Sunday Funnies – LOLs, December 01st, 2024

Mark H. submitted this 9CWL strip last year as a “Geezer Alert” (and partial CIDU), asking: “Does anyone younger than 60 know about Jimmy Hoffa?” (The CIDU and/or puzzle component is to figure out what she might have said to him underwater.)


P.S. It is so refreshing to post a Chickweed Lane strip that is not (automatically) “Arlo” material.


This was going to be a CIDU, but it seems to be a colorist error. That’s not a basketball, but a curled up armadillo. But they don’t change color when they curl up, so far as I know.

From Wikipedia: “When threatened by a predatorTolypeutes species frequently roll up into a ball. Other armadillo species cannot roll up because they have too many plates. When surprised, the North American nine-banded armadillo tends to jump straight in the air, which can lead to a fatal collision with the undercarriage or fenders of passing vehicles.”


Usual John sends this one in. This gets a bit of s “Eww”

The previous one in this series is pretty good, too.


After Thanksgiving is before Thanksgiving

This cartoon by John Jonik was first published in the New Yorker exactly 41 years ago today, but I discovered it too late to add it to the Thanksgiving collection for 2023.


The headline above is modeled after a quote by Sepp Herberger, coach of the German national football soccer team: “After the game is always before the [next] game.” Of course, discussing football (of either variety) can sometimes be even more explosive than discussing politics.


Mark H. submitted this XKCD (#2858) last year; although it did get embedded in comments (such as in the No-Politics Zone), it’s still worth a repeat in a post:


P.S. The “mouseover” or “title” text reads: “An occasional source of mild Thanksgiving tension in my family is that my mother is a die-hard fan of The Core (2003), and various family members sometimes have differing levels of enthusiasm for her annual tradition of watching it.

P.P.S. The link to the HuffPost article in the second panel still works (I already typed it in, so that you don’t have to).




In Germany, it’s called “Erntedankfest” (literally: “harvest thanks festival”), and is celebrated on the first Sunday in October, but it is primarily an event for the liturgical calendar (both Catholic and Protestant), and is not (generally) celebrated by families at home.





Several decades ago, my grandmother just happened to include a leftover bowl of (homemade) mac&cheese on the Thanksgiving dinner table, which resulted in some amused needling from my dad and uncle. However, both my sister and my aunt vigorously defended it, so that for many years thereafter, (fresh) mac&cheese became a standard component of my grandmother’s Thanksgiving menu.



The final panel reminded me of the last scene in the song “Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses.


No cranberries? Frank and Ernest have suggestions:

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, November 24th, 2024

Boise Ed submitted this B.C. strip as a CIDU, but I think it qualifies as an LOL:


Ed had questioned the illogical elements of the setup: “I had forgotten that there is a restaurant chain called ‘The Cheesecake Factory‘, but why would anyone only eat roadkill, and why would anyone drive his car through that restaurant?“, but I think that it’s not supposed to make sense, it’s just supposed to be funny. The latter is something that the current author(s) don’t always achieve, so it’s always nice to see an exception.


MarkTa submitted this Wizard of Id strip as a CIDU quite a while ago, asking “Please help – is it about flatulence? Completely baffled.


While “burrito” might indeed imply “flatulence“, the real explanation is simpler: the Wizard is tired of Blanche stealing the blankets, and is anchoring them on his side of the bed (with an ultra-modern medieval nail gun). Both Calvin and his dad would have appreciated the Wizard’s solution:


When a cat employs this blanketing strategy, the result is called a “purrito“:





Bonus: Synchronous Flushes

Brian in StL submitted this pair of “classic crescent-moon outhouses” last year, which seemed eminently appropriate for World Toilet Day.



P.S. Both of these strips were published last year on October 5th, but the Non Sequitur is actually a rerun from 2019, and was embedded into a comment in that year in Bill’s Halloween post about “Outhouses“.

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, November 17th, 2024

This “Dog Eat Doug” was submitted by Usual John as an LOL, but this feature hasn’t been seen at CIDU since August 2020 (a pair submitted by Andréa and posted by Bill), so I’m adding a CIHS tag.


John added, “While this is mainly a LOL, I am unclear on why the messenger thought the blue jay general, or whoever he thought he was reporting to, would be in a baby carriage.


Boise Ed submitted this Rhymes with Orange as a CIDU, asking “It’s the old Adam-and-Eve scene, but why is his leaf attracting flies or other bugs and what’s with the days of the week?” – I think the answer is obvious enough to reclassify this as an LOL-Ewww:


P.S. The “days of the week” are of course a reference to a type of underwear that I have often heard about, but never actually seen. I thought they were usually intended for girls, but when I hunted for a screenshot, I discovered that they were also available for boys, and even came in men’s sizes:



In order, the names of the ghosts would be Blolga (red), Polga (pink), Olga (cyan), and Clyde (orange). Since Olga is always that color, maybe he has more reason to fear than the other three.


Bob Ball send in this as a LOL / synchronicity. We don’t publish synchronicities much anymore, but this is worthy of LOL. This is part of a thread on Pearls, where Pastis makes fun of oversensitivity towards certain terms by labelling junk drawer as an insult. But while I understand the term junk drawer, mine is a miscellany drawer; there are things in there that occasionally get used (e.g. double-sided tape). What do you call yours?

The start of that Pearls storyline:


Chak sends in this gem:


Sunday Funnies – LOLs, November 10th, 2024

Kilby suggested this Macanudo from 2022:


P.S. Perhaps they should join the sheep in that tree just above the strip.


For those unfamiliar with “What the Duck“, the artwork shows a sad duck with its head on the keyboard:


P.P.S. The Ctrl-S key (for “save“) is in fact adjacent to Ctrl-Z (“undo“).


A sweet little fourth-wall moment with Arlo & Janis:


As Mark H. commented when he sent it in: “It IS hard to tell they are dancing without the notes.


Las Vegas Chasm tried to submit an Argyle Sweater as a CIDU, commenting: “I usually “get” Argyle Sweater each day owing to my modestly demented mind, but today’s is a real stumper. My equally perverse friends also do not understand it. Simply put, yo soy confusado.

Unfortunately, LVC’s link to the image was broken. Going by the date, it should have been the one on the right, but that seems too easy, so I’m also including the previous day, which seems equally funny, but might have been a little more puzzling:


The “featured comment” at GoComics gives an explanation for the first one: “Well, if you make corn oil out of corn, and olive oil out of olives, guess what you make baby powder out of” (she tried tasting it).

Considering the logo and the claims linking baby powder to cancer, eating that stuff is definitely not a good idea.


Where do they keep the journals at a Chemistry library? On the periodical table.



Danny Boy sends this high-voltage LOL in.


There’s a reason the artist picked that logo…

… and it had nothing to do with product placement for Amazon. It’s even possible that he might have been able to use Nike’s logo, instead.


Boise Ed submitted this “Looks Good on Paper” strip as a CIDU, commenting: “How is a truck wreck supposed to be funny? Maybe if it had spilled something funny, but that’s not the case here.

I agree that it’s not extremely funny, but it’s still worth a small smile. The author was careful to show that nobody was seriously injured (the truck driver can be seen at the right edge of the strip). The gag is based on “anthropomorphic pareidolia“, or in other words, interpreting an expression on a face that isn’t really there. The trucks wheels look a little like eyes, so that the inverted logo looks like a “sad” mouth. Parallels can also be drawn to the inverted Jeep bumper stickers that we discussed back in July.

P.S. If anyone is interested in discovering a whole series of such “facial expression” effects, I recommend watching Pixar’s short film “The Blue Umbrella“.

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, November 03rd, 2024

Boise Ed submitted this one last year, commenting “Every now and then, Pardon My Planet comes up with a real zinger.” I think I’ve seen it before, but I can’t find it in a CIDU post, and in any case it’s worth repeating:


The not-quite-complete “Arlo” moment in this “Zits” came as a big surprise. Perhaps King Features relaxed their censorship standards when they relaunched the Comics Kingdom website?


P.S. And what if Jeremy’s mom had not left it out? What then?


Two half Arlos published on exactly the same day do not count as a whole synchronicity, but this Luann was pretty good, too:


P.S. Note the annoying, but otherwise irrelevant color error in the second panel.


Boise Ed said about this Argyle Sweater: “Perhaps this is the fifth wall, since he’s erasing four“:


Another meta Macanudo:


P.S. The title panel bears a fair resemblance to “In the Court of the Crimson King“, but it’s unlikely that it was intentional:



Danny Boy sends this in as a CIDU, but rather than post it long after Halloween we’re putting it here. “What, what? “I was making rather scary yesterday.” Is that something like “making merry”? I.e. celebrating and now hungover (and just getting into the office at a quarter to five)?

No, I don’t think I’ve answered my own question. “Making rather scary” is still pretty opaque.”

Or, trying to scare the street urchins?


Danny Boy hopes “that mechanism isn’t set up to treat the TP as reusable!”


Happy Halloween!

Besides the popular candy collection event, today is “Reformation Day” (in honor of Luther’s 95 theses), and here at CIDU it just happens to be Meryl A.’s birthday. Since she hasn’t been able to reschedule her day of honor, we will just have to wish her a very “Happy Birthday!” today.



Halloween is supposed to be a nice, innocent holiday, but some folks misinterpret it:


Then there are others who go really overboard:


Some kids are more scary than others:


Although very dated, this costume is still scary, too: