Jack Applin sends this in: “In the final panel, Maria implies an incongruence between Ms. Velvet’s name and her rocking the color green. I would understand if her name were “Scarlett” or “Violet”, because those colors are not green. However, what’s the conflict between velvet and green? Is the cloth velvet associated with a particular color? Some cultural thing that I’m missing?”
And, if Ms. Velvet had a daughter born in 2010, would the daughter be Ms. Velveteen?
From Dirk the Daring:
Try as I might (and try as the other commenters might), I just don’t get it. If it was Jehosaphat, then yeah, but Joseph is an, um, jump from that.
Thanks to Boise Ed:
Mom clearly doesn’t like the idea, but what “will” Dad do?
Mitch4 sends this in: “I figured it must be an idiomatic expression, and a lookup confirmed it. But I had never before run across it in the wild.”
Your editor hasn’t heard this one, either. Mayor McGuffey’s name doesn’t sound German, so I guess we can’t call him a sour kraut.
There’s a suggestion here that this is a combination of two sayings: “I don’t chew my cabbage twice – Response when someone asks you to repeat what you just said. This phrase is probably a combination of: I don’t chew my baccer (tobacco) twice and I don’t boil my cabbage twice.“
I have no doubt that chewing tobacco twice would be unpleasant. Chewing tobacco at all sounds unpleasant. But what about boiling cabbage twice?
Boiling cabbage twice — or overboiling it — can significantly affect its texture, flavor, and nutritional value.
Texture and flavor changes
The first boiling softens cabbage, but a second boiling (or extended cooking) makes it mushy, limp, and less appetizing. Overcooked cabbage can also develop an unpleasant odor and lose its natural sweetness and crunch voyoeats.com+1.
Nutrient loss
Cabbage contains heat- and water-soluble vitamins like vitamin C and B vitamins, which are sensitive to prolonged cooking. Boiling it for more than 5–7 minutes can deplete up to 75% of vitamin C and reduce sulforaphane precursors by over 50% thelivinglook.com. A second boiling compounds this loss, reducing the health benefits.
Health considerations
Overboiling can also break down compounds that may interfere with thyroid function, especially in people with hypothyroidism eatandgeek.com. While this is more relevant to raw cabbage, repeated boiling increases exposure to these compounds.
How to avoid the problem
“Willing suspension of disbelief” has to work overtime here: talking fish; worm holding a smartphone; that smartphone showing a fisherman, which would seem to discourage the fish from biting. Fish knowing about AI. What difference would AI make? I can’t sort this out into a joke — help me out here.
billr sends this in: “Mike does puns ad infinitum. This is a recurring motif. What I don’t get is the text thread in the newspaper being held by the counterman. I know who Tom Waits is, but don’t know his music well enough to know if this is a reference to one of his songs. Jesus is a common name in some Hispanic-speaking countries, but “Walking Spanish down the hall” is beyond me.”
The basic joke is clear: he wants to pretend to be a better person than he is. And if those are clouds they seem to be in line at the Pearly Gates — but, if so, how can he use his phone? And what’s the significance of the way the others are portrayed: golfing, eating a piece of cake, etc.
From Marrose:
who notes:
I get the maniacal laughter (it is a Mad Scientist convention) but what does it have to do with a stroke?
