Have you kept count for how many times this joke has come up this week?
Woops! Turns out this is now the third appearance of this “kerning pun” (as jjmcgaffey called it) on CIDU in one path or another.
This fun Rubes from a few years ago was brought to our attention by Professor Jerry Coyne (a big supporter of ducks) on his Why Evolution is True web site (blog, but he doesn’t like it called that).
As reported by The Daily Cartoonist (but nowhere visible at mutts.com), Patrick McDonnell has announced that he will be taking a six-month sabbatical to work on other projects, and that (almost all of) the strips from now to June will be re-runs (note the absence of any year in the copyright line on this one).
Comics I Don't Understand 
Pickle puns are that Mom’s bread and butter. But her son feels she’s been gherkin’ him around
I get the puns but what’s he mean about the closet? And is her final remark in reference to that or to her punning?
Also, the Subway wall should just say “of the prophets”.
Her closet got trashed as he looked for the presents.
Also, the Subway wall should just say “of the prophets”.Point well taken, Powers — at least, the wall could have equally well (or better?) said just that. But I think the fuller quotation still makes the quotational joke.
Pickle puns are that Mom’s bread and butterI almost missed Zbicyclist’s pun there — based on “bread and butter” being one of the style/flavor designations you sometimes see on pickle jars.
I was confused by the reference to the new year’s pickle, and not without reason. Here is the Tex strip with the background:
https://www.gocomics.com/tex/2024/01/01
May I say that I appreciate the weekend posts, more than the weekday ones, because then I know it’s the weekend.
I love being retired.
Not to be the grammar police or anything, but in this case, wouldn’t it be: “The words of the Prophets” is written on the Subway wall.
Never mind. I thought it was funny.
@Stan: Unless I’m missing some joke, no. The subject is “words”, plural.
The Mutts is a very, Very, VERY old joke, one that I know from the 1960s and have in my list of “technologically obsolete jokes”. The way I heard it, a woman tells the milkman, “I need ten gallons of milk tomorrow–the doctor says I should take a milk bath”. The rest of the joke is the same. It’s technologically obsolete because milkmen are pretty well extinct, as is non-pasteurized milk. (In fact, “non-pasteurized milk” is surely an example of a back-formation.)
@phsiii, That may be so, but this is a phrase, and I believe it would be treated as singular, ie (The phrase) “The words of the prophets” is written on the wall.
For example, you wouldn’t say:
‘”All cars will be towed’ are written on that sign, so my car is now in the pound.” even though the subject ‘cars’ is plural.
You could say, ‘The words “All cars will be towed’ are written on that sign, so my car is now in the pound.’
In the same way, for this joke to be grammatically correct you would have to say ‘The words “The words of the Prophets’ are written on the Subway wall.’
No?
But what about the tenement halls?
@Stan: ah, yes, with the quotes, I’d agree. I wasn’t thinking that just the phrase would be in the quotes!
“The words of the Prophets are written on the subway wall”
vs.
“The words of the Prophets” is written on the subway wall.
Gee, English, she is an odd language!
Thanks.
Did anyone else see the hyperdistorted stag as having two inexplicable capital “F” letters growing out of its head?
Carl Fink, yes, I regularly see those as “F”s and have to stop and readjust. However, that character is I believe not a stag but rather the title character of the strip, “Rae the Doe”. So maybe those are meant as female antlers?
As I recall, only reindeer females typically have antlers.
@ Stan & Phil (9-13) – There is also the reading suggested by Powers @3:
“The words ‘of the prophets’ are written on the subway wall.”
P.S. That graffito made me think of the commentary in “The Spirit of Radio”, by Rush:
“For the words of the profits
Were written on the studio wall…”
P.P.S. …which then led to that classic work of philosophic literature: “The Profit” (by Kehlog Albran), part of Albran’s Serial: