This Bizarro was about a 10-minute CIDU for your editors.
But a week later, this one could be seen as retroactively helpful:
There was a study of corporate annual reports some years ago. It found that when things were going well for a company, active voice was used, e.g. “We increased our sales over X% …”. When things were going poorly, passive voice was used, e.g. “Sales were negatively impacted by …”
I never order these in a restaurant. I assume they have a similar constitution to the McDonald’s McRib, which is just restructured shredded pork with fake grill marks. Am I wrong?
Comics I Don't Understand 
On the Petty Complaint one, I’ve never seen a “Boneless Ribs” option on the menu at any place I’ve been. However, I’m a sucker for the McRib sandwich, and look forward to November when they come back for another visit. But I know they’re not actually rib meat – it doesn’t make any difference.
The Wingstop on my corner has “boneless wings”. I tried them once, definite thumbs-down!
My initial reaction was, That’s a pretty restrictive speed limit! But then, if it applies to the curbside lane, where you do pickups, then “walking” is a reasonable speed limit.
Same, Deety. No one driving an automobile wants to go at a walking pace!
Bonleless wings are fine. They’re coated chicken nuggets. Just know what you’re getting. I like them because I can eat the whole thing.
I’m not sure how you would rewrite “Sales were negatively impacted by…” into the active voice. I mean, you could say “<something> negatively impacted our sales,” but that doesn’t really change the property being contrasted in the example.
What is Frazz about to say?
@Powers,
I think the equivalent statement would be more accusatory, like ‘Our sales decreased by x%’.
I’d also like to know what Frazz was about to say.
Frazz is about to say, “We don’t need snippy comments from little s**ts like you, thanks very much.”
I’m not sure I get the laundry one. Is it Load of the Rings, or something else?
Frazz is gonna say “arrrrr”
Every day is talk like a pirate day!
Re #7: Not quite; it’s Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
The Ring Cycle would be composer Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Niebelungen. It’s four massive operas – Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Gótterdámmerung. They add up around 15-16 hours of hyper-romantic music.
If you have the stamina to sit through that much Wagner, most summers you can catch the Bayreuth Festival’s cycle. You can get in – and see about as much as you would from that laundromat – for as little as $45. The good seats go for $1,000 – $1,300.
… which runs something like 15 performance hours, over four days!
My brother and his girlfriend, who live in Oakland, saw the Ring at San Francisco Opera and became committed Wagnerites, going up to Seattle for their famous festival one year, and I think an additional one somewhere along the line. Then they saw in 2020 that Chicago’s Lyric Opera would be doing the Ring, and planned a trip to see that and visit with me (and take me along to the operas!). We were basically all set — I had just gotten a reserved parking package at the Poetry Garage — when it was all cancelled for COVID. Oh well.
Although it could be all the Lord of the Rings movies, plus all the Hobbit movies, which probably add up to about the same as the Wagner cycle. If they don’t, just toss in Ralph Bakshi’s version.
Somewhere or other I read what “Little Red Riding Hood” is an allegory for. I don’t believe it though. All I’ll say is that there’s an animated movie with the word “Red” in the title that supposedly is an allegory for the same thing. And as for Top Hats / Bottom Hats, all I’ll say is that if he relocates his shop to Bay Village in Boston he’ll sell out all of his hats in a day or two.
@ deety (3) – There is a German traffic sign that is used on low volume, residential streets: it limits cars to “walking speed”, and requires drivers to “share” the street with kids. The official term is “reduced traffic zone”, but it is generally referred to as “Spielstraße” (play street).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Zeichen_325.1_-_Beginn_eines_verkehrsberuhigten_Bereichs%2C_StVO_2009.svg
P.S. Walking speed would theoretically be 5km/h (3mph), but I once had a chance to ask a cop working a laser speed trap, and he said the machine was set to trigger at 10km/h, or 6mph. Either way, the only way to drive that slow is to stay in first gear.
Frazz was going to say “We swept the series!”
I think GAR should have been, “Is this another Tim building exercise?”
“about a 10-minute CIDU,” eh? It has been longer than that for me. Is the mouse hold (in an outside wall, no less) supposed to lead to the “bonus room”?
Arrgghh. Make that “mouse hole.”
Boise Ed: That’s what I got–that IS the bonus room. Must be in Vancouver.
Me too – the real estate industry, and in some places the law, places strict requirements on what can be called a bedroom, but “bonus room” is up for grabs. In this case it is the mouse hole!
MiB #12 – Yea, the length of those books/movies is exactly what I was thinking about, except for the comparison of the Wagner ring cycle thingy. I’m afraid I’m not cultured enough to be familiar with that. The movie The Ring, ok. Unicycles, ok. Wagon Wheels, ok. But if it ain’t any of them thar’ things, I’m more lost than a gopher in a gum tree.
Stan #21: Some of the legends and stories that influenced the Ring of the Nibelungen also influenced The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.
