Category / There must be a popculture reference that will clear it up instantly but I just don’t get it

by EditorM

And they call the wind Mariah

No, really, who is the Santa, and who are the critters? And what are they taking turns at?

(And is this one of those “It would be perfectly clear to you if you just had the first clue about popular culture” cases?)

Yes, this appeared on Christmas Sunday. Yes, I know there is a performer named Mariah Carey. Is this what she looks like?

by EditorM

Firsts

This is the “Semi-CIDU” marked for this post. It’s Cynthia’s friend who says “Lots of firsts that day” but mostly it was Cynthia herself experiencing those firsts.

BTW, what do you think of the drawing techniques used to show us the girls are their younger selves in the last two panels?

[This was a Friday strip. The Saturday strip that follows continues the flashback, and gives an explicit answer to the Semi-CIDU question we posed; so we’re withholding that one until people have had a chance to comment on this post, and then will put it in comments.]

Bonus Barney. This is the “CIDU only because of a cultural reference you may not already know” marked for this post.

If you’re familiar with the story of Boggs, do you think the summary in the fourth panel is seriously in need of some amplification/clarification?

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, December 4th, 2022

And it does match! But … but … just when did she think that?

This is a semi-cidu: you just have to know the title this is a sequel to.

And nobody had to spell “sommelier”!

We thank Andréa for sending this in. She says “I think it was the surprise ending that got to me.”

Aaron shared this Tom Falco (via the Suggest-a-CIDU form) , noting that it belongs with the coordinated event of over 100 cartoonists making some sort of Peanuts allusion as a tribute for Charles Schulz’s 100th birthday.

The CIDU editorial team noticed one or two of these on the day, and thought of posting a few in a bonus collection-type post; but frankly, didn’t get around to it. Aaron sending this one in reminded us, and it looked like a good idea to post this and one or two others that seemed appealing.

And we invite further of these from readers, in comments to this thread.

[For those who might prefer their Schulz-tributes wholesale, Kevin A in a comment last Thursday reminds us of the tribute event and notes “[…] the Charles M. Schulz Museum page, where all of them appear. ..or DO they? :~) . NOTE: the strips are linked; once you click into one, you can navigate forward and backward through all the strips. (6 x 17 = 102 tribute strips) https://schulzmuseum.org/tribute/ I REPEAT, the strips are linked; once you click into one, you can navigate forward and backward through all the strips. (6 x 17 = 102 tribute strips)”. ]

This excellent Bizarro by Wayno received special mention in several quarters. His comics partner, and founder of Bizarro, Dan Piraro, discussed it and added his own note on Schulz, at his weekly Bizarro blog. Retired linguistics professor and noted comics-explainer Arnold Zwicky made this panel the center of a blog post, where he calls it “A monumental puzzle in cartoon understanding” — but initially makes it a puzzle by omitting the tribute line along the bottom of the panel.

This Bliss appeared on 03 December, a week late for the Schulz anniversary, if that was the intention. So we are looking for a Gorey-related news prompt for this. Not that Gorey isn’t always worth thinking of!

Any others you found particularly interesting or funny or touching? Please drop into the comments thread!

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, October 2nd, 2022

Is it nice to pose a math problem on a Sunday?

I had a stationary bike. After a few years, I had done 12,500 miles on that bike — halfway around, at the equator. But I wondered what degree of north latitude would be12,500 miles long (so I could see what cities were at that latitude). I thought I’d figured it out, but wanted validation; it had been a long time since I was in junior high. We were having parent-teacher conferences, so I asked the 7th grade math teacher. She took the problem and said she’d get back to me. Never did. When my daughter asked about it, she said she’d lost the problem — but didn’t ask for another copy.

I repeated this with math teachers each year. Never got an answer.

Can you finnish this problem?

Thanks to Chemgal for this Zits, which earns a LOL-Ewww!

And here is your LOL-CIDU-Geezer for the week!

Another CIDU-LOL, or Arlo-LOL, and the one calling for the category tag about “There must be a popculture reference that will clear it up instantly” — if you can see putting the chess world in “popculture”. Yes, something upsetting happened recently in the world of chess, and then Twitter has its way with answering some of the questions raised.

Thanks to dollarbill for this DSOH, featuring one of their favorite tropes, counting sheep.
See also the posts in Random Comments and Site Comments on his idea for a structured-commenting game. (Please respond there, not so much here.)

And now, a mini-fest of Wrong Hands!

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).