Darren sent:

which sparked a lively discussion about arthroscopic vs. laparoscopic vs. the generic “minimally invasive” surgery.
Meanwhile, it also proved to be a mystery for some!
Darren sent:

which sparked a lively discussion about arthroscopic vs. laparoscopic vs. the generic “minimally invasive” surgery.
Meanwhile, it also proved to be a mystery for some!
Parallel to our question for Baldo, but probably with opposite conclusion, this pair suggests confirmation that for Macanudo the Spanish version comes first and the English results from translation.


The humor is from, well first of all the behaviors of the two species, but after that the creative way the suffixes are used in the Spanish. (I don’t think the -ota is entirely standard. but is creatively deployed to convey “large”. Comments welcome from experts and fluent or native speakers!)
There are a number of half-plausible explanations that occurred to Chemgal (who sent it in) and the editors. But not enough to choose a best one among them, nor know how to promote a candidate to fully-likely.

Two related task-management life-hacks from Tuesday.


Wait, I have a solution for her! She can just leave some OTHER task undone and its checkbox unchecked! That should w…. Oh.

(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”.
Thanks to Boise Ed and Dale Eltoft for this puzzling Carpe Diem.

The background story is hard to explain (especially as I have barely followed it myself). Suffice it that — due to some repairs or renovations on their house — this family has been living outdoors in an extended backyard for a long time, variously in tents, or in this treehouse, or in the scrub with local wildlife.
(The one previous appearance of Home Free on CIDU was from the setup of this situation. We didn’t get it then, either.)

And Yay! to the cartoonist for that “Ring Ring Ring” in the first panel! I completely accepted it as a drawing device to indicate the electro-mechanical sound of a phone ringing. But no, it was the wife just saying the words “Ring Ring Ring”. Good job of surprising us with a defeated assumption!
But then tut-tut on showing the string just drooping there slackly! As of the day following the GoComics appearance of this strip, some ninety percent of the comments there are devoted to pointing out that for a “tin can telephone” to work, the string has to be pulled taut between the cans, essentially in a single straight line. (And secondary to this, the attachment of the string with a piece of tape, shown in the first panel, is a rel;ated part of why this setup wouldn’t work — to get the vibrations to transfer, the traditional setup is to punch a small hole in the base of the can, thread the string thru the hole, and tie a knot on the end so it can pull taut.)
Hard to guess whether the cartoonist just didn’t know; or knew but just didn’t think it would matter; or knew but built in an excuse, that they can quite easily hear each other by the sound carrying in the open air, and the tin-can-telephone is just their little joke!
Thanks to Ooten Aboot for suggesting this CIDU-OY!


Okay, the general line of the joke is clear enough. But what really are the respective methods they are using, and contrasting? Is Arlo using Shazam on a laptop? Using the laptop to view the radio station’s website to find their “now playing” widget? Or is that laptop doing the streaming and he is checking the streaming service? Is Janis using anything besides Google and Wikipedia? How did she know what to look up?
P.S. The ArloAndJanis.com web page is still not providing any content.
Further P.S. The next day’s strip was sort of a sequel.
