This “dogged effort to learn a foreign language” has paid off!
And as my brother recently messaged me: Yo no soy marinara! Yo no soy marinara! Soy carbonara, soy carbonara, soy carbonara — por ti seré, por ti seré, por ti seré.
The text in the two languages says the same thing. But piece-by-piece they don’t precisely correspond; so some re-arrangement was needed. But very smoothly done!
Although CIDU Bill drafted this Frazz strip for a post back in June 2020, he never gave it a title or wrote any text for it. I thought today would be an appropriate opportunity for it to appear.
P.S. Even if the bag is only full of wet paper towels, I like the way that the kid is about to punch it to smithereens.
Kilby writes: This is another one of CIDU Bill’s old draft posts from March 2019. The only CIDU element is how he ran into a strip from 2013 nearly five and a half years later. (I checked: Barney & Clyde was not in reruns during that month.)
I thought I *knew*, as an evidence-based origins account and “official” answer, that the term flack for a public relations officer was closely tied to flak “anti-aircraft fire” — via the intermediate occupational descriptive term flak-catcher for their role in deflecting or absorbing abuse and accusation. And that this was popularized in Tom Wolfe’s essay title “Maumauing the Flack Catchers”. (His flak-catchers were local bureaucrats rather than p.r. agents but the idea was closely related.)
But I wanted to check with something besides my own memory, in scholarly sources or some easily-accessible online approximation thereto.
And so, how disappointing that Dictionary.com gives us a story about some guy named Flack, and no mention of flak except a link in a “words sometimes confused with flack” section.
1935–40; said to be after Gene Flack, a movie publicity agent
Well! At least some support from Etymonline, though they also give precedence to Gene Flack, but give some skeptical considerations against him.
flack (n.)
“publicity or press agent,” in Variety headlines by September 1933; sometimes said to be from name of Gene Flack, a movie agent, but influenced later by flak. There was a Gene Flack who was an advertising executive in the U.S. during the 1940s, but he seems to have sold principally biscuits, not movies, and seems not to have been in Variety in the ’30s.
Zippy feeling just a bit meta.
And a semi-CIDU for this same couple:
The question being: Is the guy just pushing his point by selecting a random term meant to be absurd, or else do they maybe have something (like a remote, or an ashtray, …) which is actually crafted to look like a Stegosaurus?
Why not start off Sunday with a bit of math? Roughly how old is she?
This is Frazz’s Sunday intro panel for January 7th. Mallett posts these on Facebook. Otherwise, I’d never see them because GoComics doesn’t use the intro panels, for reasons I don’t understand.
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.
Have you kept count for how many times this joke has come up this week?
Woops! Turns out this is now the third appearance of this “kerning pun” (as jjmcgaffey called it) on CIDU in one path or another.
This fun Rubes from a few years ago was brought to our attention by Professor Jerry Coyne (a big supporter of ducks) on his Why Evolution is True web site (blog, but he doesn’t like it called that).
As reported by The Daily Cartoonist (but nowhere visible at mutts.com), Patrick McDonnell has announced that he will be taking a six-month sabbatical to work on other projects, and that (almost all of) the strips from now to June will be re-runs (note the absence of any year in the copyright line on this one).
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:
Comics I Don't Understand 