Category / CIDU

by phsiii

I don’t take—I mean, get—it

Dirk the Daring sent:

Mitch suggests that perhaps supposing the absence of showering has not gone as unnoticed as purple-ring person supposes, but that seems pretty weak. He also commented on “get a shower”, wondering if it was Canadian.

I spent 17 years growing up in Canada, as the son of a linguist, and am pretty aware of Canadianisms in general—although since those were my formative years, I occasionally use one without thinking, and have to explain to Americans what I mean. I never heard “get a shower” there, but it is the kind of thing that British English does differently. I work with a number of Brits and hear “different to” where an American would say “different from” every day, and it’s always jarring.

Couple of links on that topic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/grammar/comments/30s88c/is_it_take_a_shower_or_get_a_shower/

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-get-a-shower-or-take-a-shower

https://thegrammarexchange.infopop.cc/topic/get-a-shower

I know, you’re thinking “Get a life”. Better than “Take a life”, I guess!

by zbicyclist

Gobs of fun

Andréa wonders how many still know this song, or is it just us geezers? I asked my daughters (in their 30s). One had heard of a slightly different version, the other had never heard it.

Neither of my two grandchildren (an 8 year old boy and a 6 year old girl) had heard of it. Feel free to report your own survey results!

A fuller version:

Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meat
Itty-bitty birdy feet
Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
And me without a spoon

by EditorM

Frazz riddle … conclusion

Did you catch the posting earlier today, Frazz riddle … answered soon ? It incorporated the Monday and Tuesday strips from last week, where one of the kids tells Frazz that she is giving her dad a vacation, and it cost only nine bucks. She adds a clue, that she could have spent twice as much but then it would have lasted just half as long. Oooh, paradox!

The Tuesday strip shows Frazz asking “Where will he go for $9? What will he see?” and the student answering “Nowhere. And nothing new. Just in a whole new way.” Evidently still in clue mode.

But the the Wednesday strip goes right to the answer. And Thursday and Friday just round off the story. Here they are:

P.S. It wasn’t quite done as of that Friday installment. It continued for one more, on Saturday. (But Monday — and probably not Tuesday either, but this will be already posted by then, so … who would care?). Here is the Saturday strip:

by EditorM

Frazz riddle … answered soon

Monday’s strip seemed to be the start of one of those extended riddles Frazz sometimes undertakes (such as with Halloween characters).

How can a vacation cost just nine bucks? And why would one costing twice as much last only half as long? Hmmm, put on your thinking caps.

Tuesday continued the riddling, with maybe a small bit of new clue:

And then what on Wednesday? Further clueage, helpful but not giving it all away?

Nope, Wednesday’s strip directly gave the solution! Then Thursday and Friday rounded out the story. (I’m writing this on Friday so it remains to be seen if there will be more of this tale next week. But you are reading this on Tuesday or later, so you’ll already know…)

On the off chance some CIDUers are seeing this but haven’t seen these Frazz strips, can we do something to allow for puzzle-solving and speculation in the comments here, but still give the solution? Well, ideas like throwing in tons of vertical space are not really effective. And that time we tried protecting a spoiler with that sliding-panel image-comparison gizmo was broken on some people’s platforms, and is anyhow a pretty flimsy test of patience.

Well, fine. The next three strips from this series will be in a separate post, this afternoon. Meanwhile, feel free to opine here on how that bargain vacation would work!

by EditorM

Here’s a juicy one!

Thanks to Le Vieux Lapin for this Mannequin on the Moon.

So, just how will this situation lead to super-villains? And not to feminist anti-fashion super-heroines?

Speaking of couture, the Rabbit asks also whether the logo/branding is to be seen as printed backwards on that top (since it reads correctly in the mirror). But it seems they don’t generally do it that way at Juicy brand:

by EditorM

The final collection of Oopsies, Quickies, We-can-improve-its, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops? (14th Series)

Not quite complaining about the friend’s unprompted question — it could happen, though normally you’d expect a context something like “Why won’t you X? What are you afraid of?” The problem, the detail-complaint, is with the form of Pete’s reply-question, which carefully spells out a pronunciation which marks it out as belonging to no actual regional or demographic dialect or slang.

Oops! Got the underlying myth premise precisely backwards!

And here they got the underlying business terms precisely backward. As an excuse for something like a missed payment, someone may plead that their assets are not liquid.

Okay, one joke is that there would be a rap version of a mantra. Or that she has been rapping it, or improvising it, or humming it or something, enough to disturb her friend.

But the bothersome aspect of this is how it seems to buy into some magical thinking. The dark-haired friend is linking her (later) ability to get the good parking space to performing a successful meditation now, undisturbed by intrusive mantra rapping. (Or could it be Nichiren Shōshū chanting?)

This is a perfectly fine little pun! Oh, except that there is no basis shown or hinted for why the new top provides more relief from the heat.