August 13, 2022August 10, 2022 by EditorM

Saturday Morning OYs – August 13th, 2022

(Not a Cidu), Oy, Synchronicity, Wordplay broadly speaking
Argyle Sweater, Dave Whamond, Funky Winkerbean, Hilary B. Price, John Atkinson, John Deering, John Newcombe, Reality Check, Rhymes With Orange, Rina Piccolo, Scott Hilburn, Tom Batiuk, Wrong Hands, Zack Hill
37 Comments

Thanks to Le Vieux Lapin for this one, which is some sort of word-play on language-related terms, so what is there not to oy?

For Argyle Sweater, one bad pun deserves another. The actual Pony Express is famous, but only existed for a short time, from from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861. Pricing didn’t help (The initial price was set at $5 per ¹⁄₂ ounce, then $2.50, and by July 1861 to $1. Normal mail service was $0.02 then.). The service continually lost money, and closed two days after the transcontinental telegraph connected Omaha with Sacramento.

Now we’ll segue into some that miss a bit. Kilby reminds us that Segway ceased production in June, 2020. One might ponder the various reasons why the Segway, introduced in 2001 to great fanfare, was a failure (and by the end, so out of mind it might have merited a geezer alert), while now e-bikes are flying off the shelves and electric scooters are commonly seen.

Well, there are some judgement calls here; let”s see if you agree. The “just ok” is enough to qualify it as a pun or Oy; but isn’t especially good, or enough to make it a funny Oy. However, the second shot, using the idea of “settling for [smthg]”, does make it work, and earns at least a chuckle. (No comment on the squirrel’s addition.)

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For those of us who’ve served as executor of someone’s estate that wasn’t tied up very well, this will bring back painful memories. Painful OYs here.

And just when we were making plans to officially retire the Synchronicity category, this pair comes along within a week of each other with the same double pun. One factor is that this one was already published here, in last week’s OY list:

But this one is fresh:

August 6, 2022August 6, 2022 by EditorM

Saturday Morning OYs – August 6th, 2022

Greedy for layers of pun, I almost wanted to see a ‘c’ in place of the ‘k’ — to reflect that they are drawn to look quite cute! And we would of course still recognize them as sharcs.

A reminder that it’s prime grilling season!

It’s also an excuse to listen to some B B King:

From Andréa, who says “I see it as more of an OY . . . flippin’ in all its meanings”

July 23, 2022July 22, 2022 by EditorM

Saturday Morning Oys – July 23rd, 2022

(This is under the “not really a pun but word play in general” tag.)

This joke may actually date back to the Viking era, or earlier.

Thanks to Andréa for this Bizarro:

I’m sure I’ve seen this joke used before, but not whether that means this is a repeat or just that the joke has occurred to others. A cursory search does find other examples, and tempting as it is to make a whole post out of three or four of them, let’s leave it at that.

From Andréa:

Just a bit corny.

And a little Oy-Ewww on the side.

July 16, 2022July 13, 2022 by EditorM

Saturday Morning Oys – July 16th, 2022

I think this counts as a pun, even without doing a pun-joke.

The above sent by Andréa, who particularly notes Tom Waits getting mentioned, saying “Never thought I’d see HIM in a comic – made my day!”. And one of your editors had the pleasure of taking a couple classes from Professor Lance Rips, who liked to point out that his name constitutes a complete sentence.

Meant to post this earlier.

And the award for the best re-use of old toy parts goes to …

I learned the word prodigal in the context of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and thought it meant something like all the characteristics of the guy in the story – wandering, absent, returning after a long absence and acting all entitled, etc, all packaged in that one word. Only much later did I start seeing contexts that wouldn’t support all of that meaning, and learned the base sense spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.

And then discovered that was what it meant in the Parable, too. But there had not been enough help from the context to make that choice clear! And this fits the philosopher’s point that, if your informant points to a rabbit and says gavagai, maybe they are telling you the word means rabbit — but maybe it means finger.