This Sheldon was sent in by Andréa, who asks “Remember the [long ago] discussion of these?”. Maybe not in specifics, but the CIDU crew should be able to make short work of a simple issue like the role of uniqueness and originality in the arts!
A Far Side on the theme of “Could it get any worse?”:
Side detail – while Elephant has a laptop like everybody else, Clown has a horn.
Sent in by J-L, who says “It involves Jon trying to trick Garfield into taking a pill, and how Garfield tries to frustrate Jon’s plans. My family laughed at this because recently we have been trying to feed a pill to our dog, Honey Bun. While the first few times were successful (it was easy to hide the pill in some delicious food of some sort), eventually Honey Bun got wise to our efforts and would spit out the pill, no matter how delicious the food was.” We agree, it is good to see Jon getting the better of Garfield now and then.
In another main segment of the domestic companion-animal kingdom, here is a dog who knows a lot but not everything:
This RWO was sent in by Le Vieux Lapin, who says “An LOL? An OTW? At the very least it’s a bit more off the wall than I expect from Hilary Price.”
I was a bit dithery over whether it could be considered a CIDU. But if there is somebody not familiar with Tetris it might briefly be a CIDU for them; but would not hold up for a day’s discussion.
Although I saw immediately that it was doing Tetris, I didn’t catch that the word PETRIS was reflecting that there are domestic pets in the scene. I thought for a second that the PETR- was the key part, and was using the Greek-derived stem for “rock” or “stone” — so that the falling tetris pieces would turn out made of stone, and were on their way to a destructive crash. Nice relief that they are pets and end up cozily tucked in.
The Arnold Zwicky blog has remarked on this cartoon twice, once yesterday when it was reprinted ( https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/10/10/enduring-classics/ ) and once in 2010 when it first appeared ( https://arnoldzwicky.org/2010/04/11/another-playful-portmanteau/ ) Zwicky seems surprised that people today are still quite familiar with Tetris, and that is the main subject of yesterday’s column. [Oh wait, I should be saying “last Sunday’s blog” not “yesterday’s”; though I am writing this bit on Monday 2021-10-11.]
The first two panels are so familiar as a turnabout joke, with a variety of particular punch lines, its nice to see Horace coming up with something different.
What I mean by “second-order synchronicity” is that Arthur was struck by two different synchro pairs on the same day.
“Barney & Clyde matches with MGG:”
“And Close To Home matches with Off the Mark:”
“Neither are exact matches, but both immediately caught my eye.”
Frequent CIDU contributor Ooten Aboot (aka “Canadian Raising Is Real”) sent for our enjoyment news of The New Yorker working to out-do themselves with a variant on their widely-beloved Caption Contest. It’s a series of drawings, mostly by their cartoon artists, and mostly lacking captions, presented online as a “Daily Shouts” humor feature.
The intro write-up, by Dahlia Gallin Ramirez, goes like this:
Once a year, a team of demons at The New Yorker provides “cartoons” in need of captions. You, the readers—so full of hope, so charmingly mortal—upset yourselves trying to think of jokes. There are no submissions, no finalists, and no votes, but there are winners: the evil beings who created these uncaptionable images. Good luck!
We can’t print here any pictures that are their current content, but here’s that link again!
Eats, shoots, and leaves.
These are comics that somebody thought were pretty good, or even full LOL, and not baffling but a little hard to pin down. Like, you can think of a rather plausible explanation of the chuckle — or maybe two! — but there’s nothing that clinches the case that *this* or *that* just has to be the key to what’s going on.
For example, with something like this Andertoons, we might think of the minor mystery as expressed in terms of providing the missing caption. Is it about the odd feeling you’re being watched? Or more like “Oh, where did I set down my glasses?”. It could be either, do you agree?
A Minor Mystery from Darren, who says “I can’t tell if Watson’s jarns need to be interpreted as a specific term. I’m flummoxed. Apparently the squirrel is as well?”
Okay, the joke here is that the threatened punishment will involve a cannister vacuum cleaner (in what seems to be a photo clip?) rather than a conventional physical beating or the like. But it’s an unanswerable mystery just what the threat is. Torture by exposure to noisy motor, like a household pet? Being inhaled altogether? Having some portion of his body inhaled?
The last few weeks I’ve felt that Wrong Hands has been a bit off their best form. But this one seems a good case of returning to their former standard.
So here is another Wrong Hands, sent in by Philip, who notes that as an Oy it would be tripartite. (Have we seen this one before?)
I have never sat down on a cat …. that did not immediately make the situation known! :-)
(Also adding in another Condron as he was unfamiliar to me.)
This Bliss is something of an LOL-Eww.
Sent in as a LOL or semi CIDU-LOL by Chak, who asks “And do we think the bowling bag is important here?”
How annoying, to be mis-speciesed!
Ah, so young to be falling into the essence of Meta!
And thanks to Shamie F who sent it in and says: “I think it has something to do with a flying cup looking for a flying saucer. If that’s the whole point then OY! I’m thinking I must be missing something though.” We think the default tag here would be LOL moreso than OY (a flying saucer is called that just because of resemblance to an ordinary saucer), but how does the gang weigh in on the “is that all there is?” factor?
Here’s one from BillR:
Very smart to use Peter’s name – the others are more easily identifiable.
But on the griping side of things, the wolf I think did not emerge a winner from any of their encounters. Maybe it depends on versions of the stories.
Thanks to Michelle for this LOL bit of pained irony:
“I never meta confusion I didn’t like.”
Comics I Don't Understand 