Wow, the last two Sundays were on the holidays, so there were a lot of LOLs people saw but we didn’t have the right place to post yet. And now …
A bit of synchronicity in my GoComics feed suits this post to a T.
Yep, that should have more cat-appeal than pizza.
And can’t let it go without a last-minute Zack!
Comics I Don't Understand 
I could never order food when it’s snowing. I’d feel too bad for the delivery driver.
But what if your pet insisted on it?
Well, then I’m in trouble, because I can’t say no to that little face.
As someone who NEVER saw a cockroach ’til I moved to FL, I didn’t find that cockroach one funny at all. I wouldn’t put it past these critters to do this . . .
You mean to tell me there is NOTHING in the house for them to eat????
Well, Florida’s “palmetto bugs” are huge and menacing in comparison to northern household roaches!
Windex (with ammonia) gets ’em, and doesn’t endanger the dogs. We have about one a month in the house or screen house. Which is one too many.
Don’t know why, but it occurred to me that the “asparagus” joke works better if you imagine the fake British accent that actors in old historical epics used, regardless of what nationality they actually were. (Think how James Mason sounded pretty much the same whether his character was English or German.)
“I am as-PAHR-a-gus!”
So the one signed Eric Scott… I am Groot or I’m Spartacus? Or both mashed together? Is it just absurdism? I’m looking for a reason why it’s asparagus…
(Bonus IDU: why does the fact that it’s snowing mean they’re ordering sushi? Is it the fact that it’s snowing causing the ordering in, or is the snow somehow affecting what they are ordering in, and in either case, how does the snow lead to that conclusion? I guess if the alternative was going out to eat, then the ordering in makes sense. But the going out in the first place doesn’t really make sense, as you don’t tend to take cats out (they don’t tend to like it). He’s making it really hard to get…)
@ Anonymous – I was assuming that the “asparagus” comic was a reference to the “Groot” meme, but now I’m not sure. What did I miss?
The Bizarro has a coloring thing that bugs me. The similar color makes the doorknob and door lock look like part of the Trojan Roach.
@ larK – Thanks, I think pureed Groot + Spartacus is an adequate solution.
I don’t know the Groot meme at all. But I thought it worked as the Spartacus scene. And there is a bit of phonetic similarity between spartacus and asparagus.
Believe it or not, but UrbanDictionary has a pretty good description explaining the Spartacus meme.
I don’t trust U.D. for anything, but after some reflection, I’m sure that Spartacus was intended, and Groot is just accidental contamination (the meme being much more recent that the film).
I got the punchline of the “Billy The Kid” comic just fine, but I was hung up on the artwork. It took me a few beats too long to figure out the stranger’s face.
F-Minus is a CIDU for me.
We had a cat that was a pizza fiend. Would steal entire slices if not stopped.
Grawlix, yeah, this artist has a peculiar style.
Andréa, suppose besides the well known X rays, there secretly were others, such as Z rays, that were largely held in secret from the general public, and could reveal weird internal goings-on. So sometimes a Z-ray-qualified doctor might slip up and a patient would learn about them. This is such a scene.
Ah . . . I think I was over-analyzing it, something to do with the Z Generation.
I assumed that sushi was ordered because it’s something that needs to be kept chilled, and it’s cold enough to snow. Best I can come up with.
I assumed it was Spartacus based on the way all the humans are dressed. Also it’s a scene that has been widely parodied (“I’m Brian. And so is my wife.”)
As for why sushi, it’s because cats are presumed to like fish.
Where are people getting anything related to Groot from the Asparagus comic?
(Caveat: I’ve only seen a brief Groot clip online.)
Powers, I think there are two things:
(And don’t forget : Celery stalks at midnight)
@ Powers – Mostly because of the similarity of the canonical phrase (and title) “I am Groot“, and the vegetable character of both figures, each of which has a prominent connections to “roots”. Although both the film “Spartacus” and the comic book “Groot” first appeared in 1960, in recent years the “Groot” meme has had much more media presence than the old movie.
in recent years the “Groot” meme has had much more media presence than the old movie.
I’m not at all sure about that. As Guero and his UD link discuss, the trope of multiple individuals “confessing” to some identity is quite pervasive, and clearly tracks back to Spartacus.
