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!
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.
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.
OY by virtue of ambiguous parsing of [[comic strip] bar] versus [comic [strip bar]]. But y’know, as Will Rogers is never quite quoted as saying, I never meta man I didn’t like. And also a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a metaphor?
Who’s ready for a bit more Fusco?
In case you are unfamiliar with the referenced candy:
It bothers me (mitch) a little bit that this seems to depend on fission being more dramatically explosive than fusion. But still it’s wordplay and it’s pretty funny…
(This is an OY by virtue of the “language play in any general way” subcategory.)
It seems Diamond Lil concentrates on OY punchlines almost every day; so it would be a danger to keep too often considering them for our weekly OY collections. Still, every once in a while, maybe for no particular reason, one of them will jump out and say “Use me!”.
Thanks to Philip for suggesting!
And if this was a semi-CIDU for you, let Editor Phil help out by pointing out that just before this moment of dialogue, the visitor must have addressed this officer as “Skipper”.
Comics I Don't Understand 