Brilliant!
The lion is the king of beasts, And husband of the lioness. Gazelles and things on which he feasts Address him as your highoness.
–Ogden Nash Poems to Carnival of the Animals
Y’know how sometimes when Cornered has a Sunday duplex strip (or higher multiple!), and just one of them hits the funny bone just right? And then CIDU is stuck trying to clip or trim to get that one panel? But this time it’s a case of “Why not both?” Two LOLs for the price of one!
And if we’re still in the Weekend of Remembering nineties/oughties Songs, here is one suggested by that comic:
Comics I Don't Understand 
Note that there are two “pink slips” in that panel.
I’m not quite sure I got the ‘Pamela, cancel my lunch…’ one.
Maggie, it’s playing off of some version of those life-advice sayings about “Be sure you stop and smell the roses.” This businessperson apparently accepts that idea, but still thinks he’s too busy to actually do that, so he tries to delegate it.
Powers, yes I do see two of the slip garments being worn. But is that also a traditional paper “pink slip” at the right edge, in the air below the clock?
Ah, I get it. i though that maybe the cancelling stuff also had something to do with it, but I guess I was overthinking the cartoon. Thanks Mitch.
Mitch4, what?
There’s only one pink undergarment (slip) being worn in that comic. The other “slip” is not a garment (though there is a pink garment involved, it looks like a suit not a slip).
I see what you mean about the piece of paper but it’s not as pink as the other “slips”.
The aeronautical resumes reminded me of an anecdote about certain college professors who allegedly “graded” term papers by throwing the whole stack of them down a staircase. The ones that travelled furthest down the stairs received the best grades.
P.S. @ Mitch – The papers in the air may or may not be pink slips, but they appear to have been dropped by the guy wearing the second slip, probably because he’s just been kicked out of the office and/or down the stairs.
Sorry Powers, I guess I was just being deaf to your joke — there is a second pink “slip”, understanding that to mean the action of slipping, rather than a material thing. Is that what you meant?
@ Mitch – I think that Powers is referring to the fact that the second garment doesn’t appear to be a “slip”. As opposed to the one in the foreground, it has both sleeves and completely covers the shoulders.
No, Kilby, it looks to me that you are entirely missing a key step in the dialogue between Powers and me. His initial comment today said there are two pink slips in the picture. My guess in response (8:57 — sometimes I really wish we could implement numbered comments!) was that it was the guy further back, also in a pink garment. But that was incorrect, as pointed out by Powers (9:35) and you (9:46), both of you explaining that the garment in question was not a slip in construction.
My 9:40 was acknowledging that correction — and further making an attempt to fill in a remaining question, what did Powers originally see as a second pink slip? I ventured that it was the act of slipping by the tumbling guy. But your 9:46 did not address that point at all, nor take up the question of what second slip is shown. Your “correction” actually had nothing to say in response to my 9:40, though worded as though it was settling everything.
Yes, exactly!
I’m fond of those Ogden Nash light verses for the Carnival of the Animals.
@ Mitch – Then you will have to work it out with Powers. I do not see anything in the panel that would qualify as a “second” pink slip, unless it is the second pink garment, which Powers has negated. If he is talking about the non-pink piece of paper in the speaker’s hand, then we need to consider that at least two other people appear to be holding identical papers, and the guy falling down has dropped one.
Kilby, you need to remember, nouning verbs weirds language. To slip becomes a slip when you want to describe the action. If the perpetrator of said slip is wearing pink, then the whole slippage can be referred to as a pink slip.
I’ll just slip in another comment: this is the first time I’ve seen the term “oughties.” I like it.
I also want to note that the commenting mechanism has improved a bit. It no long tries to autofill the Website field, and I don’t get the “duplicate comment” mess(age).
Yes, the second pink slip is the person in pink, slipping. That’s all. I didn’t mean to start a big controversy.
I guess I don’t really get the one with the Pez dispenser.
Powers, thanks for confirming what your “second pink slip” was about. No worries, you weren’t creating the controversy.
Brian, it’s about the tradition of displaying the enemies’ detached heads on the top of a spike. but if you’re out of spikes, how about using a giant PEZ dispenser? [Which may be in need of a head as decorative top for the flip/dispense mechanism.]
Ah. I see.
the tradition of displaying the enemies’ detached heads on the top of a spikeThat’s “spike” a.k.a. “pike”?Here are the lyrics to the paper planes; does it change the song for you?
@ Mitch – For the record, I was not creating any controversy, either. I simply did not understand Powers’s implication that the second character was “slipping”; to me it looks like he was being thrown out on his keister.
The lion was asked to pick up some wildebeest on the way home. This might meet that need:
Mitch 4 – You know if he brings home a wildebeast from a vending machine his wife will complain it is not fresh enough. She will want to be a fresh wildebeast, not one sitting around for who knows how long.
It looks to me the guy in the Andertoons comic with the painting is pointing out a dead pixel.
@ Grawlix – Dead pixels are a minor problem compared to (invariant) “live” ones. We have an iPad that has a solitary green pixel in the middle of the display. It’s very difficult to see when a picture or other bright stuff is displayed, but when most of the screen is dark, it looks like a dim planet hiding in the night sky.
Yes, like a dead pixel. But the joke is predicated on the special circumstance of this painting (and a few others) of being already pre-pixellated, so to speak. The “pointilliste” technique is what makes a dead pixel equivalent to the artist “missing this one”.
By the way, for our information, the scale of the drawing had to be rather off. In real life, the painting is so much bigger!
In a Zoom-based class I’ve taken in various quarters, the instructor often shares his screen, to show us something (or for the sake of sharing sound, as this is a music class). I noticed recently that his screen had a “locked live” pixel of the sort Kilby describes. (At first I thought it was a speck of dust on my own screen, but when I couldn’t brush it away I then thought it was something about my video driver of whatever. But then I saw that if I moved the Zoom window on my screen, the bad spot moved with it.)
But thinking about it, how could Zoom capture and transmit an error that was an actual physical problem with his screen, like a bad phosphor? It has to be something like a bad spot in the video memory?
So when I was at the Art Institute of Chicago fairly recently (within the last 10 years), I was actually kind of disappointed (no pun intended) with the pointillists — my thinking is that having grown up with computers and pixels etc., the revolutionary “point” that they were trying to make back then is just taken for granted by me today, and I just see it as a lot of effort for a rather stilted final outcome — I’m jaded because with a pixelated display and a computer to help process the image, you can do so much more and it’s so “obvious” now. I was sad to realize, for me at least, they had not aged well, and even seeing the (large) actual canvases in person, I just couldn’t summon the wonder. On the other hand, what did stand out for me was the van Gogh in the same room (a self portrait), which just stood out like it was glowing from all the other paintings — it was amazing! (I’ve often noted for impressionists that seeing the actual canvas is orders of magnitude better than seeing reproductions — my first time seeing some Monets in person that I knew quite well from reproductions had that effect on me, and I was happy to note it didn’t fade away or get jaded — the van Gogh just glowed…) The van Gogh museum in Amsterdam came up twice within the last two days, once from Ted Lasso, and then our neighbors talking about an impending visit, and I do wonder how, in a room full of ’em, how any one individual painting would stand out — would I get jaded at that museum?
(I also liked the “conversation” they set up at the Art Institute of Chicago between Hopper’s Nighthawks and Archibald John Motley, Jr.’s Nightlife…)
This Caillebotte is another that the AIC publicizes the heck out of (free posters to public schools, lunchboxes, binders…) — but you know what, it’s wonderful! The size is just right, too — if you have someone stand next to it, the foreground couple are larger than life, but the others are not — its size is impressive, yet small enough to take it all in from a short distance (it’s in a fairly small gallery).
When my poster of it was new and clean, the sign “PHARMACIE” along the lintel of the ground floor shop was quite legible, which delighted me as I was working at the hospital pharmacy at the time.
Here’s that PHARMACIE