“I am Groot” is what Groot says. There’s no situation in which other characters are saying “I’m Groot”. The Asparagus doesn’t resemble Groot in any way except that they’re both plants. If it was supposed to be a reference to Groot, there’s no humor in it that I can see.
This is so clearly a Spartacus reference.
If it was supposed to be a reference to Spartacus, there’s no humor in it that I can see.
If it was supposed to be a reference to Spartacus, there’s no humor in it that I can see.
What did you think of the phonetic play between Spartacus and asparagus?
What did you think of the phonetic play between *Spartacus and asparagus?*
Honestly, not much – not enough to really hang a joke on. I guess it’s absurdism, but having gone down the garden path of the possibility that it also or instead references “I am Groot”, when I then come to the end of that path and, as like Kilby, recognize that that probably is just pure coincidence (a stalky anthropomorphized sprout who could be the reincarnation of the original plant), to then have to retrace my route to come back to a slight vocal assonance, all that traveling disturbs the frame of mind needed to appreciate whatever slight absurdest humor might be left.
Andréa – My SIL does not normally have food in the house other than breakfast. They eat lunch out (children at school, husband at work, and her out running errands) and they eat dinner out at a local diner nightly. The start of the Covid pandemic was a major problem and somehow they continued to eat at the diner – or at least take out from same.
We normally go to her to house for Christmas Day dinner (though not the past 3 years which has her majorly upset with us). She buys an assortment for anti-pasto first course. She cooks her mother’s “gravy” (tomato sauce) for the main course of ravioli. It takes her hours and hours – we make same gravy with same recipe – half an hour is plenty of cooking and it lacks the acid hers has. Her husband cooks the ravioli for her. She buys Italian pastries for dessert. That is the extent of her cooking during the year.
The second to last time we went for this dinner she could not run her dishwasher it as there was a problem with the hot water in the kitchen. I went to wash the dishes to help her out. I asked her for a small pot “like you would cook a can of soup in” to bring hot water from the nearby bathroom (would fit in the sink) and she did not have any pots other than the ones used to cook the “gravy” and the ravioli – neither of which would fit in the bathroom sink. I was also told that I could not get the water from the bathroom sink as I might damage same as it is “was very expensive”.
So, yes, there are times when there is nothing to eat in their house as they do not eat in the house.
Did she not have a bathtub? That’s a good place to get water in large containers.
Since we stopped eating out at the beginning of 2020 (we used to eat out at least once/day for our main meal), my cholesterol has improved dramatically. I guess I could call that a good side-effect of the COVID pandemic, if I was feeling generous.
How many dishwashers rely on mains hot water? It seems like a poor design choice, since you’re going to have to use electricity anyway to run the dishwasher, then just use the electricity to heat the water, and you have one less thing not under your control to rely on. Also, you can heat the water hotter than is safe for humanity, and thus achieve better sterilization. I never thought about it much until I had to fix something on our dishwasher, and realized it didn’t rely on hot water, just water, a drain, and electricity. Made eminent sense to me, and I’d be surprised if any dishwasher didn’t do it that way…
@ larK – German dishwashers run exclusively on cold incoming water. This also avoids the disadvantage of the additional dissolved minerals usually found in the hot water feed. I am fairly certain that British dishwashers would be limited to a cold water feed, too, since they have oddball “backflow” rules that make it very difficult to use the normal “mixing” taps universally found in American and German homes.
P.S. I have run into dishwashers in the US that did use incoming hot water, so that the temperature needed to be set high enough to ensure sterilization, resulting in occasional scalds when washing hands in the kitchen sink). As noted above, this is insane.
P.P.S. One home appliance that is NEVER found (anywhere) in Germany is the garbage disposal attached to the sink’s drain. They appear to be illegal here.
Kilby: Garbage disposals were illegal in New York City until 1997.
A dishwasher can heat hot water, so it’s not necessary to have the incoming set all that high. Mine is connected to the hot water and has a heating element, which also serves as the drying heat source.
So my brain finally delivered this association to me, more than a month later, of a Spartacus / Claudius mashup from Sesame Street that clearly went above my head when I first saw it: