Lopes has an idea here, a link to either Native American burial grounds or elephant graveyards. But somehow I’m bothered by the elements. Stone tombstones floating? Who puts up the tombstones? Why would a ship pass through this unsafe area? Are whales Christian?
Elephant graveyards are said to be a myth, although when I visited Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania the guide showed us one. It was suspiciously close to a road, so I suspect this may have been where they would haul dead elephants, or maybe the result of poaching for ivory. Guides are, of course, always looking for a good story to tell the tourists.
Dead whales usually sink to the bottom, where they can become whale falls, an ecosystem supported by the dead whales. Since they are whale falls, does this mean whales tend to die in autumn?
But while we’re on the topic of graveyards, this non-CIDU was farther down in my comics feed:
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’m not sure why people on this site are always bothered by details that aren’t based in any reality. Do you find Far Side cartoons completely boring and confusing without any trace of humor to them at all?
Well, back up a bit there Ted: the starting point is a comic that seems to make no sense; given that, it is reasonable then to start looking at details and trying to figure out what could have been meant. The obvious details to focus on are those that aren’t based in any reality — figure out why or what was meant with those, and you’ll probably get a clue onto what the comic was trying to do. If you get the comic straight off, then please share what it’s about, enlighten the rest of us — the site is called “comics I don’t understand”, after all, so the default coming here should be that the comic wasn’t understood.
This comic starts off with a premise of sacred whales being a thing — is it, though? Sacred cows, sure, but sacred whales? I’ve never heard of that. Is it a regional thing? Or what? Is the cartoonist unclear on the concept? If sacred whales was a thing, what does a graveyard have to do with the idea? Is there something inherent about sacred whales dying that I don’t know about because I don’t know about sacred whales? Or is the cartoonist just conflating whales and elephants, which do have the trope of graveyards? So, is the idea that literally portraying some metaphorical trope is funny? Well, maybe, but it all depends on execution, and the underlying reality of it being a trope to begin with — if it isn’t, then you’ve just got a mess. …Which is what we seem to have here: sacred cows, elephant graveyards, but somehow we’re in the ocean talking about whales? A swing and a miss, it seems, unless I’m missing something….
Which brings us back to: do you know something I don’t? Then please share it!
But if your assertion is that absurdism all by itself automatically equates to humor, then I respectfully disagree. If you think the only source of humor in the far side it the absurdist unrealistic talking cows and snakes, then you are missing out on a whole world of humor.
You already understood the basis for the comic. There is the trope of elephant burial grounds and this is the whale equivalent. Drawing absurd or unrealistic situations does not drain the comic of understanding or humor. Very often, that is the very thing that makes it funny. See any given Far Side cartoon. Do you start to question how cows could possibly tape a sign to the back of a cowboy? Question whether men in white lab coats would really be very carefully hammering nails into a missile? Criticize the absurdity of dinosaurs smoking? Of course not.
Surely you are aware of how many people found “cow tools” to be completely baffling and devoid of humor because the tools drawn were so unrealistic. This crowd would fit in extremely well with those people.
I’ve seen this time and time again here. When people clearly understand the premise of the joke but find it unfunny, they tear into how unrealistic it is.
Once someone is judging a comic on how realistic it is, they are beyond hope of having it explained to them.
TedD (1): Actually that’s exactly how Far Side would usually strike me.
As for the Non Sequitur, it’s a little hard to tell that the wife is smoking. The “Hindsight Cemetery” sign is less than subtle, though.
Re Hindsight Cemetery, that’s where I would expect to find the well-known tombstone that says “I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK.”
But seriously, you can only postpone death, not avoid it. Of course by avoiding a prosaic death, such as a fatal disease, you may get lucky with something more memorable like choking on a grape seed, having a sea gull drop a tortoise on your head thinking it’s a rock, or eating too many cherries with ice milk.
eating too many cherries with ice milk
Huh, reportedly the reason for Zachary Taylor’s demise. Although it’s supposedly “iced milk”, a beverage. Ice milk is or was a low-fat a frozen confection similar to ice cream. I used to get the store-brand lemon ice milk when I was in college. Labeling laws in the US got rid of the appellation years ago.
*You already understood the basis for the comic. *
Did I? Oh, I guess I’m wrong then that I don’t understand it — I wish I could explain it to myself…
I’ve seen this time and time again here. When people clearly understand the premise of the joke but find it unfunny, they tear into how unrealistic it is.
You have the order all wrong here (I’d suggest you look into the Principle of Charity and try applying it): I don’t find anything funny, possibly because I don’t understand the premise; in order to try and figure out the premise, I examine what it might possibly be, usually focusing on the unrealistic elements, because they are most likely to be where the premise is to be found. I might suggest a couple of possibilities of interpretations of this premise, but that doesn’t mean I understand it — quite the opposite, actually: I dismiss possible premises because they don’t make for a good joke, so therefor I must still be wrong; I am asking, quite seriously, what have I missed, here’s what I’ve considered, please help me.
If you so clearly understand the premise, then please, explain it to us. If you think we clearly understand the premise and just refuse to find it funny, you might consider the possibility that it might, in fact, not be funny…
(In Germany there’s a name for someone who drives in the wrong direction (in the wrong lane) on an Autobahn, Geisterfahrer (literally “ghost driver”), and occasionally you’ll get emergency reports over your Blaupunkt to take heed, that there is one of these drivers on your stretch of highway. There’s a joke that goes like this:
Blaupunkt radio warning: Caution, there is a ghost driver on the A5, driving against the flow of traffic!
Driver: One?! I see hundreds…!)
“This comic starts off with a premise of sacred whales being a thing”
One thing I can say for sure is that it’s the burial grounds that are sacred, not the whales. That may be a reference to sacred Native American burial grounds, but I suspect they conflated that phrase with (apocryphal) elephant burial grounds.
I think the Christian iconography is just to make the objects recognizable as tombstones, but the angel is a particularly weird choice there.
All in all, not particularly funny, but you can kind of see what they were going for.
Lark, continually claiming the comic can’t possibly be trying to make a joke of a whale burial ground at sea means you get the joke. You just don’t find it funny. It has been explained to you multiple times, including the first sentence in the caption under the picture. Declaring that can’t possible be the joke because it defies reality means you can’t possibly understand just about every.single.comic out there.
The “joke” isn’t at all different than “cattle humor” or “cow tools.” Let me know if you need those explained to you. If you understand the humor of those, you get this humor, you just don’t find it funny. That latter I understand. If you get the joke in the Far Side panels please explain to the class why those have a joke you can understand but this doesn’t. What’s the difference?
I not only considered you might not find it funny, I said so many times that is the case. That doesn’t mean it isn’t funny or that I find it funny. Some might, so to them it is funny. Humor is very individual and it would be nearly impossible to declare anything universally unfunny.
CIDUDIDU.
Brian in STL: I have never been entirely sure whether it was ice milk or iced milk. They had ice cream since Thomas Jefferson, or so I’ve heard. I don’t know if they made it cheaper by using milk instead of cream and calling it ice milk. I believe they had ice boxes and ice delivery in the large cities in 1850, but they were still new enough that milk was still generally consumed as received from the cow, so chilling the milk or adding ice cubes must have been the trendy new thing.
From what I read, it was a hot day and he consumed large amounts. It’s possible that the dish was cherries with iced milk poured over or something. Quite possibly, he got a bacterial infection from the milk.