Category / Holiday-Thematic

by multipleciduers

Not the Midas touch

This striking but very puzzling Six Chix cartoon by the Friday chick, Maritsa Patrinos, was suggested by CIDU readers travelgirl, bobanero, and Jack Applin; and understanding remains elusive also for CIDU editors and for Comics Kingdom commenters.

(P.S., thanks for letting us know about https://www.usatoday.com/comics as another outlet for viewing King Features / Comics Kingdom cartoons.)

P.S.

Little did we suspect, when writing a title for this post based on the Six Chix comic, that we would almost immediately run across an actual Midas-themed cartoon!

CIDU QUEUE REMINDER

As always — but it needs saying explicitly again now and then — we like to think of this as a reader-participation site, and not just for your invaluable (or anyhow amusing) comments, but for suggestions of comics to run and discuss.

Please share your specific suggestions of panels or strips, in CIDU, LOL, and OY categories, either by direct email to

(that’s “CIDU dot Submissions” at gmail dot com) or by using the handy-dandy Suggest A CIDU form page!

by Kilby

Lincoln’s Birthday

Abraham Lincoln was one of H.T. Webster‘s personal heroes, and today would have been his 215th birthday. Whenever an appropriate weekday series was scheduled for February 12th, Webster occasionally took the opportunity to draw a birthday tribute. This example (taken from “The Best of H.T. Webster“, page 253) originally appeared in 1919 (on what would have been Lincoln’s 110th birthday):

This video from the Smithsonian Magazine shows a couple of alternate designs that were proposed for the Lincoln Memorial, along with five surprising facts:
1) Lincoln was an accomplished wrestler; and …
2) … is the only President to hold a patent for his own invention;
3) … stored papers in his top hat;
4) … attended seances in the White House; and
5) … established the Secret Service.

by Kilby

How Much Ground…

…could a groundhog hog, if a groundhog could hog ground?

…unless of course Phil beats the believers to the punch:

Here are four different approaches to affecting the prediction:

by zbicyclist

Saturday OYs — Some math for e day

Pi Day (March 14, or 3/14) gets a lot of play in the U.S., but doesn’t work in other countries that write dates as DD/MM/YYYY, so it becomes 14/3. An alternative in those areas is e day, after the base of natural logarithms, e, (2.71) on 27 January. So, we’re going to avoid the Pi Day rush and post some math cartoons today.

Like pi, e shows up in a variety of places in mathematics, and is associated with some of the greats in mathematical development. From Wikipedia:

“The number e is sometimes called Euler’s number …—after the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler —or Napier’s constant—after John Napier. The constant was discovered by the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli while studying compound interest.”

Some fuzzy math from websites. The first is from Kiva.org.

This one is from MyVirtualMission.com, a site where you can virtually pretend to climb Everest or complete the Camino de Santiago as you run/walk/bike around your neighborhood. Somehow, their counter of missions (trips) has gone awry. Or maybe I did one backwards?

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, January 7th, 2024

The holidays are done, but the cartoons are not all done with Xmas and NYear LOLs!

LOL-Ewww did you say?

Does Eric Scott’s drawing style sometimes seem to have a Thurber feel?

This Santino is an almost-CIDU: commenters on his page talk about getting it only after pausing and looking at it another way, or filling in their literary knowledge.

Once upon a time (it was December, actually) Sandra sent this in, and noted it could be a LOL-semi-CIDU as it’s not first-glance obvious what’s going on. 

Actually, the editors’ feeling of confidence in one explanation faded upon discussion. Is this cat-behavior being actively performed by an animated cat-statue? Or is it a static statue of characteristic cat-behavior? 

Either way, it’s the sort of thing cat people regard with loving exasperation. The great filmmaker Agnès Varda felt like putting her cat on a monument, and did so in her short Le Lion Volatil (actuality on left, modification on right):

And as Aaron notes when sending this next one in, Falco really wants to say something about this gap-week.

by zbicyclist

NY^3: New Year’s Themed Comics on New Year’s Day from The New Yorker

It’s New Year’s Day, 2024, so why not post some New Year’s cartoons from another NY, The New Yorker? Wait. Wasn’t that yesterday’s theme? But this is a theme so nice, we’re using it twice.

1931 (i.e. first issue of 1931): some wake-up bells to start your year

1930

1932: not a cheerful New Year’s

1933: Roosevelt’s been elected, but not inaugurated. The man here is not hopeful.

1933

Similar theme from 1934:

To all our readers, commenters, editors, and cartoonists who make this possible, best wishes for a wonderful 2023 2024!

Reflect and think? Or maybe just do some things appropriate to the season. Change out that furnace filter that should be changed every 3 months. Is your toothbrush getting too long in the tooth? Check your IRA balances if you’ll need to make RMDs. Check the refrigerator for stuff that expired in 2022. Make some Hoppin’ John with those black-eyed peas in the back of the pantry. Feel free to comment on your own ways to mark (or ignore) the day.

Or, perhaps like Mooch, you’re perfect and can just take a nap.

Let’s end with an OY:

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs for NYE from NYr, 2023

Some New Year’s Eve cartoons from the New Yorker archives.

1926 (i.e. first issue of 1926).

1928

1932, before our smartwatches all had synchronized time.

1934

Here’s a link to the New Yorker cartoons most shared on Instagram in 2023: NYer cartoons most shared on Instagram Not a CIDU among them, but quite a few LOLs.