Kilby writes: this is another old draft post that CIDU Bill set up, but never completed. Even though the strip was originally published in November (2018), I thought it would work better if summer vacation were at least on the horizon, if not actually started.
When this strip first appeared last September, I was sorry that I couldn’t read Rhymes with Orange from a source that had a functional comment system, because I was expecting flame wars from the dedicated Star Wars fanatics. However, since September seemed most inappropriate for the subject matter, I decided to schedule this post for a more opportune date in May. There were, of course, two obvious possibilities, but I decided to go with the first one (feel free to re-read this eight days from now).
P.S. The cinnamon bun on top of the Queen’s head is a nice touch, but I will leave it to the considerate (flame-proof) fans in the CIDU audience to pick apart why this strip is just all wrong.
I mistook those candles in the background for cat-hair rollers!
And the pun factor is: how about some gin or vodka?
I’m a little dubious how “went on the wagon” works out here. But let it be noted, there are probably several cities with drinking establishments called Crow-Bar or Cro-Bar.
Okay, do you agree this belongs in the LOLs? Or would you put it in OY, because the patient’s mishearing error depended on a near-miss similarity of sound between urine and hearing?
Thanks to Chak for this LOL from the Chuckle Bros:
When the New Yorker website has an outage, you see this message.
Hey, just a minute there! Are you saying there’s something wrong with that? It strikes me as an eminently reasonable basis for a preference.
Here is a sampler from recent episodes of an Australian strip that is new on our radar, Insanity Streak by Tony Lopes.
I recently ran into not just one, but a pair of (independent) comics that I just happened to completely misinterpret when I first read them. Both readings were humorous, just, well, “different”.
At first glance I thought the woman was trying to trick innocent candidates into volunteering (only first-timers would be so silly as to actually raise a hand; anyone with jury experience would know that maintaining a low profile is the best strategy to escape selection). Then I re-examined the artwork and realized that the gag was just a simple pun. Ooops.
The author wasn’t making any unusual wordplay with “a star is born“, but I mistakenly identified a joke that was not there. The German term for “cataract” is “grauer Star“, and I forgot that it’s not called that in English, and was expecting the “googly eye” to go blind in the next day’s strip. Ooops again.
Feel free to chime in with similar experiences, if you like.
There’s no question about whether these two comics are (nearly) synchronous, the puzzle is why both of them showed up one day apart in November. There are no Jewish holidays anywhere in the vicinity.
Although they were invented in the 1940s, household microwave ovens did not become widespread until the mid 1970s, but I know for certain that I’ve been using the verb “nuke” (as a synonym for “cook in a microwave“) for at least four decades, because I vividly remember the puzzlement it caused for a friend’s son in the early 1980s. I find it somewhat surprising that the term could become so commonly accepted in less than a decade, but thinking back, this may be the very first time that I have ever seen the word “nuke” used in this sense in printed (albeit comic) form.
This Rhymes with Orange strip might have worked perfectly back in early summer, but now it just seems awkward. The new corporate name just isn’t easy to adapt into usable slang, and even if it were, the political deadweight surrounding the takeover and renaming ruins any possible remaining humor.
In a curious instance of personal asynchronicity, it wasn’t until a couple of hours after I had written the text above (including the headline) that I saw Sunday’s Doonesbury, which needs no further commentary: