Last week — 4th wall needed for a watching-the-news story. (It’s just the date formatting that makes this look like a panel from the future.)
The joke is somewhat spoiled (or at least delayed) by the way the sightlines are drawn. But it emerges that what sound like rules for a tweenage girl being left home alone are being directed to Baby Bear (the dog); who isn’t agreeing to them. (And yes, still downloads from WaPo as .AVIF and needs pre-converting.)
And this Wondermark is not really much of a LOL, but it does provide a chuckle, and prompts me to remember encountering another sense of “Bridge club” in some novels of British India (probably Paul Scott) — it was a party with several ethnic groups invited, and intended to bridge the cultural gaps.
Now that Word Press has adjusted to occasional WEBP format images (and most of our browsers), we face a new challenge: AVIF files. Just in case it doesn’t show properly, I will follow it with a PNG conversion. But here’s hoping the AVIF will work in its given form and in future we needn’t bother producing conversions.
It’s the Final Four in college basketball, and the start of baseball season, so get ready for vicarious excitement!
But is there a Conservation of Vicarious Excitement?
Fact checking: Recent historical opinion tends to exculpate the bovine in question!
And as a gesture of public service, here is a corrected image for those who encountered it horizontal:
So, what holiday is Nancy refusing to appear on, on February 22, 1950?
Some choices:
My parents welcomed me into the world. I’m sure it felt like a holiday to my Mom, after a 3 day labor. As I am now a Geezer, that’s Geezer Alert #1. Bushmiller was probably unaware of this.
It was also Ash Wednesday, which it is also is today. That’s more of a holy day (but not a Holy Day of Obligation) than a holiday, though.
February 22 was then the national holiday of Washington’s Birthday, until that was moved to the third Monday in February in 1971. That’s over 50 years ago, so that’s Geezer Alert #2. And, while the national holiday is officially Washington’s Birthday, it’s more commonly known now as Presidents’ Day.
Lastly, if we were asking a ten year old George Washington what day he was born, he would have said February 11, 1731, not February 22, 1732. The British Calendar Act of 1751 to adopt the Gregorian calendar was applied retroactively to some dates, changing both the day and the year. Therefore, the fact that this was rerun on January 31, 2023 seems appropriate.
Why would they have changed George’s birthday? The answer may lie in this passage from the British Calendar Act of 1751: “no Person or Persons whatsoever shall be deemed or taken to have attained the said Age of one and twenty Years, or any other such Age as aforesaid, or to have completed the Time of such Service as aforesaid, until the full Number of Years and Days shall be elapsed on which such Person or Persons respectively would have attained such Age, or would have completed the Time of such Service as aforesaid, in case this Act had not been made”. To make the proper calculation of when young George would turn 21, his birthday had to move.
Okay, it has been explained to me. Hence, marked “CIDU-solved”.
But it’s already scheduled, and rather than scurry to replace it let’s give some eager cidu-beaver the opportunity to jump in and say “Well clearly, ….”
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)
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?
Comics I Don't Understand 