
Timmy, it’s you


These “Wide Open” panels from successive weeks seem to feature the same feline character, at a similar angle. Physical angle. But the comedic angle is hard to catch.



(Posting postscript: see comment on https://cidu.info/2022/04/20/yeah-cmon-what-happened-then/)
There must be a “The Ring” besides Wagner…

And then … you evolved?
From Darren, who is amused by FTP being thought of as the old-fashioned way (and we can notice that FTP would rely on the Internet service working anyway).
Darren adds: “Cobb [this dog] is always the ‘straight man’ for setups and is sane and predictable. But in this final panel he’s pounding on the keyboard. ⁋ Also, assuming Tucker [the boy] is mentioning this because it is nearly the deadline for the homework, what is the old fashioned way that Cobb is thinking of? Presumably turning it in before leaving the class is not an option.”

Each has something like a pun from basketball terminology.






(Repeated last week from 9/6 thru 9/11 in 2010.)


It’s not fancy, it’s just funny!






I did literally LOL! But filing it with the OYs for the word play.







Now the rainman gave me two cures Then he said, “Jump right in” The one was Texas medicine The other was just railroad gin An’ like a fool I mixed them An’ it strangled up my mind An’ now people just get uglier An’ I have no sense of time




Writing prompt: That’s a *winch*. Why is that a better pun than a *wrench* would have been?
Thanks to Ken Berkun for sending this one in. Also sent by Usual John, who ventures to explain the use of “Happy Birthday”: I just realized it’s to measure the 20 seconds to wash one’s hands properly.

In the lane of “I guess I get the intended joke point, but the execution is unsuccessful” we have this “powdery math” example from zbicyclist. “I’m lost here. He’s eating one donut, and has another on his plate. That’s two donuts. So how is it 50% less sugar than two donuts?” I guess the *one* donut Leroy is waving around does have 50% less sugar than the two he has altogether, since it’s 50% less donut.

I thought at first it was going to be the funnish kind of percentage mistake coming from inconsistent base. We’re going to increase your supply of widgets by 10%. But now you have too many, so we’ll reduce your supply by 10%. That should put you back where you started …. eh?




The main-punch of this charming joke is clear enough — curiosity may be fatal to cats (as in the common saying) but not to these patients. But what is it that the vet has diagnosed as a case of curiosity? And is it supposed to be clear why he speaks in the singular, and which one of the dogs is the patient?


I dunno, maybe the problem is that the top section looks like a “throwaway panel” but actually it’s essential that it appear right above the scene with the cars. Because it’s the upper-storey window and sign for the gym? But we still have to pin down the connection between weight-lifting and how that extra car got where it is.

If your thing is to visually or linguistically play off some familiar phrase or saying that almost everybody surely knows …. there’s going to be trouble when you use some that nobody knows. (All right, I know about “disruptor”. But that’s about it.)



Okay, let the anatomists explain from the configuration of fingers (and additional hand in panel 2) that the hand doing the artwork in panels 2 and 3 has to be Nancy’s. Even so, what does it get her? And if it could possibly be Fritzi’s own, does that mean her panel 1 nag about “the expression on my face” was just a fancy prank setup?