This should fulfill the category tag of “Momentary CIDU”. It presents something genuinely puzzling, but solvable quickly enough that it wouldn’t work as a daily standalone CIDU post.
A delectable one from Mutts’ finicky cat.
I couldn’t resist tossing this in the list … for the sake of quoting these classic lyrics: Ahh you've gone to the finest school, all right Miss Lonely But you know you only used to get JUICED in it Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street But you find out now you're gonna have to get USED to it
Here is the Dark-LOL advertised in the Category links:
This reminds me of a joke by Steven Wright: “I wish, when I was first born, the first thing I said was “Quote” so the last thing I said before I died would be “Unquote.””
Chemgal sends in this pair from Strange Planet:
Is the phrasing that somebody “is assisting the police in their inquiries” used everywhere? I first learned the phrase back when I worked for the Journals Division and a certain scholarly Association worked with us to draft a press release and statement to go in the journal they sponsored and edited but we published. The readership / membership had to be told that there would be an interim Acting Editor for an issue or more, as the Editor’s stay in the UK was being extended as he was needed there “to assist the authorities in their inquiries into the circumstances of the death of his wife”! [mitch]
We just had “The Grill is On” as an OY yesterday, so we’ll pick another song to wake you up this morning. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1fImXAeS-s if the embed doesn’t show up correctly; your new editor is still learning a few things ]
Thanks to Andréa for this OY, which she notes depends on our conventional pronunciation that however does not match how it is said in Dutch. Here is a video she references as a guide:
Not quite complaining about the friend’s unprompted question — it could happen, though normally you’d expect a context something like “Why won’t you X? What are you afraid of?” The problem, the detail-complaint, is with the form of Pete’s reply-question, which carefully spells out a pronunciation which marks it out as belonging to no actual regional or demographic dialect or slang.
Oops! Got the underlying myth premise precisely backwards!
And here they got the underlying business terms precisely backward. As an excuse for something like a missed payment, someone may plead that their assets are not liquid.
Okay, one joke is that there would be a rap version of a mantra. Or that she has been rapping it, or improvising it, or humming it or something, enough to disturb her friend.
But the bothersome aspect of this is how it seems to buy into some magical thinking. The dark-haired friend is linking her (later) ability to get the good parking space to performing a successful meditation now, undisturbed by intrusive mantra rapping. (Or could it be Nichiren Shōshū chanting?)
This is a perfectly fine little pun! Oh, except that there is no basis shown or hinted for why the new top provides more relief from the heat.
(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.
Thanks to Matthew McKeever, who sent this as a CIDU and says: “another stumper … … and I went to parochial school”
Should Chef Boyardee should be canonized (as a saint in heaven) or sent to the other place? Or maybe it’s the corporate moneygrubbers who own the brand (currently Conagra Foods) who should be sent someplace?
This took me a minute, as I don’t often use “home” for a physical house, the building.
For anyone not familiar with the comic, the character on the right, Lyndon, is a psychiatrist or therapist. So Freudian slips are like his stock in trade. But there is something funny in how this patient or client responds to the “Say again?” with an almost-repetition and not acknowledging he has made a correction.
An excellent OY that also had me at least chuckling out loud.
(But I have to confess I don’t know who the guy on the right is. I hope his identity wasn’t another part of the joke.)
Thanks to Rob for these next two OYs (and some hard-to-classify strips coming up elsewhere on the site):
I guess I’m wrong here — I would have said this doesn’t work unless he actually says “Heckuva” (variation possible for the c and/or k, but the v obligatory). But the crowd at GoComics seemed to take it in stride.
Several selections contributed by Andréa coming up:
“I KNEW IMMEDIATELY WHO THIS WAS, EVEN BEFORE READING THE CAPTION . . . DOES THAT MAKE ME A GEEZER??”
Synchronicity–
This Bizarro from Andréa is also taken up under the Arnold Zwicky analytical microscope. I like his term “a Desert Crawl cartoon” for the main trope here.
“SYNCHRONICITY – ABOUT *NOT* LEARNING A LESSON . . .”
Sure, there’s a fix just calling out to us! Change the thought balloon to “Can I come up with the atomic symbol for Sodium?” and the bottom caption to “Na, he can’t.”
Other improvements from y’all?
And on this train of thought, for those with trigonometric inclinations, “Can he remember the sixth of the basic circular functions?” and the answer “No, of ____ __ ___ “.
This Breaking Cat News comes from Andréa as a problem of the physics. “Won’t the eggs fall out if they’re in the holder like this? I’ve not dyed eggs for YEARS, but I distinctly remember putting the egg in the holder small end DOWN . . .”
Here’s a new sub-category. It’s not LOL material, there is no joke to be understood, and it’s not a comic flop either. It’s just something you gotta see!
Okay, the joke here isn’t that far away from easy understanding — it’s that she’s at home, not in a hotel lobby or restaurant waiting area, yet her remark is appropriate only to the latter kind of situations. But the furnishings are not that different from what a public place might have. So how is the casual reader to know this is her home (the regular reader might be expected to recognize the furnishings and decor).
A “quickie CIDU” because it is entirely opaque while misinterpreting the artwork; then becomes a clear and simple joke the instant you re-interpret the artwork.
I think we’ve argued this point before: If a question is posed which is not answered within the comic itself, and is not clearly discernible after thinking about it, can we say “Well there isn’t meant to be an answer, but that’s part of why it’s meant to be funny”? On this one I just don’t get it.
Oh but wait! This was the 4-19 panel so of course it was a 4-20 joke. Ermmm.
Well this one might be called a second-take CIDU. I thought I had gotten it, or enough for a chuckle, when originally reading it – the guy hanging on the wall is a (baseball) catcher, and is the ideal one for the husband/fan-guy, so is his “dream” catcher. But the offstage wife takes that phrasing to mean a “dreamcatcher” wall hanging, whose proper placement she issues a reminder about. I didn’t give any significance to the nickname “Pudge” which the husband bestows on the catcher.
But then now Mark M sends it in and notes some complicating factors: I’m thinking if you’re not a MLB fan AND a geezer, this comic will be confusing. I’m both and it’s still confusing. Pudge was a nickname for Carlton Fisk, who played as a catcher some 50 years ago. A very good player, so “dream catcher” is a great pun. Maybe this belongs as an Oy or LOL. But the CIDU part is the response in Spanish. Fisk was born in the U.S. and had no Latino connections that I’m aware of. And then there’s maybe even more to this if we start to worry about him saying “This is how it works” which may go on only some readings.
(P.S. A few days later, he got down from that wall, and the husband caught him rifling in their liquor cabinet, and strewn about him were several bottles of this family’s favorite kind of American distilled grain whiskey. Which made him the catcher in the rye.)
Comics I Don't Understand 