Month / October 2021

by EditorM

Minor Mysteries and Oopses

These are non-CIDUs or semi–CIDUs, where the joke or main point isn’t seriously in doubt, but some specifics of the writing or artwork seem somewhat off, or incomplete, or in need of explanation or correction. (Yet we don’t want to get into the territory of mockery or purely complaining.)

This first one is from Chak who calls it an Oops, and comments “The oopsies I’m thinking of are about well-drawn comics that slipped up”. In this Fastrack, the custom paperclip seems to change position without physical cause.:

Here was a Between Friends that seems to be illustrating a familiar saying with a situation that shows something different. In the picture, isn’t it more someone who has gone down and may not come back up?

The Far Side

We have been getting plenty of submissions or suggestions for The Far Side cartoons by Gary Larson, both classic and recent, some scanned from books and some copied off the 2019-established web site. Some suggestions were meant as classic solo-CIDU posts, but others might fit into one of these quasi-CIDU categories.

But there’s a big problem, that Larson has made a public point of his wish to not have his cartoons reprinted without permission and not under his control. There are people who doubt that this would have legal force if he tried to enforce it; but it doesn’t seem entirely right to defy the wishes of someone whose work we appreciate and want to enjoy.

So generally we have been responding to submissions and suggestions with a reminder of those constraints.

But thinking about Internet standards, short of copying and reposting something, and short also of the middle ground of embedding something by link, there is the fundamental WWW action of linking. That is well established as not infringing anything.

It’s also pretty inconvenient! Hard to have informed discussion threads when the item being commented on is not visible in the same window or tab! Still, it’s not beyond our abilities, CIDUers.

Sent in by Findus as an artwork/layout question rather than overall CIDU, this linked Far Side cartoon raises for them the question “what’s with the lovingly executed reflection in the mirror that is not a ‚mirror image‘? Is this intentional?”

And from Brian R we have this linked Far Side cartoon, which he suggested as a CIDU – but then understood fine the next day!

There actually is a certain amount of good sense to the now-classic bit about tech support asking “Have you tried turning it off and then on again?” as made famous by “The IT Crowd”. Now here in Lard’s World Peace Tips, it is cited in the wrong order. Is that the joke? Or was it accidental? Or intentional but supposed to be meaningful here, where the kite in the picture seems to be “off” since it is not flying, so is poised to be turned on, i.e., launched? My gosh that was long-winded!

Down the Garden Path Dept. Can you convince me this Loose Parts does not at all involve people getting squeaky voices from inhaling Helium?

by EditorM

Take the A Train

I’ve seen scenes like this in movies, and it does seem sensible when taking a kid on the transit to have an emergency meet-up plan.

But some questions:

— Can our New Yorkers, or anyone familiar with the subways there, comment on whether the described trains or routes, and geography, make at least approximate sense? Not so much “Is it a wise plan for these people?” as I figure it is not, but things like whether there is a station called “Eastern Parkway” and the Brooklyn Museum is right by their doorstep..

— And for CIDUers anywhere, is the joke in the complexity of the plan? Is the “under 3” bit because he’s still thinking about diiscounted admission to the museum, or because it would help with the rescue?

Bonus riddle: “My friend Gloria threw up on the subway on Monday”. What life-lesson familiar saying cab we take from that?

by EditorM

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, October 17th, 2021

Sent in by J-L, who says “It involves Jon trying to trick Garfield into taking a pill, and how Garfield tries to frustrate Jon’s plans. My family laughed at this because recently we have been trying to feed a pill to our dog, Honey Bun.  While the first few times were successful (it was easy to hide the pill in some delicious food of some sort), eventually Honey Bun got wise to our efforts and would spit out the pill, no matter how delicious the food was.” We agree, it is good to see Jon getting the better of Garfield now and then.

In another main segment of the domestic companion-animal kingdom, here is a dog who knows a lot but not everything:

This RWO was sent in by Le Vieux Lapin, who says “An LOL? An OTW? At the very least it’s a bit more off the wall than I expect from Hilary Price.”

I was a bit dithery over whether it could be considered a CIDU. But if there is somebody not familiar with Tetris it might briefly be a CIDU for them; but would not hold up for a day’s discussion.

Although I saw immediately that it was doing Tetris, I didn’t catch that the word PETRIS was reflecting that there are domestic pets in the scene. I thought for a second that the PETR- was the key part, and was using the Greek-derived stem for “rock” or “stone” — so that the falling tetris pieces would turn out made of stone, and were on their way to a destructive crash. Nice relief that they are pets and end up cozily tucked in.

The Arnold Zwicky blog has remarked on this cartoon twice, once yesterday when it was reprinted ( https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/10/10/enduring-classics/ ) and once in 2010 when it first appeared ( https://arnoldzwicky.org/2010/04/11/another-playful-portmanteau/ ) Zwicky seems surprised that people today are still quite familiar with Tetris, and that is the main subject of yesterday’s column. [Oh wait, I should be saying “last Sunday’s blog” not “yesterday’s”; though I am writing this bit on Monday 2021-10-11.]

The first two panels are so familiar as a turnabout joke, with a variety of particular punch lines, its nice to see Horace coming up with something different.

by EditorM

Saturday Morning Oys – October 16th, 2021

I really like treating “erudite” as the name of a mineral. But don’t care for the supposed punch line here that was used to get that across and try to pun on the standard meaning.

by EditorM

Tundra

Robert Kinney sent this in, and asks “What in that sonagram tells us that this is a rooster?  I don’t get what this is trying to tell us, or why it’s supposed to be funny.”

While I was browsing the Tundra site (for context and to check if this one was available in color) I noticed that his Gallery page provides a few comics that some readers felt were in need of explanatiion – which he then provides, sometimes in an answer-strip!

by EditorM

Second-order synchros of LOLs

What I mean by “second-order synchronicity” is that Arthur was struck by two different synchro pairs on the same day.

“Barney & Clyde matches with MGG:”

“And Close To Home matches with Off the Mark:”

“Neither are exact matches, but both immediately caught my eye.”