by phsiii

Point of order

BillR offers:

Came across this guy, Cameron Spires, who calls his strip Goat to Self. Most of his are borderline NSFW, or over the line, somewhat surrealistic, or just vague. Can’t figure this one out at all.

This editor posits that the key is that the dolphin (porpoise? beluga?) in the last panel is the defense lawyer, and the objection is to forcing self-incrimination. Mind you, I’m not sure that’s up to the defense lawyer — I think the witness has to invoke that themselves.

by phsiii

Trying to find the colonel of humor

OK, I get the overall joke, but what’s with the “Colonel” bit? Is this something cruise companies do–try to flatter people with bogus titles? If so, I need to sign up for a better class of junk mail.

Just seems odd and not relevant to the overall joke. What say ye?

(I’ve lived a version of this joke: 35 years ago, my wife and I were living in a townhouse. We went for a walk on a Sunday and the end unit in our building was having an open house. “Hey, let’s go look”, she said, “I’ve always wanted to see one of those end units”. A couple of months later, I’m carrying boxes down the sidewalk between townhouses as we start our move…)

by Kilby

Germification

CIDU frequently presents holiday-based material, but virtually all of the holidays we have ever celebrated so far have been American, even if a few of them (such as New Year’s Eve and Halloween) are also celebrated outside of North America. The following collection is presented in recognition of German Unification Day, which just happened to land on October 3rd (in 1990), and has been celebrated on that day ever since.

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Coverly put a “T” in front of the first “CH”, but neglected to do the same for the second, which would have made the pronunciation clearer, but it might have annoyed the syndicate’s censors.

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During my first stay in Germany (over 35 years ago), once I had begun to understand and speak a little of the language, I was frequently astonished (and/or embarrassed) by the linguistic abilities of German toddlers, which were often better than my own.

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Here’s a classic riddle for students beginning to learn the language:
Q – “What does a German parakeet say?“
A – (in a deep voice): “Billig! Billig!” (meaning “cheap”, of course)

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As unlikely as it may seem, Hogan’s Heroes wasn’t just translated into German, they actually did it twice, because the first version didn’t get good enough ratings. The scriptwriters for the newer version invented details and even (unseen) characters not found in the original shows, and the dialog (of the “Germans”) was changed from standard (“Hochdeutsch“) pronunciation to more comical (Bavarian and Saxon) dialects.

The American characters speak normal German in the translation, except for “Newkirk” (Richard Dawson’s character), who was changed from British to being a stutterer, which was both unnecessary and is absolutely unwatchable (at least for anyone who is familiar with the original show). I don’t remember whether LeBeau was synchronized into German with a French accent.

P.S. Keith Knight has drawn at least a dozen strips based on interactions with his (German) wife; there are simply too many of them to include them all here. Perhaps later, in a separate “linguistic” post.

by Kilby

Feets Don’t Fail Me Now!

There are ten pairs of cartoon feet in this Sunday “Ink Pen” strip from 2010:

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Unfortunately, the author didn’t bother to make any of the dialog “characteristic”, which might have helped to identify each figure. I have a positive ID for only five and a half of them. Can anyone match all ten (unseen) talking heads to their correct feet?

P.S. Bonus assignment: Provide an unmistakable (but very short) quote for each character.