BTW, in case you guys didn’t notice: this post is from Bill!
Hey, Bill, if you’re seeing this… it’s not the woman’s image because the guy didn’t actually commission this. It’s that he’s so important to Macy’s that they chose, on their own initiative, to make him into a balloon.
Shall we have the typo corrected, then?
@Olivier: Thanks, that makes sense.
He also looks a bit like Mr Sawyer, the psychiatrist in the (original) Miracle on 34th Street…
@ Olivier & Mitch4 – What typo?
The typo that’s gone now. 🙂
“This would make more sense to me if the man was talking to the woman and the balloon was in her image.”
Um….why? what difference would it make?
Typo? Was it supposed to be “or” rather than “and”. I’d hate to think Bill gave in to a sexist stereotype.
But if it’s an “or” it would be equal confusion . (Thanks to ianosmond for explaining what Bill maybe thought it was.)
Huh? No, it said taking in place of talking, which seems rather obvious and easy to fix.
Well, it’s impossible to know and we can’t ask but I wonder if that “and” was meant to be an “or”. That’s the type of error I make frequently and I can never catch them in a proof read because my mind automatically corrects.
As an “and” the paragraph is saying, “I’d find it easier to understand if it were the same situation but with the genders reversed.”
But as an “or” the paragraph would be saying “I’d understand if it were the person whose image is on the balloon who was speaking instead of the other person”.
Woozy, there does not seem to be much basis for your continued speculation about and and or.
Then let me be the first to state the obvious. The way to handle a simple typo like that is to make the correction, then delete the comment that pointed it out and the one that acknowledged it and said it had been corrected.
Then the sequence of absurd follow-ups would not even have been made, and you would not have the dilemma of deleting seven comments.
I see no reason it would make more sense; there is a balloon in the Macy parade depicting one of two people sitting on a balcony, and the other asks “How much did you spend at Macy’s?” If nothing else, he might simply have spent an enormous amount of money on getting Macy’s to commission the balloon.
Yes, I’ve gotta say, it looks like Bill’s remark would depend on the shared assumption that it is wives who do more shopping and husbands who do more scrutiny of it.
I agree with woozy. Bill’s comment would make more sense to me if the “and” had been an “or.” I don’t know if that really was a typo or not (in addition to the more obvious, now-corrected typo), but it would have made more sense – in which case ianosmond has explained the comment to Bill.
I remembered this cartoon as being in the Caption Contest, but it took me awhile to dig up the original. That is the winning caption, and is the only entry referring to the Macy’s parade, (surprising since the contest was in November 2019.) I preferred the second runner-up, something to the effect “Be glad we’re not on the third floor.”
I’m not speculating whether it was a typo or not. I’m giving Bill thel benefit of the doubt. The comment as current written if not a typo is astonishingly sexist.
Okay, but assuming he meant “or”, how does that make the comic better?
“Okay, but assuming he meant “or”, how does that make the comic better?”
We may never know, but if it is “or” it is different scenario other than the exact same one. We’ll never know why he thought one scenario made sense and another didn’t but at least its the scenario that this is confusing and not merely the genders.
But I think ianosmond’s explanation is likely. I saw the comic as he did, that Macy’s honored the man for spending a lot of money, and so his wife asks how much money he spent. I’m actually a little puzzled as to how it can be interpret with the other speaker, but ianosmond’s explanation makes sense. A person spends a lot of money to have Macys make a balloon of their spouse and the spouse asks “how much did you spend”.
But… couldn’t that equally be interpreted that the person spent money to commission a balloon of themselves?
Actually the comment is rather perplexing. More perplexing than the comic itself.
And I could be very wrong about the “and/or” thing.
Perhaps it is the stereotype itself that was causing confusion to Bill.
As this site is here to help explain comics he didn’t get, he could have been saying that this comic would have been easier to understand at first glance if it HAD played upon the common stereotype. Since it didn’t, maybe it meant something else and a number of other ideas arose to make it a CIDU for him. There certainly seems to be a couple of different scenarios being discussed here.
I’m going with this. The sexist overtones of that comment doesn’t sound like Bill at all.
The information that this was from the Caption Contest makes some difference for me. That’s why many of us are seeing some sort of mismatch or dissonance between drawing and caption (as clearly Bill did also, even if we haven’t pinned down which way it went for him). Contestants offered captions but could not get the drawing changed to better fit the idea. Judges could reject a submitted caption for bad fit, or could overlook minor problems for the sake of a (maybe) better joke.
Andréa –
I agree. Robert does much more shopping than I do. Even food shopping since March – he buys excessive amounts of food – he went ordering food in March from Walmart (big mistake – too many cans were dented,some to the point that they were almost bent in half) so that our dining room table was completely covered with some items stacked on others in cans, bottles, jars, packaged food items and the only reason it is not still covered is that I needed table for Thanksgiving and now my work table in our studio (other side of kitchen from dining room) is now covered in the food items and is unable to use for craft work. Also he had panicked shopped in early March for TP and paper towels. I just mentioned to him that I have put the last of the TP which was in the house before we bought more in the two bathroom cabinets as the second spare roll in each. Have not yet started the new paper towels he bought then.
I figure as long as we can eventually use what he bought, if it makes him feel better for right now – it is okay. Unlike most couples – he takes up 2 closets for his clothes and I don’t fill the one I have. He uses drawers in my dresser as he is short on space in his. We cannot easily move or take jackets out of the hall closet – I have 4 hangers with jackets and the rest of the jackets in there taking up all the room (at least a dozen hangers and some have items double hung) are his. We had a “discussion” a few years ago about the fact that I had one small plastic drawer on the top shelf of the hall closet for gloves and scarves (he has a matching drawer, two large drawers and stuff piled on the drawers and the rest of the shelf) and he always had more of his stuff piled in front of it so I could not get my gloves or scarves out.
Okay, to be fair – I do have an entire room called the teddys’ room for my stuffed bear (and their friends) collection – but guess which one of us bought most of them.
I did it the easy way – bought a house with two separate wings; we each have one. I’ve no idea how crowded – or not – Hubby’s closets are, but here in FL, clothes are thinner (teeshirts and sleeveless tops).
Before Hurricane Irma in September 2017, Hubby and his SIL went to Sam’s Club, ’cause they were the only ones that still had gas. WHY he thought we needed to fill the gas tank, I don’t know, as with seven dogs, we weren’t goin’ anyhere, but he was making me nervous so I thought I’d get a few hours peace.
He came back with TONS of food – stuff we’d NEVER ever eaten before. Much of it had to be refrigerated; of course, in a hurricane (or even high wind), the first thing to go out is the ‘lectricity. it was off for four days.
After the hurricane, he flew back to WI; guess who had to throw out 100’s of $$$ of food.
This year, in prep for Hurricane Eta . . . no extra gas or food.
Due to my being immune-compromised, Hubby now does all the grocery shopping, unless I order from WM and pick it up curbside. To be honest, I loathe grocery shopping and he always brings home things I’d not have thought to purchase but have enjoyed, so I tell him, ‘Have at it!’
I think I’ll be spending the rest of my life in stay-at-home mode; one of the many things I don’t miss is shopping.
Emergency grocery shopping seems to turn everyone into Gracie Allen, if you’ve ever heard one of her routines where she tells George all the things she’s buying for her brother in the Army.
Andréa – Our general rule (in normal times) is to keep the fridge and freezers empty(one is in the top of the fridge and the other is about the size of dorm refrigerator and we used to need it when grew vegetables and then froze the excess for the winter – never got rid of it and keep it running – used in June-July 2019 when our fridge died to save what was in its freezer and this year it has been full, then starts to empty as we use it and then is refilled). Emptiness is good in summer in case a storm takes out the electricity as we are known to have 4 days outages, so we lose as little as possible and then can go out to buy more when the electricity is back, as almost always the electricity is not down in the same storm for all of the LI communities. In the winter we have to take a chance and keep the freezers full as if we lose electricity due to snow storms, chances are we won’t be going out afterwards, and even if we don’t lose electricity – we may not want to go out for some time. Our logic is that if is cold out and we don’t have electricity, we can always put food in large plastic boxes (we shop at Costco so we have some rather larger plastic boxes and a lot of them) in the snow or cold weather to keep them.
This year it has been a juggling task to fit everything we (he) buy in the freezers and fridge. When we bought the turkey for Thanksgiving (fresh not frozen) he was suggesting buying a second one for Christmas – I pointed out that the second one would have to be frozen by us to keep that long and having gone food shopping a couple of days before there was no room for a turkey in the freezers or a second one in the fridge.
Before I came online to come to CIDU tonight I finished entering the inventory of food I just made into Excel so we can go through what and how much we have, (I am an accountant after all) so we can have a shopping list. We had originally planned to go out late next week, but with the increase in C-19 cases locally and the tendency of people to panic shop, we figure this week is safer to go. Tomorrow was our target date – but suppose to be snow/rain so now Thursday is our target date.
What do I mean by 4 day periods without electricity? After Hurricane Sandy (technically only a tropical storm here) we were without electricity 4 days. Then just after it came back on, the area was hit by a nor’easter (usually a winter storm) and we lost electricity for another 4 days. We can cook small meals as we have a 2 burner propane stove in our little RV – I have made soup in there once and eggs in there once – never cook when we traveling – it’s vacation.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Maybe he was buying gifts for her! And isn’t it a BIT of stereotyping to think that only women do a lot of shopping, at Macy’s or anywhere else?
