Author / phsiii

by phsiii

Going Through a Phase

From Chemgal:

She notes, “I know phase changes, and expect someone else will immediately understand the bouba and kiki part, but I do not.”

Not sure “immediately” is the operative term, but it did sound vaguely familiar; Google finds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect, now alles klar. Even more interesting is searching “kiki bouba english”, which reveals that it’s not just an English phenomenon, although it does vary somewhat.

Oh, and hovertext is:

Even when you try to make nice, smooth ice cubes in a freezer, sometimes one of them will shoot out a random ice spike, which physicists ascribe to kiki conservation.

by phsiii

It’s…magic??

From Irv:

He comments,

The second and third frames in the second row are what IDU. If the Wizard is cheating, shouldn’t the beam and hangers be visible there as well as in the last frame? Otherwise, maybe he is cheating and conjures the beam and hangers to “prove” he wasn’t using magic in the previous frames even though he was? All told, IDU what’s going on here.

For that matter, if there’s some magic making the beam and hangers invisible that he somehow forgets? turns off? for the last frame, how did he appear to lift it off the ground??

by phsiii

Point of order

BillR offers:

Came across this guy, Cameron Spires, who calls his strip Goat to Self. Most of his are borderline NSFW, or over the line, somewhat surrealistic, or just vague. Can’t figure this one out at all.

This editor posits that the key is that the dolphin (porpoise? beluga?) in the last panel is the defense lawyer, and the objection is to forcing self-incrimination. Mind you, I’m not sure that’s up to the defense lawyer — I think the witness has to invoke that themselves.

by phsiii

Trying to find the colonel of humor

OK, I get the overall joke, but what’s with the “Colonel” bit? Is this something cruise companies do–try to flatter people with bogus titles? If so, I need to sign up for a better class of junk mail.

Just seems odd and not relevant to the overall joke. What say ye?

(I’ve lived a version of this joke: 35 years ago, my wife and I were living in a townhouse. We went for a walk on a Sunday and the end unit in our building was having an open house. “Hey, let’s go look”, she said, “I’ve always wanted to see one of those end units”. A couple of months later, I’m carrying boxes down the sidewalk between townhouses as we start our move…)