Author / Kilby

by Kilby

Pick a Holiday, ANY Holiday!

This year they all fall so close to one another, it’s hard to keep track.

Or perhaps not:

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I really doubt that any mohel would be willing to perform 1/8th of a bris.

by Kilby

Caffeine Redux

Some comics feature both tea and coffee, usually preferring the latter, but this comic from a 1902 issue of “Punch” is notable for its impartiality:

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The passenger’s statement (“Look here, Steward, if this is Coffee, I want Tea; but if this is Tea, then I wish for Coffee”) has been (incorrectly) attributed to a number of people (such as Abraham Lincoln), but it remains unclear who said it first, or whether it was merely composed as a fictional anecdote.

Herman is confronted with an alternative solution:

Buni seems to depict the usual attitude of coffee drinkers towards tea.

Ditto Adam@Home:

Horace has made it clear (multiple times) that he definitely prefers coffee:

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It’s hard to say which one it easier to prepare (if you care about doing it well):

Sometimes it doesn’t matter, when it’s just for the caffeine:

Each drink has its own particular traditions.

by Kilby

The shortest day of the year…

… will occur tomorrow (well, at least up here in the northern hemisphere):

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Most countries in the temperate zones have one 23-hour day every year’s calendar, but it falls in Spring, not in Winter.

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As opposed to both of the “Born Loser” strips, Frazz is referring here to net sunlight, rather than total duration.

P.S. Jef Mallett lives in Michigan, and must be very familiar with how short the days get in northern latitudes. On the other hand, Berlin is located ten degrees farther north than Detroit, so Mallett doesn’t have that much to complain about.

Of course, the shortest day of the year is followed immediately by the longest night:

by Kilby

Prime Primes

Brian in StL submitted this B.C. strip a long while ago, commenting: “When I read this initially, I had no idea. There are some suggestions in comments that might be right. The “Transformers” one in particular. I still don’t know.“

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Even after reading some of those comments, I’m just not sure whether this gag works at all: it seems rather contrived.

by Kilby

Anyone for a Tea Party?

It’s difficult to say which caffeinated drink is more popular; it depends on who and where you are (in America the answer would probably be “cola”).

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I was once offered (hot) tea at a friend’s house (in high school); he dropped a tea bag into a mug of cold water, and put it all into the microwave for a minute or two. Just like Calvin’s attempt, it was a complete failure.

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For several years a German brand of hair care products called “Alpecin” advertised its overloaded caffeine content as “doping for the hair“. This caused a fair amount of controversy, especially when the company later started sponsoring a bicycle racing team.

by Kilby

Bonus: Macanudo Misfires, Too

Macanudo has been extremely dependable since I started following it several years ago: whimsical, sometimes poignant, but often surreal (and occasionally CIDU). Like Rubes, this makes it all the more noticeable when a strip just doesn’t work, like this one:

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The slapstick “flattening” might have worked if the strip had ended at the third panel (shifting “Are you OK?” into the second dialog balloon), but including the partner’s desperation and anguish in the fourth panel transforms the remnant of humor into a simple tragedy, leaving nothing to laugh at or feel good about. Thankfully, the hiatus was just for one day.

by Kilby

Logical Impossibilities

I have been following Leigh Rubin’s “Rubes” comics for at least a decade, or possibly two. I have to admit that it only rarely provokes an audible laugh, but it is virtually always worth a good smile. It is precisely this dependability that makes it all the more noticeable when a “Rubes” comic just doesn’t work, such as this one:

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Simply telescoping two concepts into one term doesn’t always produce a meaningful (nor humorous) result. The whole point of the “Schrödinger’s Cat” thought experiment is “observability”. In this drawing we can see both the cat and the damage, so there cannot be any quantum (or “cat-tum”) superposition.

I had even more trouble with this second comic, which I would like to call “Stooge Trek“:

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Nobody would ever claim that anything that The Three Stooges ever did was “logical”, but Spock’s reaction (and dialog) seems completely out of place (even more illogical than the picture he is watching). For me, this comic just doesn’t work; YMMV.

P.S. Given the similarity of the hair styles of Moe and Spock, perhaps it would have been funnier to have a second frame, in which Spock pokes Kirk in the eyes.

P.P.S. I initially thought that the “dual nose poke” tableau seemed gratuitously excessive, but I was clearly wrong, as proved by this picture: