Month / February 2022

by EditorM

And a tip of the hat to Billy Sutton in Tampa

And thanks to Markus for sending this in and saying “The following a CIDU for me: I have no idea, what to make of this (apparently old) The Far Side comic, which appeared today (Feb 15.)”

You may recall we have been hesitant about using The Far Side material, from Gary Larson’s apparent stated preferences. But preferences only go so far, and there is such a thing as fair use. While we have for a while been doing links rather than embedding or copying, mostly for LOL collections, a short-expiration link doesn’t seem suitable for a standalone CIDU-of-the-day.

Markus also raises the question of the status of the “Thanx!” inset.  I doubt it could be simply real.  It seems to be playing off the tradition of comics that use reader suggestions, and include a thanks note — such as Pluggers more recently or longer ago They’ll Do It Every Time with “A tip of the Hatlo hat”.  But with that said, how is this relating to that tradition? Not just mocking it, if you ask me.

by EditorM

A Watson Sampler

I saw one somewhere, and didn’t quite understand it, so have explored a little at his home site, WatsonStrip.com . The New Readers page sets out some history and admirable goals for the strip; but the new reader, not knowing the backstory, may be at a loss sometimes. The Facebook page of course would be the place for recent chronological archiving, plus reader commentary.

The current A recent strip, with a topical reference to “Wordle” — but what is Silly Putty doing here? Geezers may recall transferring printed material (comics) from newspapers via Silly Putty.

Aha! The word being tried out in Wordle is “Wayno” — so that’s where I ran across this, on Wayno’s blog!

Next, here when Watson says “We’ve got penguins.” is that like “We’ve got termites”?

This one I don’t get at all, but it feels like it might be clear enough for somebody who knew these characters and enough backstory to understand what the blue-wrapped entrepreneur is charging for … ah, could it be a dog-walker?

I think the one below is the first one I ran across [no, it was the Wordle one, via Wayno], with an explanation of the Snow Monkey in the footer text, but an intriguing speculation over whether pickles and ketchup is a normal meal in this world.

This one seems to be about letting oneself just enjoy a lame joke!

by EditorM

Do you Mean What you Say?

Thanks to Usual John for sending this in, and for useful email discussion! His focus is on the bottom strip, where we get amusing literalized visions of some common idiomatic expressions. Except — we apparently no longer have an idiom to match “He had a pony on his cuff”. So, what would that mean, apart from what’s in the literal illustration?

By the way, can anyone assist my memory and give me a clue why I remembered this Origins of the Sunday Comics feature as not always in the past being a genuine historical exploration, but rather including sometimes a parodic or fictive-history take? Maybe mental contamination from reading a sometime series of posts in Working Daze, pretending to trace a century-long history of that strip, thru different writers and artists, and even titles and publishers. 

by EditorM

Ban on passive progressive

Thanks to Dale for sending this in, and saying “Is that fish supposed to be smoking? That doesn’t seem funny. Is it that it’s out of the bowl & sitting human fashion? Would that be funny? Are the other fish frowning or is that just resting fish face?”

Also I wondered, as did Dale, as did some commenters at goComics, whether this could have something to do with smoked fish.

That’s where the title about passive progressive comes in. It used to be that you weren’t supposed to say something like “Their house is being built currently”. And instead the recommended form was “Their house is a-building currently” or (slightly less eccentric sounding today) “Their house is building currently”. And by those rules, in place of “The fish is being smoked” you would have “The fish is smoking“. And voilà, here we have a picture of “The fish is smoking”.

Okay, in the spirit of supplementing the daily CIDU with entertaining musical clips, here is Cream doing “Strange Brew”:

by EditorM

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, February 13th, 2022 

TBH, this was for me more a chuckle than a full LOL. But I was wondering if others also see an analogy between the point here and our thread about interpreting “The exception proves the rule” from early January.

For that matter, what sort of thing was a “buck” in that saying, by the time HST talked about it?

Thanks to Boise Ed for this Ewww-LOL!

Okay, okay, Reply All is an acquired taste I guess.

Is anyone ready to name a particular Raymond Chandler title being quoted? Or is Bliss just happily riffing on the voice?

by EditorM

Saturday Morning Oys – February 12th, 2022

Let’s mark this Lard’s as a CIDU-Oy, inasmuch as it does a rather nice word-play joke, but may take a couple beats to figure out.

Not a perfect portmanteau but it’ll do, and we get to treat the cat fans. For those not into cats, you may not be aware that a vernacular name for this sort of tricolor marking is “calico cat”.

And not-a-perfect exemplar of “pun”, but this is certainly word-play!