








Mark H. sent this one in, just for enjoyment by ewe.


Hilburn stays out of Arlo range by avoiding the little blue pill.



This cartoon by John Jonik was first published in the New Yorker exactly 41 years ago today, but I discovered it too late to add it to the Thanksgiving collection for 2023.

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The headline above is modeled after a quote by Sepp Herberger, coach of the German national football soccer team: “After the game is always before the [next] game.” Of course, discussing football (of either variety) can sometimes be even more explosive than discussing politics.
Mark H. submitted this XKCD (#2858) last year; although it did get embedded in comments (such as in the No-Politics Zone), it’s still worth a repeat in a post:

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P.S. The “mouseover” or “title” text reads: “An occasional source of mild Thanksgiving tension in my family is that my mother is a die-hard fan of The Core (2003), and various family members sometimes have differing levels of enthusiasm for her annual tradition of watching it.“
P.P.S. The link to the HuffPost article in the second panel still works (I already typed it in, so that you don’t have to).


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In Germany, it’s called “Erntedankfest” (literally: “harvest thanks festival”), and is celebrated on the first Sunday in October, but it is primarily an event for the liturgical calendar (both Catholic and Protestant), and is not (generally) celebrated by families at home.



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Several decades ago, my grandmother just happened to include a leftover bowl of (homemade) mac&cheese on the Thanksgiving dinner table, which resulted in some amused needling from my dad and uncle. However, both my sister and my aunt vigorously defended it, so that for many years thereafter, (fresh) mac&cheese became a standard component of my grandmother’s Thanksgiving menu.

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The final panel reminded me of the last scene in the song “Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses.
No cranberries? Frank and Ernest have suggestions:

Maggie the Cartoonist submitted this ancient Garfield as an OY, commenting: “Farms must be fun.”

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This is a repeat, but it would have been even better as a “Garfield minus Garfield” strip.


Mark H. submitted this Frazz as an OY, admitting that it “Took me a minute…” (to get the joke). However, since at least one Editor still doesn’t understand it, a CIDU has been added to the tags. Perhaps Mark would be so kind…?

This Carpe Diem panel was submitted back in July by James Riendeau, who wrote, “Carpe Diem tends to be one I frequently do not get, but today’s was a real head-scratcher. It must be a cultural reference I’m not familiar with.”
Niklas Eriksson is Swedish; those “P”-Jackets might actually be worn there, but I sort of doubt it.

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Solution: The “P” stands for “parking”; the guy is a meter reader, and he’s writing a ticket for the “parked” whale.

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P.S. Claes Oldenberg was the only real mystery, the rest of them were fairly clear.
Early voting has started. The US election will soon be over … maybe.

Some of you likely came across this a few days ago, when Danny Boy in the comments, but it’s worth another chuckle.


This cartoon circulating around the internet probably qualifies as a CIDU, but the joke depends on a wordplay, so I’m posting it here.

I searched for the original source, but couldn’t find it in the many, many times it has been posted on the internet before I saw it this week.



This mashup in The Big Picture recently appeared in an article at The Daily Cartoonist:

Mark H. sends this one in. “Bad pun! Bad! Bad!”





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And let’s try out a pairing of some bacon with some fur:



This one was already a massive anachronism when it was originally published, and is even more so now:






Rather dumb word-argument. But it prompts memory of an assortment of senior-targeted advertising campaigns which for a while used the phrasing “age 50 or better” or “age seventy-and-a-half or better” etcetera. It was supposed to be obvious, yet a sort of joke, that better would mean older. At least one that I heard regularly for a while did change to older; but then later reverted to better ; so I guess there was some complaint but it got resolved, or just overruled.



Come to think of it, probably the word-level associations of squashing things must have played a role in my lifelong aversion to the vegetable of that name.

Chak notes “I’ve read En attendant Godot several times, and I still don’t have a clue.”
Could one expect Godot to comment? Waiting for your comments below.


Some comics with socks appeal:






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From the “Wisdom from the Funny Papers” Department. Sometimes a “cry for help” must be responded to with help. Sometimes when “they’re just doing that for attention” the humane response includes paying attention.
BTW, Maritsa Patrinos of the Six Chix now has her own separate strip, called Working Cats and appearing at Comics Kingdom.

I thought this was going to be about sentence-adverbs; but it was better than that. (Hopefully, everybody remembers what the controversies and pseudo-rules about sentence-adverbs were.)
No, I don’t see a joke here. But also I can’t say there’s supposed to be one, so it’s not really a CIDU. So let’s just take a minute to admire the artistry here. Such draughtsmanship! That ice-cliff shows us both distance and height, even while a whole surface is devoid of detail.

