Ah, the eternal question: to explain or not to explain?
From Andréa, who calls it “An OY that may, or may not, have been intended”:
And it misses a third reading, an imperative exclamation equivalent to “Shoo!”.
To anyone who might have a birthday this year, Happy Birthday!
This is one that takes up a bunch of hyphenate tags. It’s a LOL-Meta-4thWall with a geezerish allusion to a story (urban legend) you just have to know to make it clear….
Would this hyena might benefit from checking Comics I Don’t Understand?
This Rhymes With Orange LOL is from Alan Smithee.
UPDATE
Let’s see if this image is any cleaner
Thanks to Le Vieux Lapin for this one, which is some sort of word-play on language-related terms, so what is there not to oy?
For Argyle Sweater, one bad pun deserves another. The actual Pony Express is famous, but only existed for a short time, from from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861. Pricing didn’t help (The initial price was set at $5 per 1⁄2 ounce, then $2.50, and by July 1861 to $1. Normal mail service was $0.02 then.). The service continually lost money, and closed two days after the transcontinental telegraph connected Omaha with Sacramento.
Now we’ll segue into some that miss a bit. Kilby reminds us that Segway ceased production in June, 2020. One might ponder the various reasons why the Segway, introduced in 2001 to great fanfare, was a failure (and by the end, so out of mind it might have merited a geezer alert), while now e-bikes are flying off the shelves and electric scooters are commonly seen.
Well, there are some judgement calls here; let”s see if you agree. The “just ok” is enough to qualify it as a pun or Oy; but isn’t especially good, or enough to make it a funny Oy. However, the second shot, using the idea of “settling for [smthg]”, does make it work, and earns at least a chuckle. (No comment on the squirrel’s addition.)
For those of us who’ve served as executor of someone’s estate that wasn’t tied up very well, this will bring back painful memories. Painful OYs here.
And just when we were making plans to officially retire the Synchronicity category, this pair comes along within a week of each other with the same double pun. One factor is that this one was already published here, in last week’s OY list:
But this one is fresh:
(This is under the “not really a pun but word play in general” tag.)
Thanks to Andréa for this Bizarro:
I’m sure I’ve seen this joke used before, but not whether that means this is a repeat or just that the joke has occurred to others. A cursory search does find other examples, and tempting as it is to make a whole post out of three or four of them, let’s leave it at that.
From Andréa:
Just a bit corny.
And a little Oy-Ewww on the side.
And let’s try our luck once more with an unconverted webp image.
This was sent in with the comment “Today’s RWO has understandable bits, but a few riddles:”
The sender of this said “I cannot decide whether today’s Rhymes with Orange is a CIDU or just an attempt at a reference to a work of art that I do not know.”
My attempt to look up whether the first two panels have the accurate tartans for those clans was hampered by starting from a position of zero knowledge, and by what turned out to be a huge set of variants for any name. However, most samples of Sinclair Modern seem to have a lot more red than in the comic. Shrug. Anyway, the pun is in panel 3, and is pretty good.
It’s not uncommon for these two guys to end a conversation with that mutual exchange of “What?”. And actually I’m generally quite content with that and wouldn’t demand more punchline delivery.
When I first heard about a State of the Union speech I figured it must be to announce an award, and wondered if Florida had a chance.
Okay, many a few people still say they use “tin foil” or may even think they use “tin foil”. (And probably a larger number say “tin cans”.) But is this — stating flatly that they use “tin foil” — an acceptable way of putting it? I wouldn’t think so.
To make matters worse, apparently you can still get actual tin foil, as an expensive alternative or as a novelty. (I’m looking at an E-Bay listing of a roll or sheet of 150mm x 300mm for $18.) No, no no no, that does not justify the caption!
Okay, that seems to be a bad answer. Is there a reason he suggests it, apart from being dimwitted? And can we say what a good answer might have been?
The sender of this Rhymes With Orange points out “a minor, but annoying mistake,” that the central pips on the two of hearts should not be both facing the same way. Ooops! And we might add that Ace here doesn’t look much like a playing-card ace, either — they’ve become more just a business card. Heck, they don’t even have a suit!
Okay, I do get the joke. But can’t stop making a face at the degree to which cartoon physics had to stretch to set this up. Unless someone sees an explanation for the saucer’s crash other than it getting hit by a golf ball.
This looks more like our world than Oz. But if that was an Oz-witch then I guess the susceptibility to dissolving by water came here with her. And if amniotic fluid counts as water (as in saying “her water broke”) then it would be dangerous to her. But … but … but … then how have witches ever survived giving birth?
Hmmm, this may be flipping the sense of the Oopsies category …. I don’t see it as even near funny, but really want to give the cartoonist points for mathematical accuracy. That’s a good rendering of a regular dodecahedron, one of the five Platonic solids. (Though some may have preferred to see the -hedra plural.)
A CIDU-Quickie is like a Minor-Mystery — it seems like it will work out to a good joke, but there’s that just-one-thing we can’t understand. But it’s so close, obviously once someone makes a good suggestion there will be nothing to discuss; so it can’t be expected to be a standalone CIDU to satisfy a whole day’s spot.
Thanks to BillR for this CIDU-Quickie from Bizarro, about which he writes “No idea what the x-balls are.” Well I had an idea – but it wasn’t very good. Then BillR wrote back that his wife had a better idea – and yes it was better. But still not certain. So, what say you?
(Did this already get posted separately and discussed?? I thought so but can’t find it.)
This is a case of what some defined the “oopsie” for – a possibly good joke, but something about the drawing is wrong, or as in this case, tiny, scribbled, and indecipherable, to the extent that the joke is quite lost.
So the anticipated encounter is …. “Hold on! Where are you going with that ape” … “No, this is my kid! Look, here’s our tickets, that proves it.”
Comics I Don't Understand 