And that explains the smell of gas around here …
Chemgal sent this in, and classifies it as an Oy, but avers that she did LOL at it too.
And a final item from Andréa:
Whenever confronted with people who like to insist that JFK’s Ich bin ein Berliner meant that he was calling himself a pastry, I like to think of alternate stories where a President needs to reinforce our commitment to Denmark.
Comics I Don't Understand 
The last one reminds me of a Beowulf couplet I remember:
“Grendel’s tastes were rather plainish.
Breakfast? Just a couple Danish.”
Pretty sure I saw the chemistry joke done elsewhere fairly recently. Zits maybe?
The irony about the “jelly doughnut” interpretation of “Ich bin ein Berliner” is that while it might have been understood that way in some other parts of Germany, the joke would never work in or around Berlin. Locally, those doughnuts are called “Pfannkuchen“(†). If you order a “Berliner” in a restaurant around here, you are more than likely to get a curious type of beer called “Berliner Weiße“, a brew so bitter that it is always served with a shot of red or green sirup mixed into the glass.
P.S. (†) – Literally “pan cakes”: they are available year round, but are a traditional treat on New Year’s Eve, usually just before or just after the midnight fireworks. (American “pancakes” are generally called “Eierkuchen” in German, literally “egg cakes”.)
P.P.S. For those who are unfamiliar with the context of Kennedy’s speak, the phrase was meant to evoke the same sort of pride as “civis romanus sum” once did in Latin (for “I am a Roman citizen”).
Has anybody else heard that the newest COVID variants don’t respond to the vaccines? I was hoping I dreamed it or something.
@ Chak – The currently available vaccines were all developed on the basis of the original virus. While it is true that they are not as good at preventing an infection with one of the newer variants, they still do provide excellent protection against severe sickness and hospitalization.
I could swear I first heard about the Ich bin ein Berliner thing from my father, a Berliner, derisively mocking Kennedy for claiming to be a pastry, but when in later life I brought it up, he claimed to have no idea what I was talking about, there was no such thing as a “Berliner”. (As Kilby points out, no Berliner would have heard it that way.) …Except, no one anywhere would have heard it that way, everyone would understand the intent; it’s like the stories of the Chevy Nova being understood in Spanish speaking countries to be the Chevy Doesn’t Go — everyone understands the original intent, and it is the cards and contrarians who then point out the silly interpretation. My father left Berlin and we lived in other parts of West Germany, and so he should have been exposed, if not immediately in Berlin at the time of the speech, then later living in other parts of Germany, to the card’s interpretation, the derisive mocking of Kennedy that is possible if you want it. But his denial and bewilderment later on was pretty convincing. Was he deliberately denying the possibility of that interpretation? Was he getting old and forgetful? Or had I never heard it from him to begin with, maybe getting it from my aunt, his younger sister? I’ll never know, but I can avow that up to around the time the wall came down, I firmly believed that even Berliners would derisively claim Kennedy claimed he was a doughnut.
Mark M – it was in Zits that I saw it, a short continuity about the big friend and a shy girl.
They have chemistry together
Yes, at 2 pm Fridays
I wasn’t talking about the class
That too.
What is the meaning of the “CB” cufflinks in the first one? That looks more like Groucho than Charlie Brown.
Re: “CB” – If you read the fine print at the top, it turns out that the comic is called “Chuckle Brothers”.
The Kennedy urban legend seems to date to around the 1980s or so. Blame a novel and a subsequent book review for starting the whole thing, along with the typical embellishing of detail in retellings of the tale. (Note that the first few minutes of the video here recap the history of the formation of the partitioned Germany, setting the stage for Kennedy’s speech.)
Now, referring to the last comic, the aliens could be in for a nasty surprise. As the line from a certain Shakespeare play goes, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”.
And in Denmark, what we call a Danish is known as a Viennese pastry.
I would argue that Eierkuchen aren’t quite the same as pancakes, because they’re unleavened. More like thick crepes. American style pancakes are pretty rare, but you can find them the closer you get to the old American occupation zones. I’ve usually seen them called Pfannkuchen to distinguish them from the traditional unleavened German variety.
I have heard that the breed of dog we call “Great Dane” is called in Danish “the big German dog”.
I saw a video once, along the lines of “Irish People Try American Breakfast Food”. They were most excited about the pancakes, because they wanted the thick fluffy ones. I wondered why they didn’t just make them. It’s not very hard.
What we call a “German Shepherd Dog” is called an “Alsatian” in England. Whether this is because of World War I anti-German sentiment or not I don’t know.
Re Chucklebros https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=uxbridge+english+dictionary