Making it COVID-related:
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/25/939162948/yes-the-macys-parade-is-still-happening-this-year-but-itll-be-a-bit-different
BTW, in case you guys didn’t notice: this post is from Bill!
Hey, Bill, if you’re seeing this… it’s not the woman’s image because the guy didn’t actually commission this. It’s that he’s so important to Macy’s that they chose, on their own initiative, to make him into a balloon.
Shall we have the typo corrected, then?
@Olivier: Thanks, that makes sense.
He also looks a bit like Mr Sawyer, the psychiatrist in the (original) Miracle on 34th Street…
@ Olivier & Mitch4 – What typo?
The typo that’s gone now. 🙂
“This would make more sense to me if the man was talking to the woman and the balloon was in her image.”
Um….why? what difference would it make?
Typo? Was it supposed to be “or” rather than “and”. I’d hate to think Bill gave in to a sexist stereotype.
But if it’s an “or” it would be equal confusion . (Thanks to ianosmond for explaining what Bill maybe thought it was.)
Huh? No, it said taking in place of talking, which seems rather obvious and easy to fix.
Well, it’s impossible to know and we can’t ask but I wonder if that “and” was meant to be an “or”. That’s the type of error I make frequently and I can never catch them in a proof read because my mind automatically corrects.
As an “and” the paragraph is saying, “I’d find it easier to understand if it were the same situation but with the genders reversed.”
But as an “or” the paragraph would be saying “I’d understand if it were the person whose image is on the balloon who was speaking instead of the other person”.
Woozy, there does not seem to be much basis for your continued speculation about and and or.
Then let me be the first to state the obvious. The way to handle a simple typo like that is to make the correction, then delete the comment that pointed it out and the one that acknowledged it and said it had been corrected.
Then the sequence of absurd follow-ups would not even have been made, and you would not have the dilemma of deleting seven comments.
I see no reason it would make more sense; there is a balloon in the Macy parade depicting one of two people sitting on a balcony, and the other asks “How much did you spend at Macy’s?” If nothing else, he might simply have spent an enormous amount of money on getting Macy’s to commission the balloon.
Yes, I’ve gotta say, it looks like Bill’s remark would depend on the shared assumption that it is wives who do more shopping and husbands who do more scrutiny of it.
I agree with woozy. Bill’s comment would make more sense to me if the “and” had been an “or.” I don’t know if that really was a typo or not (in addition to the more obvious, now-corrected typo), but it would have made more sense – in which case ianosmond has explained the comment to Bill.
I remembered this cartoon as being in the Caption Contest, but it took me awhile to dig up the original. That is the winning caption, and is the only entry referring to the Macy’s parade, (surprising since the contest was in November 2019.) I preferred the second runner-up, something to the effect “Be glad we’re not on the third floor.”
I’m not speculating whether it was a typo or not. I’m giving Bill thel benefit of the doubt. The comment as current written if not a typo is astonishingly sexist.
Okay, but assuming he meant “or”, how does that make the comic better?
“Okay, but assuming he meant “or”, how does that make the comic better?”
We may never know, but if it is “or” it is different scenario other than the exact same one. We’ll never know why he thought one scenario made sense and another didn’t but at least its the scenario that this is confusing and not merely the genders.
But I think ianosmond’s explanation is likely. I saw the comic as he did, that Macy’s honored the man for spending a lot of money, and so his wife asks how much money he spent. I’m actually a little puzzled as to how it can be interpret with the other speaker, but ianosmond’s explanation makes sense. A person spends a lot of money to have Macys make a balloon of their spouse and the spouse asks “how much did you spend”.
But… couldn’t that equally be interpreted that the person spent money to commission a balloon of themselves?
Actually the comment is rather perplexing. More perplexing than the comic itself.
And I could be very wrong about the “and/or” thing.
Perhaps it is the stereotype itself that was causing confusion to Bill.
As this site is here to help explain comics he didn’t get, he could have been saying that this comic would have been easier to understand at first glance if it HAD played upon the common stereotype. Since it didn’t, maybe it meant something else and a number of other ideas arose to make it a CIDU for him. There certainly seems to be a couple of different scenarios being discussed here.
I’m going with this. The sexist overtones of that comment doesn’t sound like Bill at all.
The information that this was from the Caption Contest makes some difference for me. That’s why many of us are seeing some sort of mismatch or dissonance between drawing and caption (as clearly Bill did also, even if we haven’t pinned down which way it went for him). Contestants offered captions but could not get the drawing changed to better fit the idea. Judges could reject a submitted caption for bad fit, or could overlook minor problems for the sake of a (maybe) better joke.
Andréa –
I agree. Robert does much more shopping than I do. Even food shopping since March – he buys excessive amounts of food – he went ordering food in March from Walmart (big mistake – too many cans were dented,some to the point that they were almost bent in half) so that our dining room table was completely covered with some items stacked on others in cans, bottles, jars, packaged food items and the only reason it is not still covered is that I needed table for Thanksgiving and now my work table in our studio (other side of kitchen from dining room) is now covered in the food items and is unable to use for craft work. Also he had panicked shopped in early March for TP and paper towels. I just mentioned to him that I have put the last of the TP which was in the house before we bought more in the two bathroom cabinets as the second spare roll in each. Have not yet started the new paper towels he bought then.
I figure as long as we can eventually use what he bought, if it makes him feel better for right now – it is okay. Unlike most couples – he takes up 2 closets for his clothes and I don’t fill the one I have. He uses drawers in my dresser as he is short on space in his. We cannot easily move or take jackets out of the hall closet – I have 4 hangers with jackets and the rest of the jackets in there taking up all the room (at least a dozen hangers and some have items double hung) are his. We had a “discussion” a few years ago about the fact that I had one small plastic drawer on the top shelf of the hall closet for gloves and scarves (he has a matching drawer, two large drawers and stuff piled on the drawers and the rest of the shelf) and he always had more of his stuff piled in front of it so I could not get my gloves or scarves out.
Okay, to be fair – I do have an entire room called the teddys’ room for my stuffed bear (and their friends) collection – but guess which one of us bought most of them.
I did it the easy way – bought a house with two separate wings; we each have one. I’ve no idea how crowded – or not – Hubby’s closets are, but here in FL, clothes are thinner (teeshirts and sleeveless tops).
Before Hurricane Irma in September 2017, Hubby and his SIL went to Sam’s Club, ’cause they were the only ones that still had gas. WHY he thought we needed to fill the gas tank, I don’t know, as with seven dogs, we weren’t goin’ anyhere, but he was making me nervous so I thought I’d get a few hours peace.
He came back with TONS of food – stuff we’d NEVER ever eaten before. Much of it had to be refrigerated; of course, in a hurricane (or even high wind), the first thing to go out is the ‘lectricity. it was off for four days.
After the hurricane, he flew back to WI; guess who had to throw out 100’s of $$$ of food.
This year, in prep for Hurricane Eta . . . no extra gas or food.
Due to my being immune-compromised, Hubby now does all the grocery shopping, unless I order from WM and pick it up curbside. To be honest, I loathe grocery shopping and he always brings home things I’d not have thought to purchase but have enjoyed, so I tell him, ‘Have at it!’
I think I’ll be spending the rest of my life in stay-at-home mode; one of the many things I don’t miss is shopping.
Emergency grocery shopping seems to turn everyone into Gracie Allen, if you’ve ever heard one of her routines where she tells George all the things she’s buying for her brother in the Army.
Andréa – Our general rule (in normal times) is to keep the fridge and freezers empty(one is in the top of the fridge and the other is about the size of dorm refrigerator and we used to need it when grew vegetables and then froze the excess for the winter – never got rid of it and keep it running – used in June-July 2019 when our fridge died to save what was in its freezer and this year it has been full, then starts to empty as we use it and then is refilled). Emptiness is good in summer in case a storm takes out the electricity as we are known to have 4 days outages, so we lose as little as possible and then can go out to buy more when the electricity is back, as almost always the electricity is not down in the same storm for all of the LI communities. In the winter we have to take a chance and keep the freezers full as if we lose electricity due to snow storms, chances are we won’t be going out afterwards, and even if we don’t lose electricity – we may not want to go out for some time. Our logic is that if is cold out and we don’t have electricity, we can always put food in large plastic boxes (we shop at Costco so we have some rather larger plastic boxes and a lot of them) in the snow or cold weather to keep them.
This year it has been a juggling task to fit everything we (he) buy in the freezers and fridge. When we bought the turkey for Thanksgiving (fresh not frozen) he was suggesting buying a second one for Christmas – I pointed out that the second one would have to be frozen by us to keep that long and having gone food shopping a couple of days before there was no room for a turkey in the freezers or a second one in the fridge.
Before I came online to come to CIDU tonight I finished entering the inventory of food I just made into Excel so we can go through what and how much we have, (I am an accountant after all) so we can have a shopping list. We had originally planned to go out late next week, but with the increase in C-19 cases locally and the tendency of people to panic shop, we figure this week is safer to go. Tomorrow was our target date – but suppose to be snow/rain so now Thursday is our target date.
What do I mean by 4 day periods without electricity? After Hurricane Sandy (technically only a tropical storm here) we were without electricity 4 days. Then just after it came back on, the area was hit by a nor’easter (usually a winter storm) and we lost electricity for another 4 days. We can cook small meals as we have a 2 burner propane stove in our little RV – I have made soup in there once and eggs in there once – never cook when we traveling – it’s vacation.