Category / Momentary CIDU

by Kilby

Bonus CIDU: Barney & Clyde Quadrifecta

I understood the primary gag in the final panels, but I do not understand the meteorological setup in the first panel:

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Perhaps it’s just the awkward expression: how can a hurricane “drop a millibar“? Did anything like this actually happen during either of the recent hurricanes?

I might as well include the previous two B&C strips, which feature Horace’s “intentional CIDUs. The solution to the first one was explained in Week 94 of the Invitational, in which Gene Weingarten solicited even more obscure “Horace” material. (The results will appear in the Invitational on Halloween, and the better ones will probably be immortalized in future Barney & Clyde strips.)

The second one I had to look up myself, but Barney’s tip in the last panel was a big help:

P.S. Given the solution, this one might also need a “geezer” tag.

Here’s a third “Horace” strip from last year, which was also included (with its solution) in the Invitational article:

by Kilby

Hunting Vermin

Usual John submitted this Working Cats strip as a CIDU, commenting: “This is a strip about Brooklyn bodega cats, and these are the two central characters. Sula, the older and wiser cat, acts as a mentor to Taki, the kitten. But I don’t get what Sula is doing in the last panel.”

Even though I can explain exactly what is happening in this strip, I wanted to post this as a Comic I Haven’t Seen. Maritsa Patrinos has appeared at CIDU before, but only for her work on “Six Chix” (Fridays, since 2019).

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I think my very first impression may have been the same thing that John thought: that Sula has assumed the same position that she was in when Taki mistakenly attacked Sula as “vermin”. However, what is actually happening is that Sula is calling attention to the real vermin: Taki’s tail. The weakness is that all the symbols surrounding Taki’s head distract from the marks meant to highlight her tail.

P.S. This strip is the first time that I have ever seen the term “vermin” used as a singular noun; I’ve always thought of it as inherently plural.

by Kilby

Passing Exactly the Same Gasses

I think that these comics are closer to EWWWs, but DollarBill submitted them as synchronous OYs, commenting “same day, same theme, juxtaposition next to each other in my GoComics daily feed“. The latter is not surprising, given that the titles are alphabetically adjacent to each other:

Blazek’s comic was a brief CIDU for me, but it wasn’t that hard to figure out. If there ever was a feature that GoComics should have renamed for just one day, this was it:

Dan Collins wasn’t taking any chances with misunderstandings: the label on the bubble seems gratuitous and unnecessarily crude, but without it, the color might not have been enough to identify the contents, since he did not indicate the precise location of the source.

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P.S. No matter how it was generated, a bubble that large would have a good chance of capsizing that boat. Aerated water has a much lower density, and cannot support the same weight as normal water, so the vessel sinks. This is a factor with depth charges used against submarines. Even if the explosion itself does not cause a leak, the reduced buoyancy may cause the submarine to fall to a depth where the water pressure is too high, fatally damaging the hull (as happened in the Ocean Gate disaster last year).

by Kilby

Tundra links go ice cold

Boise Ed attempted to submit a Tundra comic, using a link from The Seattle Times. Reading between the lines of his comment (see below), the comic he meant was probably all or part of this one:

Here’s what Boise Ed wrote: He says “a while ago,” but I think the walrus joke appeared just a couple of days earlier. There doesn’t seem to be an accessible archive where I can check on that…. Is there any other source to see the Tundra strip?

The answer is (probably) “No, there isn’t.” The problem is that both The Seattle Times and the official Tundra website provide only the strip for the current day. Past Tundra archives are only available on a pay-to-view basis (to Patreon members). This means that any Tundra link sent to CIDU has an expiration limit of (at most) 24 hours, which renders those links useless for all practical purposes. Therefore, if you want to submit a Tundra comic, don’t depend on the link: send a screenshot, or attach a graphic file.

P.S. The same problem exists for all Arcamax comics. The Arcamax links are not quite so ephemeral, but they do expire after just a couple of weeks, so it’s not a good idea to use them for submitting CIDUs, nor for embedding any images in comments.

by Kilby

The Mercenary Spirit

An anonymous contributor submitted this Argyle Sweater, commenting that “adding a Spirit sign would have made this funny. Without that, I’m just lost“, which was a comment that I didn’t understand.

For those who might not be able to intuit the Spanish, she’s saying “But, I am Dora“. Even without that, I thought the point of the joke was fairly clear, since many airlines now charge for all sorts of services that used to be automatic and complimentary. However, it turned out that Spirit Airlines (a no frills company with which I have never had the misfortune to fly) was the first airline to charge for carry-on baggage, even though there now are other companies that have adopted same the odious practice.

P.S. The Argyle Sweater really should get a prize for the MoSt AnNoYiNg FoNt in use by any newspaper comic.

by EditorM

Still in a mask? … Oh!

This appearance of “Yes, I’m Hot in This” on 29 July 2024 was a return to GoComics after an absence, with the previous publication marked as 06 September 2023. The GoComics comments for this strip were mostly on the “Welcome back!” theme, but with a few addressing the content. Her Patreon describes activities over the past year including an NBA nomination; but only indirectly talks about getting back into drawing cartoons.

(Marking as “Momentary CIDU” because it was a touch confusing at first, but not too hard to decode in general terms.)

No, she’s not a professional hoopster, you philistine!

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, January 28th, 2024

This sub-feature of the SFPC repertoire rarely does much for me. But this instance worked well — maybe because it isn’t really “for the epically/brutally challenged” as much as “for the nightly news evaluation challenged”. 

This was a momentary CIDU — I was puzzling out which side of the deal was losing, and why — until the GoComics comments cleared it all up. If you still need a clue, look at those pages in his right hand.

Yes, we don’t publish synchronicities any more. But two comics on the obscure theme of squirrel pushing showing up not just on the same day, but right next to each other in my GoComics feed, was too much to resist.

by EditorM

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, August 7th, 2022

This should fulfill the category tag of “Momentary CIDU”. It presents something genuinely puzzling, but solvable quickly enough that it wouldn’t work as a daily standalone CIDU post.

A delectable one from Mutts’ finicky cat.

I couldn’t resist tossing this in the list … for the sake of quoting these classic lyrics:
Ahh you've gone to the finest school, all right Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get JUICED in it
Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street
But you find out now you're gonna have to get USED to it

Here is the Dark-LOL advertised in the Category links:

This reminds me of a joke by Steven Wright: “I wish, when I was first born, the first thing I said was “Quote” so the last thing I said before I died would be “Unquote.””

Chemgal sends in this pair from Strange Planet:

Is the phrasing that somebody “is assisting the police in their inquiries” used everywhere? I first learned the phrase back when I worked for the Journals Division and a certain scholarly Association worked with us to draft a press release and statement to go in the journal they sponsored and edited but we published. The readership / membership had to be told that there would be an interim Acting Editor for an issue or more, as the Editor’s stay in the UK was being extended as he was needed there “to assist the authorities in their inquiries into the circumstances of the death of his wife”! [mitch]

We just had “The Grill is On” as an OY yesterday, so we’ll pick another song to wake you up this morning. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1fImXAeS-s if the embed doesn’t show up correctly; your new editor is still learning a few things ]