Cursed magic ring: Both
Other magic rings: LotR only
Thing that makes you invisible: Ring (Lotr), Tarnhelm (RotN)
Have to destroy the ring in fire / purify the ring through fire to break the curse: Both
Giants: RotN only
Dwarves / Dwarfs: Both (Nibelungs in RotN)
Dragon: Both
Dragon in a cave: Both
Dragon in a cave that sleeps on a huge pile of gold: Both
Dragon that talks: Both
Dragon that gets slain: Both
Bird that tells something important to at least one character: Both
Gods: RotN only
Wizards: LotR only
Orcs: LotR only
Exactly one heroic female character who does something extraordinary: Both
Character stripped of power when his staff is broken: Both
Magic sword that was broken, now remade: Both
Main character finds true love: RotN only
Events mark end of the age: RotN: End of the age of the Gods. LotR: End of the Third Age, start of the Fourth Age.
@ MiB (22) – There is an isolated, but direct reference to a giant in “The Hobbit”, in which Gandalf comments that he should try to get “a more or less friendly giant” to block up the newly discovered cave entrance to the goblins’ underground lair in the Misty Mountains. In addition, part of the danger (and noise) of the storm there was attributed to giants throwing boulders around.
P.S. You may be right about “gods”: they form a significant part of the stories in the “Silmarillion”, but I cannot recall a specific reference to the “Valar” in LotR.
Well so far on Wednesday morning I am having absolutely no luck at the Comics Kingdom main site. Can’t log in, can’t change password, can’t see any comics without logging in either.
And Comicskingdom.net is presenting a nice-looking “All Comics” landing page, but struggling to go past it.
Oh wait! I got to Macanudo pretty much okay. (And today’s is a good joke!)
A lot of user experience and commentary is coming thru https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2024/02/27/inside-the-comics-kingdom-reboot/
Sorry, all those Comics Kingdom comments were meant for the Random Comments thread!
But now one that I do mean for the Sunday Funnies thread — There is a little discussion at today’s Comic Strip of the Day column.
@Kilby (23): Although the Hobbits in Hobbiton are supposed to be based on ordinary English country folk, there seem to be no churches anywhere in Middle Earth, and none of the characters attend weekly services or seem religious in any way.
LotR does have human-appearing but non-human characters who appear to have primarily a spiritual existence, may be immortal, and spend long periods of time in physical form. Gandalf is one of them. Saruman is another, and although Saruman appears to be killed by Wormtongue toward the end of Return of the King, his body disappears and he apparently returns to some kind of spiritual form. I guess you have to read The Silmarillion and Christopher Tolkien’s works to know the whole story there.
Neither LotR nor RotN seem to have a concept of the God of Judeo-Christianity or Jesus Christ. This in spite of the fact that Wagner was some sort of Catholic from time to time, once mentioned that he wanted to write an opera about Jesus Christ, and did write Parsifal. And Tolkien himself described LotR as a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work.”
@ MiB (28) – I dragged myself through the Silmarillion just once (decades ago), but I did not enjoy it and would not repeat it. I found the LotR appendices much more entertaining and informative (with a much higher “information/effort” ratio).
Gandalf, Saruman, and (presumably) Radagast were semi-angelic “Istari”, effectively above the elves, but below the Valar in rank. Saruman’s body was destroyed by Wormtongue’s knife, but his spirit was subsequently dispersed by “a cold wind out of the west” (presumably from the Valar). There was a also supreme creator in Tolkien’s writings (called Eru and/or Illuvatar), and Sauron (and the Balrogs) were followers or creations of Morgoth, the original “fallen angel” (a.k.a. “devil”) of his creation legend.
There is indeed some deep spirituality buried in Tolkien’s books, but I think he knew what he was doing when he left any blatant Christian parallels out of his writings, unlike his compatriot C.S. Lewis, who saw nothing wrong in using a sledgehammer on readers.
In college, my friends were big into Tolkien. I haven’t really ever been a big fantasy fan, and especially not high fantasy. I was a science fiction reader. I did pick up enough by osmosis to be able to fake a conversation about LOTR if it didn’t go on too long.
I think it was Tolkien that inspired Dungeons & Dragons. D&D has caves and dwarves and orcs and all that. And then there was Magic The Gathering. And then all kinds of books and games and comic books and who knows what else.
And then Rule 34 kicked in.
@ MiB (31) – I think “inspired” is the wrong word. Gygax & Co. definitely copied (swiped) a lot of material from LotR, but they lifted stuff from many other sources as well. I sincerely doubt that Tolkien would have been happy with the result, and the holder of the derivative rights didn’t like it either, and brought suit, which resulted in a series of ridiculous name changes.
In stark contrast to LotR, there is no “soul” nor any morality whatsoever in the fundamental structure of D&D; the strength of the game (and the reason for its popularity) is that it serves as a loose framework that can be filled with whatever life that any group of players choose to put into it. I enjoyed playing the game with friends in high school, but when I got to college I found that the group there had a different focus, which just didn’t work for me, so I quit.