Sunday Funnies – LOLs, November 6, 2022

Kilby sends this in, wondering why it was run on September 11, 2022. There are some standard characters (Ahab, Diogenes, Napoleon), among others. I’ve earnestly tried to figure out the two characters in the upper right corner of the 2nd panel, but frankly I don’t get it.

Kilby also notes that November 6th is the 50th anniversary of Frank and Ernest. Their Wikipedia entry has some interesting notes. The strip is distributed in Spanish as Justo y Franco. The strip depends so heavily on wordplay that I wouldn’t think it would translate well.

But by hitting the random button at GoComics, I see many that are understandable in any language.


This Frank and Ernest is a CIDU to me. 8 isn’t straight.

For obsessives who feel you need to see the Carolyn Hax column this accompanied, here is a guest link. For the rest of you, the connection to the cartoon is just that the advice question involves parent/child conflict.


Don’t you want to hear a few more rrrrr’s in that?


Ludwig is such a patient little guy! This semi-LOL is in truth mostly an Awww for the ailurophile crowd. And the White Meat Chicken Florentine from Fancy Feast Medleys in the 3oz can with green label is a standby in the Mitch4 household.


Knitting a Searle Cardigan? (Bonus CIDU)

Thanks to Harvey Heilbrun for separately submitting and discussing this one:

Yes, you’ve seen it before! It was embedded as a comment in the “Shouldn’t his brow be knitted?” thread, and discussed in some respects, alongside the cartoon in the main post there.

The discussion there touched on the relation of Nick G’s illustrations to the Carolyn Hax advice column, and on the palpable relation to The Scarlet Letter. But Harvey points out something not noticed in that discussion: The man’s newspaper has a mostly legible title or headline on the visible back page: “After Searle”.

Harvey and the editors all figure this refers to John Searle, prominent American philosopher — and not to, say, the big pharma company. But what is the point? Is Nick sneaking an irrelevancy past us? Or hinting at a connection?

Whatting their whats?

(If you think the Carolyn Hax column where this appeared might explain it, you can try this freebie link and read it for yourself. But I thought the connection was barely discernible.)


Afterthought. — This had already been in the queue for about a week, with the title “Whatting their whats?” as still shown, when I happened on this Frog Applause and wanted to postscript it for the wording.

Sunday Funnies – LOLs and OYs , December 26th, 2021 

This seems to work from a double mis-aiming:

This one got a chuckle from Chemgal. While not really a CIDU, it does have me scratching my head to see if I can remember where “There can only be one” could come from. Oh, you say there are multiple sources? No, but there can only …

Thanks to Rob for this Stahler:

And Rob steps right back in with this 1-and-done:

A LOL-Ewww or CIDU-Ewww from Kliban:

Dressed to Protect

From Chak, who asks “Is this missing a caption?  Is he her father or her witsec protector?”

For anyone who hasn’t seen this info before, the “Nick and Zuzu” comics by Nick Galifianakis are published first as illustrations for a Washington Post advice column by Carolyn Hax. And they don’t have captions there, nor when appearing in GoComics or other comics outlets; though the Hax column headline is sometimes close enough to work as a title for the comic. However, his drawings don’t always adhere closely to the content of the column.

So viewing the column with this illustration in place will spoil enough to answer one of Chak’s questions, but will not explain everything about the scene and the characters’ appearance. CIDUers who don’t mind a half-spoiler could check out the original column with illustration, or if that presents paywall problems then try this alternate link.

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, February 21st, 2021





In your circle of friends, child-raising experts, and ethicists, what generally is the next step in thinking from that kind of statement?


Spacer with multicolor segments spacer4 divider

Special section on Policing


And this Whamond was picked up from Arnold Zwicky’s blog, which also discusses the “grammar police” construction for our convenience.