JMcAndrew notes: “He’s pretending to be having a medical emergency? A seizure? Allergic Reaction? As a way to entertain his grandchild on video chat? Why?”
Parisi is 64, about the age to have young grandchildren. I’ve done this with my grandchildren, who are always amused, and usually want me to do it again.
JMcAndrew sends this in: “I have to agree with Ditto. It’s ridiculous that they only have 3 birthday candles and her plan was to just hope her 6-year-old wasn’t perceptive enough to notice. Is the family in such financial hardship that they can’t afford some new birthday candles? This is sad more than funny but I like how mad Lois looks here as she cuts the candles in half.”
No, when it comes to the first panel, I can’t even!
A word I was more likely looking for was “elliptical”.
Well, I’m going to call this a colorist’s error (leading to an interpretive crux) …
… with me thinking it should be green like the delivery bag, but squirrel-shaped, to show that McKenzie (the delivery person, a main character of the strip) succeeded in trapping the critter inside. And she is then giving the customer a live animal, plus whatever part of the order remains unconsumed in the bag, plus (uh-oh!) food already eaten by the animal.
But on further look, I was wrong. It is meant to be the squirrel, with face details clearly shown. And a large satisfied tummy. (Where is the bag? Did he eat that too?) Is her comment to the customer meant to imply the customer could force regurgitation (or slice the animal open!?!) and treat the semi-digested food as still good for human consumption? Well, she doesn’t simply think this will fly — some of the patches in the sky are not clouds but anxiety-sweat beads — so I guess she conveys a just-kidding with that. But who knows?
TBH, I don’t entirely understand this. I mean, I understand the heartwarming message about group loyalty and generosity — but not whether there was actually supposed to be anything funny.
Wait, could this be heading for an idiom-origins story about “bought the farm”? No? Nah!
Defeatist, that is, in that the only solution is to give up and do something else. *Not* “do some lateral thinking and that could help” . Or simply “why don ‘t you take a break, and get refreshed”?
But then again, it could be trying to get a little meta, with “the box” also meaning the borders of the cartoon strip panels. But projected back to the realism layer, that means … what? The cartoonist will yank you from your toils?
These are non-CIDUs or semi–CIDUs, where the joke or main point isn’t seriously in doubt, but some specifics of the writing or artwork seem somewhat off, or incomplete, or in need of explanation or correction. (Yet we don’t want to get into the territory of mockery or purely complaining.)
This first one is from Chak who calls it an Oops, and comments “The oopsies I’m thinking of are about well-drawn comics that slipped up”. In this Fastrack, the custom paperclip seems to change position without physical cause.:
Here was a BetweenFriends that seems to be illustrating a familiar saying with a situation that shows something different. In the picture, isn’t it more someone who has gone down and may not come back up?
The Far Side
We have been getting plenty of submissions or suggestions for The Far Side cartoons by Gary Larson, both classic and recent, some scanned from books and some copied off the 2019-established web site. Some suggestions were meant as classic solo-CIDU posts, but others might fit into one of these quasi-CIDU categories.
But there’s a big problem, that Larson has made a public point of his wish to not have his cartoons reprinted without permission and not under his control. There are people who doubt that this would have legal force if he tried to enforce it; but it doesn’t seem entirely right to defy the wishes of someone whose work we appreciate and want to enjoy.
So generally we have been responding to submissions and suggestions with a reminder of those constraints.
But thinking about Internet standards, short of copying and reposting something, and short also of the middle ground of embedding something by link, there is the fundamental WWW action of linking. That is well established as not infringing anything.
It’s also pretty inconvenient! Hard to have informed discussion threads when the item being commented on is not visible in the same window or tab! Still, it’s not beyond our abilities, CIDUers.
Sent in by Findus as an artwork/layout question rather than overall CIDU, this linked Far Side cartoon raises for them the question “what’s with the lovingly executed reflection in the mirror that is not a ‚mirror image‘? Is this intentional?”
And from Brian R we have this linked Far Side cartoon, which he suggested as a CIDU – but then understood fine the next day!
There actually is a certain amount of good sense to the now-classic bit about tech support asking “Have you tried turning it off and then on again?” as made famous by “The IT Crowd”. Now here in Lard’s World Peace Tips, it is cited in the wrong order. Is that the joke? Or was it accidental? Or intentional but supposed to be meaningful here, where the kite in the picture seems to be “off” since it is not flying, so is poised to be turned on, i.e., launched? My gosh that was long-winded!
Down the Garden Path Dept. Can you convince me this Loose Parts does not at all involve people getting squeaky voices from inhaling Helium?
From Usual John, who says “I don’t understand the ageism reference, since the unhappy mom does not appear to be the oldest (or, for that matter, the youngest) of the women in the cartoon.”
I (Winter Wallaby) would add to that that china teacups in general seem like a very nice present. But it strikes me as bizarre to just give one, regardless of the age of the recipient.
The startled reaction of Emma (the daughter) in panel 2 must be preparing us for the weird drama of panel 4; but why? And why is she wearing gloves — dishwashing gloves? — for her big announcement? And especially, what does she mean by “purge”? A reference to the movie series? A different way of talking about simplifying and tossing out whatever does not give joy (and is not worth inheriting)? We hope it’s not another name for “juice cleanse”!
P.S.
So mothers saying this to daughters is the new version of this venerable trope!
Comics I Don't Understand 