“It’s Horace, the guy who tells jokes so sophisticated no one can understand them.”

Sent by Andréa, who also kindly linked this Bernoulli explainer. (Which however doesn’t make the joke really clearer.)

Barney and Clyde have a whole series of these this month. They are obscure, but are they funny? Here’s another. The humor seems species-ous.

And then again there are some, like the most recent episode, which we would gleefully consign to an “Ooopses!” list if we didn’t have this post to use it in.

Let us pass over in silence the syllable count of guacamole, and get right to the point: why isn’t there superscripting? If there’s an excuse in “He’s supposed to be speaking these”, still they should be written correctly and trust the reader to vocalize them appropriately; or heck, even write out him saying “times ten to the twenty-third” and something like “inverse moles” or simply “units per mole”.

Styxing it to ’em

Andréa writes:

For 60 years, I lived a few miles from CubLand, but I still don’t get this . . is he giving a raspberry? Does it have something to do with this . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xBxZGQ1dJk
. . . if so, the comic is 10 days early, as he was born on 25 July, NOT 15 July.

Here’s a bonus Steve Goodman track, another live performance, the ultimate country song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QUSQJQml40



Sunday Funnies – LOLs, July 17th, 2022

A little bit mean … but still quite funny.

A brain-painful LOL from Chemgal:

Inspiration!

This almost went into the Oys list, since there is a play on a sort of ambiguity of where. This was a favorite joke-form of a friend of mine who knew Ulysses inside-out after teaching it to undergrads at Millard Fillmore College in Buffalo, and dubbed these “on the canal bank” jokes. It was from this bit, in the final chapter:
I hate that confession when I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put it I forget no father

Saturday Morning Oys – July 16th, 2022

I think this counts as a pun, even without doing a pun-joke.

The above sent by Andréa, who particularly notes Tom Waits getting mentioned, saying “Never thought I’d see HIM in a comic – made my day!”. And one of your editors had the pleasure of taking a couple classes from Professor Lance Rips, who liked to point out that his name constitutes a complete sentence.

Meant to post this earlier.

And the award for the best re-use of old toy parts goes to …

I learned the word prodigal in the context of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and thought it meant something like all the characteristics of the guy in the story – wandering, absent, returning after a long absence and acting all entitled, etc, all packaged in that one word. Only much later did I start seeing contexts that wouldn’t support all of that meaning, and learned the base sense spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.

And then discovered that was what it meant in the Parable, too. But there had not been enough help from the context to make that choice clear! And this fits the philosopher’s point that, if your informant points to a rabbit and says gavagai, maybe they are telling you the word means rabbit — but maybe it means finger.

Why do you ask?

Why indeed? A friend and sometime-lurker sent me this, suggesting it for CIDU, and I have to agree. Maybe there’s something about philately?

Mitch suggests that there may be a joke in the way the therapist is probing for something the guy is leaving out–perhaps his hairpiece is also something he thinks the wife criticizes too much. He also asked: Why does the diploma alternate between an MA and a PhD? What is the significance of the therapist doodling instead of making notes?

Formulaic CIDU (bonus)

Well, I don’t think he was just scribbling. It’s too convincing.

Unlikely that it is a vector-graphics equation for the lines and filled areas that constitute the smiley face. Right?

But if mostly a blur-retrace of something real, then what in particular? An elaboration or derivation of part of Maxwell? [Though that would work better for the “Let There Be Light” referenced in the GoComics comments.] Something from General Relativity? Thermodynamics? We are happy because the Sun keeps shining?

Are there gas stations in heaven?

Boise Ed: “Taking the wings seems to imply accepting that you’re dead. The free Camaro leaves me with no idea at all.”

Which reminds me of something I’ve thought about: the religious concept of eternity. Christians can imagine heaven as a place, but not a real place. It sits outside the dimensions of length, width, and depth. So why shouldn’t it sit outside the realm of time, as well?