(This is under the “not really a pun but word play in general” tag.)
Thanks to Andréa for this Bizarro:
I’m sure I’ve seen this joke used before, but not whether that means this is a repeat or just that the joke has occurred to others. A cursory search does find other examples, and tempting as it is to make a whole post out of three or four of them, let’s leave it at that.
From Andréa:
Just a bit corny.
And a little Oy-Ewww on the side.
Sent by Andréa, who also kindly linked this Bernoulli explainer. (Which however doesn’t make the joke really clearer.)
Barney and Clyde have a whole series of these this month. They are obscure, but are they funny? Here’s another. The humor seems species-ous.
And then again there are some, like the most recent episode, which we would gleefully consign to an “Ooopses!” list if we didn’t have this post to use it in.
Let us pass over in silence the syllable count of guacamole, and get right to the point: why isn’t there superscripting? If there’s an excuse in “He’s supposed to be speaking these”, still they should be written correctly and trust the reader to vocalize them appropriately; or heck, even write out him saying “times ten to the twenty-third” and something like “inverse moles” or simply “units per mole”.
Thanks to Matthew McKeever, who sent this as a CIDU and says: “another stumper … … and I went to parochial school”
Should Chef Boyardee should be canonized (as a saint in heaven) or sent to the other place? Or maybe it’s the corporate moneygrubbers who own the brand (currently Conagra Foods) who should be sent someplace?
A little bit mean … but still quite funny.
A brain-painful LOL from Chemgal:
Inspiration!
This almost went into the Oys list, since there is a play on a sort of ambiguity of where. This was a favorite joke-form of a friend of mine who knew Ulysses inside-out after teaching it to undergrads at Millard Fillmore College in Buffalo, and dubbed these “on the canal bank” jokes. It was from this bit, in the final chapter:
I hate that confession when I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put it I forget no father
I think this counts as a pun, even without doing a pun-joke.
The above sent by Andréa, who particularly notes Tom Waits getting mentioned, saying “Never thought I’d see HIM in a comic – made my day!”. And one of your editors had the pleasure of taking a couple classes from Professor Lance Rips, who liked to point out that his name constitutes a complete sentence.
Meant to post this earlier.
I learned the word prodigal in the context of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and thought it meant something like all the characteristics of the guy in the story – wandering, absent, returning after a long absence and acting all entitled, etc, all packaged in that one word. Only much later did I start seeing contexts that wouldn’t support all of that meaning, and learned the base sense spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.
And then discovered that was what it meant in the Parable, too. But there had not been enough help from the context to make that choice clear! And this fits the philosopher’s point that, if your informant points to a rabbit and says gavagai, maybe they are telling you the word means rabbit — but maybe it means finger.
Well, I don’t think he was just scribbling. It’s too convincing.
Unlikely that it is a vector-graphics equation for the lines and filled areas that constitute the smiley face. Right?
But if mostly a blur-retrace of something real, then what in particular? An elaboration or derivation of part of Maxwell? [Though that would work better for the “Let There Be Light” referenced in the GoComics comments.] Something from General Relativity? Thermodynamics? We are happy because the Sun keeps shining?
Who comes off better here, Lila or Annie?
Does Lila simply not follow the more technical description, or is she saying “but that’s not how to think of it, at a personal level”? I’m not sure we credit her with that maturity though.
BTW, I think the adoption has already officially gone thru at this point in the cycle, but it’s still more reasonable for Lila to say “my dad” in the first panel than try to use “your granddad”.
(This is half of a Sunday Cornered, using only one of the two separate joke panels.)
Underlying this is a pretty standard modern-office joke — make yourself indispensable and they will go to lengths to bother you on your off-time.
But how are they doing it? Is this just an arty juxtaposition of two well-separated scenes? Or are they linking by video call, so that he can demonstrate the technique, for someone back at the ranch to execute? Or have they borrowed a transporter from a friendly Star Trek franchise; or using a drone to deliver and retrieve the printer and materials to his lake? What is that vertical line? Or are vacations now required to be taken in-office, courtesy of a crack art and special effects department? Or, indeed, by holodeck?
Two Andertoons for the price of one.
Well that’s getting down to the point!
Nice to see the secondary characters getting featured on their own.
Here’s that “LOL-Yikes! (horror)” you saw category-tagged and wondered about.
Actually I think this is making a pretty deep point about the relativity of relativity.
Thanks to Dale Eltoft for sending in the second Diamond Lil in the pair below. “This follows from the day before but I don’t know if that’s a necessary setup.” On that recommendation we’re also including the set-up one first, though it isn’t in itself an OY.
(In a followup, they make it clear that you better say it in the pun way or there is no joke left!)
Oy! this is so labored of a pun — but sometimes you just have to honor that labor! (Also interesting how there had to be a switch of syntactic role of me in the last panel.)
Added Thursday – This cartoon was the main topic of an Arnold Zwicky post on his blog, which says a lot more than my remark above on the parsing of the punned title in the last panel; and also brings up Stephan Pastis as a mainstay of this genre.
A multi-OY from Cat and Girl, with e3xtras from meme-land.
Comics I Don't Understand 