Jack Applin sends this in: “Aslant? In what way is Edda aslant? (aslant: in a slanting direction : obliquely) She is absolutely upright. This being 9 Chickweed Lane, the answer involves sex. Panels 5 and 6 focus on her middle region, as does his eyeline. She hasn’t cocked her hip. Are her lady parts somehow aslant, and revealed by her short dress? Also–her mother?”
Uncle $crooge sends this in: “It’s probably some kind of weird McEldowney fetish so I probably will regret sending this in and learning something that I really don’t want to know. Still, maybe it’s just a harmless joke; I just have no idea what this strip is about.”
I don’t really understand it, either, but I’m giving it an Arlo tag just because it’s McEldowney. The ones before and after this one are also themed The Thorax Clinic, but have a different patient.
billr sends this in: “Is ARLO still a category?”
Excellent question for discussion! Societal norms have changed a bit; I note the increased presence of gratuitous @#$% and $%^& ) in casual speech (with the words, not the @##$ euphemism, in a way that would have had the nuns kick me out of school until I brought my parents and begged for reinstatement. Similarly, as comic strips have depended less on newspapers and more on other outlets, implied or implicit Arlo material seems to have become much more common.
Sometime back, we awarded 9 Chickweed Lane a permanent ARLO award, which it richly deserves. But then, is Brooke McEldowney really sneaking over anything on anybody? Or has his syndicate just decided it’s a popular strip that’s making us money, so let’s let him do soft porn?
So, the ARLO category hasn’t been abolished, but I (editor zbicyclist) haven’t been tagging things as ARLO much.
In this case, Pam and Fred could have been inebriated co-workers discussing other co-workers in disparaging terms — and including the big bosses in their disparagement. But probably not.
Here’s another example from Sally Forth, a strip with began in the simpler (for comics) times of 1982.
I’d be interested on what others think.
billr sends this in: “I’m not a dog owner so it took me a moment.”
billr also sends this in: “The coffeemaker question seems like a non sequitur. And what’s with her eye?”
JMcAndrew surfaced these Beetle Bailey comics with somewhat the same girlie calendar.
“I’ve seen hundreds of Miss Buxley being sexually harassed comics. I’m still surprised that the syndicate let Mort Walker put fully naked woman in the strip.”
Of course, a calendar is pretty useless for telling you if this is Wednesday or Thursday. But he’s just looking for an excuse.
The others JMcAndrew sent in show that same calendar post, but with strategic additions:
It’s curious that the number of days in a week vary across the calendars.
This type of calendar used to be a common site; it seemed every gas station had one hung up. I can’t remember the last time I saw one hung up.
And here’s today’s vocabulary lesson:
JMcAndrew wonders: “Are they watching a cooking show where they make Jello?”
Timing is everything. Probably when Schwadron drew this, the stock market was still going up. Since then, the story has been different and volatile would be the best description.
Is there a non-Arlo interpretation of this joke?
JMcAndrew sends this one in: “There’s a new Disney Snow White movie in the theater today and although I haven’t seen it yet I don’t think it’s going to be X-Rated. Also I want to point out that if you look really closely under the banner that says “X-rated” you can see the feet of the dwarves who are apparently participating in an orgy. … I think Ziggy himself is a “little person” so maybe he is just going to see it out of a sense of solidarity.”
I find it hard to believe that any newspaper editor would have let Get Fuzzy strip this appear in print, even if the relevant expression is a little bit dated:
…
The last dialog bubble in the fourth panel is closer to overkill than actually necessary, but it certainly makes it clear that the joke in the third panel was intentional.
This Yuval Robichek comic was submitted as a “choice half-Arlo”, but in Bill’s day it would never have appeared on the primary CIDU site: he would have banned it to his separate “Arlo” page. (But since it is a web comic, it wouldn’t qualify for an Arlo “award”.)
… will occur tomorrow (well, at least up here in the northern hemisphere):
…
Most countries in the temperate zones have one 23-hour day every year’s calendar, but it falls in Spring, not in Winter.
…
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:
