Well, there’s a good OY on the left, and a good LOL on the right, and I’m feeling too lazy to get out the cropper, so let’s print it twice, once today, and once yesterday or tomorrow.
Not a huge LOL, but Tiger and Punkinhead here are reproducing a classic problem in the literature of logical representation, going back to Bertrand Russell.
An Arlo-LOL from Divad who says “I’ve got a pretty good guess what was on Arlo’s mind (in general), but I’m trying to not picture what he’s specifically thinking.”
“Zzz-mailing” makes it worth it…
Comics I Don't Understand 
The misdirected mail comic is a poignant reminder of CIDU Bill’s neverending battle with IBB, a saga that will now never have a satisfactory ending.
Frankenstein’s monster’s mail was a CIDU for a moment. It wasn’t immediately obvious that he was talking to Dr. Frankenstein.
Mary Shelly’s handwritten coda helps.
Max; Thank you! That one went from a CIDU to a LOL with your comment. (Also violating the “If you have to explain it, it’s no longer funny” rule.)
Ruben Bolling/Tom the Dancing Bug has a recurring Frankenstein/Frankenstein’s Monster gag in his Super-Fun-Pak Comix. Here is a “Pak” that has two of them, from 2018/12/31:
Yes thanks from me too for explaining Frankenstein.
Is zzz-mailing a thing? I have heard of people who walk in their sleep and therefore can never get a hotel room on a upper level.
Apparently it is. I found an article from in the New York Times from 2009 describing it, along with sleep driving.
How are we to know who the guy standing in the doorway is?
Comedian Mike Birbiglia had a feature movie Sleepwalk with Me (2012), based on his actual experience (and also treated in his stand-up monologues), about his extreme case of sleepwalking. I half-recall his diagnosis was under a more technical-sounding term (and not just somnambulism) but not what the details of that were. One crisis point was when he was on tour and got up and walked thru a glass door at the hotel where he was staying, ending up on the ground outdoors.
The Frankenstein cartoon struck me as really funny. DESPITE a couple problems: (1) the young guy just doesn’t look the way we expect Dr. F. to look. (2) There is some sort of logic flaw. Why would Monster be upset with Doctor for the misdirected mail? Maybe for not giving him a name, which would have headed off the problem. But the immediate issue is maybe with the postman, who should be delivering “To Frankenstein” mail to Doctor. And if misguided fans are writing to Monster but addressing just “To Frankenstein”, then Monster should be content with the postal service delivering them to him even though technically wrong.
Too bad more people are not aware of the postscript from Mary Shelley that Max C Webster III has shared with us!
@PS III – no, the rule holds, it’s not funny.
I did get the Frankenstein one after a bit of thought, and I found it to be amusing.
I loved the Frankenstine one. I didn’t think there were too many flaws though.
a) “the young guy just doesn’t look the way we expect Dr. F. to look” Maybe not, but that’s on us. In the book, he is quite young. It doesn’t say his age exactly, but there are several clues: He is 17 years old when he goes to Ingolstadt to university, and after only several years of study, he drops out to complete his creation. He was in his early to mid 20s at the absolute most.
b) “Why would Monster be upset with Doctor for the misdirected mail?” He’s not. He’s annoyed that he has to keep explaining the mix up to the mailman.
c) “immediate issue is maybe with the postman, who should be delivering “To Frankenstein” mail to Doctor.” Yes, I think this is the basis of the joke. He’s moved out but is still getting Franenstein’s mail.
What I found funny was that it is almost a trope that whenever someone refers to the monster as ‘Frankenstein’, some annoying pedant pipes up and corrects them by saying it was the name of the creator (in the novel, he’s not actually a doctor either…see, it’s annoying). However, this comic turns this trope around. The one ‘person’ who would have a valid and non-pedantic reason to point this out is the monster himself, and it turns out that he’s annoyed that he has to keep explaining it. I thought that this comic found a brilliant way to demonstrate how this mix-up could happen to the monster on a regular basis and cause him annoyance.
Well, I laughed.
Max: I experienced the same sequence. At first, I thought the guy answering the door was some Greek philosopher, due to his chiton.
Mark: There were some stories, a few years back, about Ambien causing some people to do some remarkable sleepwalking activity. (It has never had that effect on me, though.) But I love that term “zzz-mailing,” while hoping I never do it.
Stan: I’m that “annoying pedant” — or one of them, anyhow.
EditorM: there’s a good OY on the left, and a good LOL on the right
Are you saying that the compliment to Plato is an OY? I do love Zero’s LOL, though, even though it’s as old as the hills around Camp Swampy.
Boise Ed, you gotta watch the divider / grouping lines! The remark about one LOL and one OY goes with the Cornered panel(s). I could have used a graphics editor to separate them, then print the OY one in the Saturday OY collection and the LOL one in the Sunday LOL collection. But that would be extra work, so I let the mixed-pair appear together on both days…
Aha! So your confessed “laziness” evidently extended to not wanting to edit the accompanying text at all between its appearance in the Saturday post and in the Sunday post … explaining that odd wording about “so let’s print it twice, once today, and once yesterday or tomorrow.“
I see how the Tiger comic is “reproducing a classic problem in the literature of logical representation, going back to Bertrand Russell.” His example, btw, was I thought your yacht was larger than it is. https://philosophy.tamucc.edu/texts//russell-on-denoting
But indeed, I’d say they are also dipping into epistemology, as well as “the problem of other minds”.
That Arlo and Janis is indeed very much “an Arlo”!
Boise Ed says
At first, I thought the guy answering the door was some Greek philosopher, due to his chiton.. I took it right away as just his nightclothes — telling us his “offspring” has chosen to stop by at an inconveniently late night or early morning moment. But I also join with those who hesitated over him looking so young.I thought he was supposed to be wearing an operating room smock (these days they are usually green, I think, but back then they were white).
I have a sister who is 12 years younger than I am (there is a third sister about halfway between us). “The baby” and I used to share a bedroom. She would sleepwalk when she was young – she would walk into my bed (hers was against the 2 walls in a corner and mine was sticking out into the room further along the wall against which was the head of each bed). I would say to her that she was sleepwalking and had walked into my bed. She would reply “okay” and then turn around and go back to bed without ever waking up.
(I still call her the baby – even though she is in her middle 50s now.)
Oops. I wouldn’t want to cost you extra work, Mitch, really! I just took the first remark as belonging to the first comic.