Category / unsuccessful execution

by Kilby

Logical Impossibilities

I have been following Leigh Rubin’s “Rubes” comics for at least a decade, or possibly two. I have to admit that it only rarely provokes an audible laugh, but it is virtually always worth a good smile. It is precisely this dependability that makes it all the more noticeable when a “Rubes” comic just doesn’t work, such as this one:

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Simply telescoping two concepts into one term doesn’t always produce a meaningful (nor humorous) result. The whole point of the “Schrödinger’s Cat” thought experiment is “observability”. In this drawing we can see both the cat and the damage, so there cannot be any quantum (or “cat-tum”) superposition.

I had even more trouble with this second comic, which I would like to call “Stooge Trek“:

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Nobody would ever claim that anything that The Three Stooges ever did was “logical”, but Spock’s reaction (and dialog) seems completely out of place (even more illogical than the picture he is watching). For me, this comic just doesn’t work; YMMV.

P.S. Given the similarity of the hair styles of Moe and Spock, perhaps it would have been funnier to have a second frame, in which Spock pokes Kirk in the eyes.

P.P.S. I initially thought that the “dual nose poke” tableau seemed gratuitously excessive, but I was clearly wrong, as proved by this picture:

by multipleciduers

M’aidez with some Not-Quites and Oopsies

Peculiar but not quite an intriguing CIDU, wry but not quite a LOL, pun-adjacent but not quite an OY, or just based in a factual mistake …

Here in a current two-day sequence for Reply All, is there room to agree “Neither one is actually funny at all”?

Thanks to Mike Pollock, who says “You don’t often see graphical captions with typographical errors. Is Curly Bracket [ } ] there intentionally?”

Okay, maybe this is just quibbling, but we all know a real Etch-A-Sketch doesn’t erase that way. You need to turn it face-down and shake. Or maybe it can marginally work to keep it face-up and shake vertically as well as side-to-side — but the shake lines here don’t suggest that enough.

Well, no. Frank does have multiple sources, multiple origins — so the Ancestry.com jokes work well. But there’s nothing about his special situation that puts him here, and here, and here too.

And the squirrel trying to justify it accomplishes nothing much. The map notations say “You are here” not “You have been here” – just as real building directories do.

This says “WANTED — [strikeout]ALIVE[/strikeout] OR DEAD”.

But, but … which party is supposed to be pictured on the poster, the hunter or hunted?

Sorry to pick on Whamond, but while we all know about cartoon physics I have some doubt about cartoon math. That’s the plain number three, he’s not in any respect irrational or in danger of turning irrational. He could slide up to pi nearby and be not only irrational but transcendental — but there is no indication of that happening. He’s just three, the natural number, not irrational and not even negative.

by EditorM

Further adventures of Oopsies, Quickies, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops (10th Series)

In the lane of “I guess I get the intended joke point, but the execution is unsuccessful” we have this “powdery math” example from zbicyclist. “I’m lost here. He’s eating one donut, and has another on his plate. That’s two donuts. So how is it 50% less sugar than two donuts?” I guess the *one* donut Leroy is waving around does have 50% less sugar than the two he has altogether, since it’s 50% less donut.

I thought at first it was going to be the funnish kind of percentage mistake coming from inconsistent base. We’re going to increase your supply of widgets by 10%. But now you have too many, so we’ll reduce your supply by 10%. That should put you back where you started …. eh?

Why even begin to use the Jeopardy setup? Then not use their layout? And if we grant that eating triple bacon cheeseburgers presents a risk to a heart, does that require that answering a question about them also does?

The main-punch of this charming joke is clear enough — curiosity may be fatal to cats (as in the common saying) but not to these patients. But what is it that the vet has diagnosed as a case of curiosity? And is it supposed to be clear why he speaks in the singular, and which one of the dogs is the patient?

I dunno, maybe the problem is that the top section looks like a “throwaway panel” but actually it’s essential that it appear right above the scene with the cars. Because it’s the upper-storey window and sign for the gym? But we still have to pin down the connection between weight-lifting and how that extra car got where it is.

If your thing is to visually or linguistically play off some familiar phrase or saying that almost everybody surely knows …. there’s going to be trouble when you use some that nobody knows. (All right, I know about “disruptor”. But that’s about it.)

Okay, let the anatomists explain from the configuration of fingers (and additional hand in panel 2) that the hand doing the artwork in panels 2 and 3 has to be Nancy’s. Even so, what does it get her? And if it could possibly be Fritzi’s own, does that mean her panel 1 nag about “the expression on my face” was just a fancy prank setup?