Category / CIDU

by zbicyclist

Shouldn’t his brow be knitted?

Kenneth Berkun sends in this puzzler from the New Yorker.

The joke would be simpler to understand if we had the inbox with yarn and the outbox with garments with a knitting grandmother in the middle. Then the joke would be that the knitter was treating her hobby as if she was (still) in an office.

So, the CIDU question would be why put it in a business office context? Why does the businessman have that deer-in-the-headlights look? Why, if he has the status to get a window office with such a nice view of the skyline, does he have so many pens, and why are they in his suitcoat?  Or, are these details just because Roz Chast probably hasn’t spent much time in a business office (lucky her)?

And should the presence of the inbox and outbox pair be a geezer alert? I don’t think I had an outbox since the mid-1990s, and my physical inbox didn’t have much in it.

by phsiii

Flashbacks is ending

Not sure how many readers are familiar with Patrick Reynolds’ Flashbacks strip. It appears on the comics pages but isn’t funny (deliberately, unlike The Family Circus): it’s a Sunday strip about historical events that’s been running, mostly in The Washington Post, for 31 years. He hasn’t put it on the web, further reducing its exposure.

It has provided a fascinating look into sometimes-small, sometimes-large bits of history, and is ending this Sunday, September 25, 2022. It will be missed by those of us who saw it every week, but at 79, I’m sure everyone would agree that Mr. Reynolds deserves the time off!

For his last five strips, he’s been running stories in which he had some personal involvement. We’re running the first four below, and will add the fifth once it comes out; it seemed better to run this now, so anyone who was vaguely aware of the strip would have a chance to see it “in the flesh” one last time.

You can find more about the end of Flashbacks here, and this is Mr. Reynolds’ home page, including links to his books.

The final strips are below. Alas, I missed scanning the first two. I got the first one from the article linked above; the second I got directly from Mr. Reynolds, hence the super-high quality!

by EditorM

Down the Selador

Sent in (via the Suggest-a-CIDU Form) by Boise Ed, who says “We have ants carrying food, more ants carrying a bottle of wine, and a storm cellar. Why?”

The top comment at GoComics at the time I viewed it (by stevesilver48) asked “Do the Bilco doors go to the same place as the anthill?” and I made little sense of that, thinking it was about Sgt. Bilko of TV fame. But it turns out that is a brand name widely adopted as the general term — see this Home Depot page:

But wait! There’s more! What-all can “cellar door” mean?

by EditorM

Russell on Denoting?

This appeared on Daily Nous on 13 September 2022, just a couple days after the expression “the present King of England” changed(?) its meaning(?).

The “To φ or not to φ” comics feature on The Daily Nous is done by Tanya Kostocha ,  Assistant Professor of philosophy at Ashoka University. Russell’s theory of descriptions is long gone, but is still studied for the sake of understanding the variety of refutations and reformulations that succeeded it. Oh, and also for its well-remembered example, “The present King of France is bald” (uttered in 1905, when there was no current King of France).

by EditorM

Ah, to recline

Thanks to Dirk the Daring for sending this from Take it from the Tinkersons, a strip relatively new to CIDU.

Looking over the recent instances of the strip, we find some relevance in the day before:

This maybe clarifies his attitude in the top strip, which Dirk characterizes as “Yeah, maybe just don’t hurt the one I love”. But still leaves the wife’s reaction shot in the last panel as unclear in intent.