Mondays to me (wee hours Tuesday morning to everyone else) and anything I do not get to I read Tuesday night (Wednesday wee hours).
The “week to 10 days” for the entire process to repair it under warranty (bought it at Costco and it died 47 days before the extra year of warranty ran out) turned out to be more like 3 weeks (plus the week we let it sit to make sure no corona virus on it). When I spoke with them about what was wrong with it (screen died per them – but since there was no power going into the computer as power lights did not go on either, and now they do, obviously there were other problems) they told me that the parts should be there on 11/15 and they would email info about when it was being shipped and the tracking number. They actually shipped it before the 15th, with no notice and totally unexpected as when I went out the for the mail on 11/14 it was sitting in front of the house. Good thing I went out for the mail as it poured on Sunday and neither of us would gone out before late Sunday night when we drive to a USPS collection box to mail out the coming week’s bill payments etc. – had I not gone out for the mail its package would be drenched. On the Wednesday after we had received it the Saturday before Robert received an email that it had been shipped to us at 1pm that day and giving the tracking info which matched the one on the package, so they showed it shipped about almost a week before they sent the email saying that they shipped it “today”.
This is why we try to avoid ordering anything.
When I was sending it they told me to back it up – umm, it is a brick- nothing works, how do I back it up? Luckily I had done the monthly and quarterly backups of my computers the week before. In the list of what photos we had to take and email to them we were told we had to take a photo of the computer turned on so they could see the screen working – ha ha!
Figuring this was a screen problem according to them, when we did turn it on we were surprised that the computer was reset to original and all software – including a virtual Win XP machine – were gone. We (okay, Robert) went through a variety of things to get the backup installed on it – including realizing that some piece of software to do so, we only had for Windows version through 8 and he had to go online (with his computer) to download the Win10 version. Then the computer had to do all the Windows updates since it was originally made to be able to do anything – and we were worried because for some of the updates when done originally the computer had to be left running overnight – but it did not take that long. Finally a screen came up and said that it was done updating and putting in the backup and what did I want to do next. Sure whatever I picked would be wrong, I texted Robert to come downstairs. He picked the choice to start using the computer – nothing, he tried again – nothing. He picked shut off the computer – it shut off, we rebooted, same screen. Finally he gave up and told me to shut it off and he would look to see what to do and when I went to that – magically the home screen was right and all my stuff was there – he insists I should not thank him – a higher power must have fixed it for me.
While I keep all of my important data on flash drives (backed up daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly on a multiple of assorted data types – including external hard drives, I had just kept things such as which comics I posted last time, our shopping list (in Excel and something only being done this year as we go out monthly to a month and a half food shopping) and other leisure data on the hard drive of the laptop) so I have been out without it until I could get back into the laptop – of course now using a flash drive for this data also.
I had to copy passwords, user names etc from desktop to drive to be able to access anything on old laptop and I never was able to log in into the website of the regional newspaper that we get the print version and since I don’t want to touch it/read it the kitchen table right now, I have been putting on vacation hold for a month, getting it for a couple days, on vacation hold again and reading it online. For some reason I could log in on my desktop but could not log in with XP laptop – we brought Robert’s Win 10 laptop down for me to use to read the paper and it could not sign in either – but this one did right away – makes no sense at all.
Just for the record, or your information – a program like Time Machine (on my MAC), connected to a separate hard drive, will automatically update your entire hard drive (or any changes made) every few minutes, or whatever you set it to (on the other hard drive, I mean). I’ve found this VERY handy to have, and I’m sure there’s something similar for PC. One less thing to remember to do.
Another Medusa funny . . . which actually IS quite funny . . .
Andréa –
Thank you. I back up the data on my desktop (main) computer after each work session – meaning sometimes twice a day – using 2USB flash drives (A&B) alternately . I also back it up separately weekly – making a different backup for 6 weeks each year and then updating the oldest backup each Friday late afternoon again with a USB flash drive. On the 15 of the month I back up data, desktop, and laptop to my monthly external hard drive. In January, April, July and October I back up everything again onto my quarterly external hard drive.
This system has worked very well. Problem with the laptop is that it had not occurred to me to keep such “inconsequential data” as which comics I posted on here, to be able to check for replies the following week(s) or which comics I did same on a flash drive. So all of that was lost as what was on the hard drive since a week before the laptop went bad and of course no longer of value, but while it annoyed me – it was not major loss. I am now using a USB flash drive for all of that also.
I thought a problem I have had since I got this laptop. (I am not happy with this laptop in general – but Robert says is Win 10 I am not happy with.) When I fold down the top/screen while the computer is running, even though it set to stay on the computer stays on, but the screen shuts off and I have to shut the computer with the power button and reboot. When I first starting using it after I got it back I forgot about this and the first two times I shut it – the screen stayed on, and we figured it was related to the problem and the screen had problems all along. But then it went to back as it was.
Last night it decided it had to update Window – again and I let it go. It started updating at around 3 am and when Robert came down this morning at around 9 am – it was still updating. This has happened before with it. It is now set not to update.