Sunday Funnies – LOLs, December 29th, 2024 

Boise Ed suggested this venerable “For Better or for Worse” strip (from 1993), commenting: “This one really warmed the cockles of my heart (and I have no idea where that idiom came from).


P.S. Ed didn’t give it a category, he called it “just sweet“, so I’ve added an “Awww” tag.


The New York Times has a Flashback quiz, which asks you to place 8 historical events in chronological order. The New Yorker has now started Laugh Lines, in which you are asked to put some New Yorker cartoons in chronological order. Here’s one:

https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/laugh-lines/no-2

I haven’t tested to what extent these are available to non-subscribers. The cartoon version would seem impossible, but there’s usually a clue to some event (e.g. the word “Obama”).

This one popped up at the end when I finished:



And now a few more Christmas LOL’s / Awws:

Danny Boy send this cutie in: “The pets’ fondness for a “little pink sock” is a running trope. But then the pairing of sock/stocking is I guess “the joke””


And a few holiday entries:




Sunday Funnies – LOLs, December 8, 2024





Radio has certain requirements. Sports announcing, too. Dead air is the enemy. Some of the most painful examples to me are long bicycle races (4+ hours) that end in a sprint stage. So until the last kilometer, not much is going on if there’s no breakaway. But 4 hours must be filled with announcing, regardless. Particularly painful if there’s only one announcer, not two.


A quick look around my dwelling shows 6 books that I’m partway through but intend to finish, a couple of which I haven’t make any progress on in at least a year. (Not counting ones I don’t intend to finish, or haven’t started.) Should I invoke a statute of limitations on these 6?


The New Yorker has posted a page of the magazine’s cartoons which were most liked on Instagram.

This one pairs nicely with Parisi’s one above.


After Thanksgiving is before Thanksgiving

This cartoon by John Jonik was first published in the New Yorker exactly 41 years ago today, but I discovered it too late to add it to the Thanksgiving collection for 2023.


The headline above is modeled after a quote by Sepp Herberger, coach of the German national football soccer team: “After the game is always before the [next] game.” Of course, discussing football (of either variety) can sometimes be even more explosive than discussing politics.


Mark H. submitted this XKCD (#2858) last year; although it did get embedded in comments (such as in the No-Politics Zone), it’s still worth a repeat in a post:


P.S. The “mouseover” or “title” text reads: “An occasional source of mild Thanksgiving tension in my family is that my mother is a die-hard fan of The Core (2003), and various family members sometimes have differing levels of enthusiasm for her annual tradition of watching it.

P.P.S. The link to the HuffPost article in the second panel still works (I already typed it in, so that you don’t have to).




In Germany, it’s called “Erntedankfest” (literally: “harvest thanks festival”), and is celebrated on the first Sunday in October, but it is primarily an event for the liturgical calendar (both Catholic and Protestant), and is not (generally) celebrated by families at home.





Several decades ago, my grandmother just happened to include a leftover bowl of (homemade) mac&cheese on the Thanksgiving dinner table, which resulted in some amused needling from my dad and uncle. However, both my sister and my aunt vigorously defended it, so that for many years thereafter, (fresh) mac&cheese became a standard component of my grandmother’s Thanksgiving menu.



The final panel reminded me of the last scene in the song “Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses.


No cranberries? Frank and Ernest have suggestions:

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, October 27th, 2024

Kilby comments: This Macanudo isn’t really “laugh out loud” funny (it’s closer to an “Awww”), but I found the diagonal framing (and the “lensing” effect in the title panel) so impressive that wanted to share it with everyone:


The strip is even better if you open the image in a new tab (or window), and let it fill the screen.


P.S. As long as we are reminiscing about summer, here’s how Calvin & Hobbes spent a similar day (three decades ago):



P.S. The fact that Bil Keane drew a few of his own “grown up children” strips doesn’t make that Ink Pen any less funny.


Danny Boy was kind enough to send in these LOLs.





Nancy Classics this week gave us this comic from 1955. Half dollars almost call for a geezer alert. Relatively few of them are still made in the U.S.

Dollar coins are no longer minted after multiple failures to gain acceptance (Susan B. Anthony, Sakagawea, U.S. Presidents). The U.S. Mint does produce some American Innovation Dollars, but these are not intended for circulation and are sold at a premium.

From 2001-2020, the U.S. Mint produced half dollars only for collectors because the Federal Reserve already had plenty, but limited production has now resumed.

In 2023, the United States Mint produced a total of 11.38 billion coins for circulation. Here’s the breakdown by denomination:

  • Pennies (1 cent): 6.58 billion
  • Nickels (5 cents): 1.24 billion
  • Dimes (10 cents): 2.37 billion
  • Quarters (25 cents): 1.15 billion
  • Half dollars (50 cents): 40.2 million