Saturday Morning Oys – July 16th, 2022

I think this counts as a pun, even without doing a pun-joke.

The above sent by Andréa, who particularly notes Tom Waits getting mentioned, saying “Never thought I’d see HIM in a comic – made my day!”. And one of your editors had the pleasure of taking a couple classes from Professor Lance Rips, who liked to point out that his name constitutes a complete sentence.

Meant to post this earlier.

And the award for the best re-use of old toy parts goes to …

I learned the word prodigal in the context of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and thought it meant something like all the characteristics of the guy in the story – wandering, absent, returning after a long absence and acting all entitled, etc, all packaged in that one word. Only much later did I start seeing contexts that wouldn’t support all of that meaning, and learned the base sense spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.

And then discovered that was what it meant in the Parable, too. But there had not been enough help from the context to make that choice clear! And this fits the philosopher’s point that, if your informant points to a rabbit and says gavagai, maybe they are telling you the word means rabbit — but maybe it means finger.

No stopping these collections of Oopsies, Quickies, We-can-improve-its, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops? (lucky 13th Series)

But it seems to be offering a moment of inspiration, when he discovers … his own name? (Or his pretend / pun name, no difference.)

It finally turns into a sort of techno-era observational-humor consumer complaint about passwords and online support and automated voice response systems. Stuff we all like to complain about, fine.

But to get there we have to follow a confusing sequence of redefinitions of “cordless” and “wireless” – do these parachutes lack the strings/lines joining the canopy to the harness? Is that what makes them cordless? Oh, you mean automatic deployment of some sort so you don’t use a traditional manual “ripcord”. But the online bit (which is what “wireless” seems to mean here) is an utterly implausible development in the sport.

Y’know, it’s almost there! But there’s nothing at all in the scene to relate to the baseball meaning of bunt, let alone the more specialized sacrifice bunt.

Saturday Morning Oys – May 21st, 2022 

From Andréa:

And which sort of meaning is invoked in “Check your privilege”?

The person sending this in said Today’s “Rubes” would qualify either for a Sunday Funnies or a
Saturday OY post
. So which one won out? Aha, Andréa found it too and says “OY (also, EW – and such a waste when folks are starving in the world)”.
A couple of OYs from Darren, who says “The unshelved is old, but I enjoyed the extra time to get it” (Old inasmuch as “This classic Unshelved striporiginally appeared on May 9, 2011.”)

… and “Along with 10 seconds before I got the loose parts ‘remorse'”:

Saturday Morning Oys – May 14th, 2022 

An Oy from Andréa:

Oy by virtue of wordplay, broadly speaking

At Arnold Zwicky’s Blog he analyzes this and discusses previous comics uses of the same pun.

A trio-oy from Andréa:

But I have told my cats they are not truly brother and sisters. Even though I need to say “Now be nicer to your little sister!”



Saturday Morning Oys – April 30th, 2022

And that explains the smell of gas around here …

A pair sent from Andréa, which she hesitates between calling puns and just plays on words. I don’t know either, but they easily belong in the OYs collection.

Chemgal sent this in, and classifies it as an Oy, but avers that she did LOL at it too.

And a final item from Andréa:

Whenever confronted with people who like to insist that JFK’s  Ich bin ein Berliner meant that he was calling himself a pastry, I like to think of alternate stories where a President needs to reinforce our commitment to Denmark.

Further adventures of Oopsies, Quickies, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops (10th Series)

In the lane of “I guess I get the intended joke point, but the execution is unsuccessful” we have this “powdery math” example from zbicyclist. “I’m lost here. He’s eating one donut, and has another on his plate. That’s two donuts. So how is it 50% less sugar than two donuts?” I guess the *one* donut Leroy is waving around does have 50% less sugar than the two he has altogether, since it’s 50% less donut.

I thought at first it was going to be the funnish kind of percentage mistake coming from inconsistent base. We’re going to increase your supply of widgets by 10%. But now you have too many, so we’ll reduce your supply by 10%. That should put you back where you started …. eh?

Why even begin to use the Jeopardy setup? Then not use their layout? And if we grant that eating triple bacon cheeseburgers presents a risk to a heart, does that require that answering a question about them also does?

The main-punch of this charming joke is clear enough — curiosity may be fatal to cats (as in the common saying) but not to these patients. But what is it that the vet has diagnosed as a case of curiosity? And is it supposed to be clear why he speaks in the singular, and which one of the dogs is the patient?

I dunno, maybe the problem is that the top section looks like a “throwaway panel” but actually it’s essential that it appear right above the scene with the cars. Because it’s the upper-storey window and sign for the gym? But we still have to pin down the connection between weight-lifting and how that extra car got where it is.

If your thing is to visually or linguistically play off some familiar phrase or saying that almost everybody surely knows …. there’s going to be trouble when you use some that nobody knows. (All right, I know about “disruptor”. But that’s about it.)

Okay, let the anatomists explain from the configuration of fingers (and additional hand in panel 2) that the hand doing the artwork in panels 2 and 3 has to be Nancy’s. Even so, what does it get her? And if it could possibly be Fritzi’s own, does that mean her panel 1 nag about “the expression on my face” was just a fancy prank setup?

Saturday Morning Oys – March 26th, 2022

After inserting this one here, I later found it discussed on Arnold Zwicky’s Blog, in his usual exemplary detail and scholarship.

I’ve also seen this with the speech bubble reduced to just the “It don’t mean a thing” part. Which might be even more fun.

Oh, he got us! It turned out not to be an oy about “Youth In Asia”!

Here’s an Ewww-Oy for sure:

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, March 6th, 2022

A link-only reference to this Medusa Far Side:

That’s quite a surprise!

“Thought I was being ghosted.”

A slightly Ewww-flavored LOL:

This might take a moment as a Quickie-CIDU before resolving as a LOL:

Bliss has been running an excellent series with the dog and/or cat in anthropomorphized domestic settings. Here is a good example: