Let’s appropriately start with the Pledge of Allegiance.
A serious moment from Nancy. The Gilchrists could do this type of thing well.
Now it’s time for a picnic and fireworks!
And one good Baldo deserves another! We never got anything more exciting than sparklers, regardless of what the neighbors got.
The Founding Fathers had to contend with a lot of logistic difficulties in declaring independence.
Let’s not forget, though, that the Founding Fathers were also quite interested in making a buck, and modern America continues that tradition!
But eventually the Founding Fathers brought their interests into harmony with each other.
But beyond commercialism and politics, there’s a country out there to treasure.
This land is your land and this land is my land From the California to the New York island From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me (Woody Guthrie)
Thanks to Dana K for this Today’s Szep. The main joke is easy enough: the mere unlikely existence of this rack and these categories of card message. But what is all that ancillary action supposed to be about? Do these two know each other? Or is the woman just a judgemental bystander? Is she saying something, or just standing there with her jaw dropping?
On the first hand, this seems to me an excellent job of working out a technical experiment in the art of cartooning. Color-coding the speech bubbles could represent an improvement on trying to aim the pointers with precision, or stretching them around, or finding a basis for making the comic multi-panel so the dialogue can be rearranged.
But OTOH, the content of the dialogue is miles away from being at all funny. And is not even folk-wise, in that pseudo-deep way Frazz is so fond of trying.
Here’s a FoxTrot sent in by Kilby for the Oopses list. He says there is a real-world chronology error in showing Alpha-bits cereal in a current cartoon scene. “Alphabits was taken off the market in 2006, and made only brief periodic re-appearances, before disappearing again a year ago (May 2021). [Wikipedia link] The reason I checked is that I was not able to find them the last time I visited Washington. It’s possibe that Bill Amend is writing his strips a whole year in advance, but I seriously doubt it.”
Kilby also presents a judgement dilemma. “When a cartoonist recycles an ancient joke (albeit with ‘improvements’), is it better (A) To admit the crime, or (B) Just pretend that nobody will notice how ancient the gag really is?”
(A)
(B)
A classic case of “Oops!” from Le Vieux Lapin. Oops, I forgot to draw a cloud that looks like a comma.
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'”:
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.)
Sources say that either the exclamation “Great Scott” is not attached to any particular person with that name; or else may be associated with Sir Walter Scott, or with U.S. General Winfield Scott. But here, with the talk of Antarctica and the South Pole, surely they intend some kind of glance at famous and unfortunate polar explorer Robert F Scott?
And another from Andréa, who calls this “Barely an oy”. Also fodder for you dialectologists out there.
“Here’s an apocryphal story that I figure prominently in.”A CIDUer received this in some email without source info, and passed it along. The artist seems to be Mike Gruhn, who posts cartoons to Instagram and here-and-there; and has his own site, called WebDonuts. He had a feature called Caption Challenge or Caption Contest, which seems to end in 2015. A note on the WebDonuts site from 2019 indicates that Instagram would be the place to look for his current material.
The mirror is sketched oddly and had me thinking for a second it was a cleaver! But thankfully, no!
CIDU Bill had saved this one to an unused draft dated 2019/08/17 and called “Strange Family”, as a CIDU:
We can’t let a Whack-a-Mole reference go by without linking to Cameron Esposito’s “Guacamole” bit! (In case the “start at” feature in the link doesn’t work, you might want to skip an intro and jump to about 1:40.)
This LOL-Meta from Argyle Sweater surprises me a little by taking it for granted that kids that age would tease (or try to insult) each other in the terms Sara used.
I just need to say I’m impressed how he selected and wrote out the twenty-five names.
And a thorough Ewww-LOL:
Here’s the same vet who treated the cute “I’m a little horse”.
This semi-CIDU OY is from Boise Ed, who notes the apparent error that they are doing downhill skiing but the text is about cross-country. But why is it not actually in error? Hmm?
Comics I Don't Understand 