Category / Wordplay broadly speaking

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – July 27th, 2024

This first one is more of an Ewww than an OY:

P.S. The weather this summer has been exceptional for snails and slugs; every few days I can go into the back yard and collect a dozen (or even a score) of the gross things.

…
This is only the third time that the Keane’s “Family Circus” has appeared at CIDU (not counting a few mashups and tangential references).

A Comic I didn’t understand the first three times I saw it. I wasn’t puzzled, just mistaken.

I thought the point was just in the dog choosing to ignore the request (command) and pursue different interests.

This atrocious B.C. pun appeared just in time for the opening ceremonies:

Tolkien wrote that the Elves made three rings, the Dwarves were given seven rings, and Sauron made nine rings to entrap the Nazgul, but where do the five rings fit into the story?

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – June 15th, 2024

Rather dumb word-argument. But it prompts memory of an assortment of senior-targeted advertising campaigns which for a while used the phrasing “age 50 or better” or “age seventy-and-a-half or better” etcetera. It was supposed to be obvious, yet a sort of joke, that better would mean older. At least one that I heard regularly for a while did change to older; but then later reverted to better ; so I guess there was some complaint but it got resolved, or just overruled.

Come to think of it, probably the word-level associations of squashing things must have played a role in my lifelong aversion to the vegetable of that name.

Chak notes “I’ve read En attendant Godot several times, and I still don’t have a clue.”

Could one expect Godot to comment? Waiting for your comments below.

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – May 25th, 2024

There is a rather old joke involving a misunderstanding of that kind of signage (and based on a now-possibly-objectionable euphemistic term) — but wait!, it turns out this Crabgrass is not using that joke, but rather one based on a different misunderstanding of it.

Picked up from Counterpoint

Is that an electric plug in her hand, at the end of a wire? So she has unplugged a phonograph from playing one of the objectionable original versions?

It’s very simple, but (therefore?) almost perfect.

(it was established in the previous days that these are temporary tattoos)

by EditorM

Just Janis?

Janis is here without her Arlo, but the cartoon is heading for what we’d have to call Arlo territory in the CIDU sense!

I thought farmer’s daughter’s tan a clever play on the familiar farmer’s tan but wasn’t sure what the intended extended meaning was or whether it has anything to do with farmer’s daughter jokes. But I thought it might help to establish it was a nonce coinage by pointing to many standard dictionary entries for farmer’s tan and the absence of any for farmer’s daughter’s tan. But couldn’t find any of even the former! But at the last minute, at least Urban Dictionary turns up with an entry for farmers tan!

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – March 30th, 2024

I mistook those candles in the background for cat-hair rollers!

And the pun factor is: how about some gin or vodka?

I’m a little dubious how “went on the wagon” works out here. But let it be noted, there are probably several cities with drinking establishments called Crow-Bar or Cro-Bar.

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – March 2nd, 2024

And another Argyle Sweater, this one from Targuman.

If you enjoyed that one, you may already know about the “Peccavi” incident.

The movie on which this joke is based was released in 1977: 47 years ago. Ordinarily, that would qualify for a Geezer tag.

by EditorM

Bonus etymological dispute

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.

 ORIGIN OF FLACK

  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.