Thanks to Darren for sending these in. He says of the Loose Parts, “I’m wondering what made him give in. Has the mime just been standing in one spot for over a week or something?
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Comics I Don't Understand 
What was wrong with the good old “synchronicity” category? Or has it simply been given a new overly long name?
The term “synchronicity” was not always understood as really needing “similar idea”, so making that explicit may help. (And that is also why we declared “no more synchronicity submissions please.”)
I generally enjoy(ed) the synchronicity posts, but “similar idea” seems a bit broader. I had a suitable pair last week that were consecutive in my GoComics list, but I didn’t sent them because “synchronicity” was unwanted. I no longer remember what they were, alas.
Sorry to have discouraged you; but you may have the wrong end of the stick, as they say on Brit dramas (and I now realize is an unpleasant image!). I thought “similar idea” would be narrower, not broader. (The problem with the broadness was that people would submit pairs as “synchronicity” which had nothing like a similar joke or theme, but just both mentioned the same object or animal or whatever.)
The only regrettable thing about the “similar ideas on same day” formulation is that it looks like maintaining a certain strictness about simultaneity that was always dispensable in practice. Bill would often buy some plausible substitute for “published same day” if the comics were worth it. We are now equally friendly to the idea of some fuzziness in that aspect!
To continue that thought in response to Ed, don’t hold back from submitting a pair that are near in time and strikingly related in some major way, if both or at least one is/are funny or worthwhile on their own.
Not to nitpick, but shouldn’t that be the Miranda rights?
And picking up on Maggie’s comment, I immediately picture some wag running with it and presenting rights that didn’t make the cut — like you have the right to a floral arrangement, you have the right to two sides or a soup — and calling them Miranda lefts… on the cutting room floor!
The post title seems just tangential to the comics. But that is something of a CIDU tradition, I gather. At least it’s a pretty good joke on its own.
(“The notes are sound, while the rests are silence.” That’s the music lesson aspect. Meanwhile, Hamlet’s death line is “The rest is silence.”)
I got lab tests on Thursday, and went by the Chinese place I used to go to weekly when I was working at Megacorp. I like that place because the lunch special comes with egg roll or crab rangoons, plus soup. Most places just soup as one of the side options. I tried a few times at those places to see if I could get an additional side for a nominal amount, but with no success. You’d have to get a big container of soup or 6 crab rangoons.
I’m not sure if that’s the correct way to pluralize “crab rangoon”, but nothing else seemed right.
Brian, I’m pretty sure I have seen exactly that form with “rangoon” treated as a count noun that can be pluralized with an -s, on the packaging of a frozen pack of that product. Something like an instruction on arranging the rangoons in a single layer. And I may not have been sure at the time why it looked wrong! But just now, it was forced on me by the need to fight with autocorrect which kept wanting to capitalize it. The usual “crab Rangoon” must be that peculiar formation where the proper name is used as a postposed modifier, for the sense of “in the style of ___”.
And it was only in the last decade or so that I realized “bisque Tortoni” was the same sort of construction, where the Tortoni was the name of a restaurant (and presumably a family name of the proprietors) where a creamy frozen bisque was made. I had for many years happily taken “tortoni” as the head noun, which could be pluralized. (Or of course singularized, in “I’ll have a tortoni.”)
For a minute there, I couldn’t remember why I had posted that. Then I found the reference to soup and sides above.
So a number of attorneys at law went with their mothers-in-law to enjoy some crabs Rangoon? With crêpes Suzette and cherries jubilee for dessert, no doubt, and nobody complains about those last two.
Wikipedia says “Crab Rangoon, sometimes called crab puffs, crab rangoon puffs, cheese wontons, or cream cheese rangoons, are …” So it is a mass noun, uncountable.
They aren’t crabs prepared in Rangoon style though. They contain (theoretically but probably not) crab meat.
Brian, thanks for catching that misleading way of putting it. I didn’t mean to introduce the idea of whole crabs. I was about to add “clearly” it still uses the idea of “in the style of Rangoon” but applied to crab meat — except that (as Ed’s Wikipedia link points out) there is no basis for that purported connection.
And that would be about Rangoon, Burma, now more officially Yangon, Myanmar.
Sort of like Peking Duck, named after a city that we don’t call it that anymore?
Yes, similar. Both are the result in a change in the romanization scheme rather than an actual change in the name of the city.