Author / EditorM

by EditorM

Impossible!

Let’s revisit a topic we’ve seen in different lights at different times: How the English and Spanish versions of Baldo may differ in how a joke works.

Here the joke comes off okay in English, as based in written language (or anyhow spelling). The specifics won’t work in Spanish, so they settle for a less striking point.

P.S. The previous day’s comic clarifies that “work for me” probably means more like “as a substitute” than like “as an employee”.

by EditorM

Let’s debate which way would be funnier

You ever think — or find yourself actually writing a comment — that the comic we’re seeing maybe has a point or makes a joke, or maybe doesn’t really, but in any case would be much better off if only some aspect were changed?

We just have to agree with some commenters on the GoComics appearance of this panel in October 2023 that getting a joke from this would seem to require knowing which of the gorillas ordered the virgin daiquiri. Is it the one facing us from the far end of the banquette and looking (maybe) a little abashed? Or could it have worked better with one gorilla and three humans? Or how about …

One original commenter said The joke isn’t about which ordered it – the joke is that the virgin one is simply a banana…. Does that help? Or does it just emphasize that *all* of them would probably want the plain banana?

Okay, sure, the little one is the “sub” woofer because it’s subordinate. I guess. 
— But, but … When it comes to actual acoustic speakers (where the terminology originated), a sub woofer produces even lower pitches than a woofer, and therefore needs to be larger. 
— Okay, that might fix the technicality, but it would ruin the joke.
 – Nah, it would be funnier that way, with the facts working. 
 – Nah, it would be stupid that way. Everybody would say, “But what’s the joke?”

And what do mice know or care, about an MRI scan? Ah, but if it were about CAT scans, then we would understand the issue!

by EditorM

Endless Dads

What on Earth does he mean?

CIDU QUEUE REMINDER

As always — but it needs saying explicitly again now and then — we like to think of this as a reader-participation site, and not just for your invaluable (or anyhow amusing) comments, but for suggestions of comics to run and discuss.

Please share your specific suggestions of panels or strips, in CIDU, LOL, and OY categories, either by direct email to

(that’s “CIDU dot Submissions” at gmail dot com) or by using the handy-dandy Suggest A CIDU form page!

by EditorM

OMG! He’s been harvesting the youngsters!

These critters cannot be newly placed around the tree trunks, as shown, but must have had a newly planted small tree grow up within the loop. But Ed got hold of some by just lifting them off a still-immature tree, or perhaps felling a small tree. Monster!

Or do you have some kind of better explanation for this scene?

by EditorM

Bonus: Luann congratulates itself

They tell you where the answer can be found.
Before consulting that official answer, as a regular Luann reader but not a long-long-term fan, I was able to decode many of the individual clues, but could not give it an overall meaning. How will CIDU readers do, on either level?

Additional clue from CIDU

All the individual clues decode to the same thing.

Second additional clue from CIDU

It’s a number

by EditorM

Cat and Girl and Shoes and Plums

Cat and Girl have picked two nice and juicy little literary targets to bedevil!

Or actually, one literary target and one literary-adjacent (and probably apocryphal) anecdote. It’s probably fun, if not precisely funny, that our characters are not directly challenging the truth or the reputed depth of the anecdote, nor directly mocking it, but blithely misunderstanding it and spinning their own absurd background explanations. Which maybe does the job of a take-down without showing attitude!

What do our readers think of these two iconic stories? (Oh, of course first someone must identify them.)

Below the break, some prior responses to one of them! And the quick Snopes link for the fake. (I’m not sure the Page Break tool will work as intended. If not, don’t panic, the additional content is still there and we will just pop it out if needed.) (Update: using the Details tool instead. This seems to work better. But the “Don’t Panic” advice still holds, of course.)

Open for spoiler-ish notes!

The Hemingway authorship of the baby shoes “six-word story” is debunked at Snopes.

Here at Poets.org is the plain text of the William Carlos Williams notorious plums poem, “This is Just to Say”.

Probably the best-known response by an established poet is “Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams” by Kenneth Koch. Here is a personal blog post (responding to a This American Life episode), giving the original, the Koch, and another variation, written by a sixth-grader.


Here from New York Magazine (Intelligencer), an article “This Is Just to Say I Have Written a Blog Post Explaining the Icebox-Plum Meme” , showing a series of responses or variations in the form of Tweets, from when that was a thing.