This one from Matthew McKeever, who concisely expresses his puzzlement in this email subject line: “???”

This one from Matthew McKeever, who concisely expresses his puzzlement in this email subject line: “???”

Kenneth Berkun sends this one in. Seems to be missing something, but missing things is what CIDU is all about.


We all know to watch out for some tricky switcheroo from Horace. But this one whizzes right past me.

Thanks to Rob S. for this one by Tom Falco. That “Summer at Home” title is the cartoonist’s title for it, and goes with his inflation-leads-to-staycation topical message.
But the real interest the panel holds for us is the way the picture is based on an ad campaign from a ways back. Can you remember the brand that used that picture, and a slogan (in the form of a question) associated with that brand and this ad campaign … or a competitor’s?
Rob shares that he indeed thought of the competitor first, as did the cartoonist according to his blog entry. See the Tomversation blog for Falco’s discussion of this, including the original windswept photo from the ads.
CALL FOR HOLIDAY COMICS
We’re going to succumb to Independence Day fervor and have a potpourri posting on the Fourth, with any and every kind of comic, whether funny, punny, or puzzling, as long as it relates to that holiday.
But it’s scheduled to go live on the day! So we need items that are already out there! Thanks!
So far all we have is a nice stock photo of people watching fireworks, which serves as featured image. It would be sad to have this presiding over an empty page.
Thanks to Powers, who wrote:
Extra synchronic because they appear kitty-corner from each other in my Sunday paper.


And then there was Rubes from the very next day (Monday 20 June), which seemed to combine the two and made me wonder what was going on.

And just for a kicker, Monday’s Ziggy continued the theme:

Editorial comment on “kitty-corner”: this Anglicism, also spelled “catercorner” and various other variations, apparently comes from the dots on a four in dice or cards being, well, kitty-corner from each other, plus the French word “quatre” for four, at one point also spelled “catre”. Given that the Brits have “centre” and the like, the mystery to me is why it’s not “catre-corner”.


Thanks to Ken Berkun for this next one.






What’s his problem?

But it seems to be offering a moment of inspiration, when he discovers … his own name? (Or his pretend / pun name, no difference.)


It finally turns into a sort of techno-era observational-humor consumer complaint about passwords and online support and automated voice response systems. Stuff we all like to complain about, fine.
But to get there we have to follow a confusing sequence of redefinitions of “cordless” and “wireless” – do these parachutes lack the strings/lines joining the canopy to the harness? Is that what makes them cordless? Oh, you mean automatic deployment of some sort so you don’t use a traditional manual “ripcord”. But the online bit (which is what “wireless” seems to mean here) is an utterly implausible development in the sport.


Y’know, it’s almost there! But there’s nothing at all in the scene to relate to the baseball meaning of bunt, let alone the more specialized sacrifice bunt.