The latest Wondermark has the scrollover text “There was a period back in October/November when George was watching a lot of lute videos on YouTube.” The fact that “a lot of lute videos” are now available to a couple of billion people is one of the reasons I’m happy to live at this moment in history.
Posted by acilius on December 26, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/12/26/it-looks-like-a-good-gift-to-me/
Posted by CMStewart on December 21, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/12/21/non-virtual-wabac-machine/
Posted by believer1 on December 15, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/12/15/snowman-comics/
Keith Knight’s latest K Chronicles cartoon:
Some recent comments by Barack Obama, and a little joke about them:
In an interview with NBC News, Obama said those offended by the legal privileges given to Mohammed by virtue of getting a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal won’t find it “offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.”
Obama quickly added that he did not mean to suggest he was prejudging the outcome of Mohammed’s trial. “I’m not going to be in that courtroom,” he said. “That’s the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury.”
The president then elaborated: “I’m not going to be on the jury that will report its guilty verdict at 3pm on September 11, 2010, nor will I be the one who administers the lethal injection that will kill Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a week before Election Day 2012. I used to teach constitutional law, so I can tell you that it would be a violation of due process for me to do those things.”
In fact, I do believe that they can find an impartial jury in New York City. I would go so far as to say that Manhattan is probably the one place in the USA where it would be easiest to empanel twelve jurors who can judge the case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on its merits. That’s not only because the island is a bastion of liberalism, but also because the further you go from Ground Zero the more Americans you find who feel they have to prove that 9/11 was an event in their own lives and not just something they saw on TV. If as Knight sarcastically suggests they did set up a temporary courtroom on the former site of the World Trade Center, the attacks would have a definite reality for the jurors- they would be real events, with specific causes, specific consequences, specific forms that could be examined empirically. Go a thousand miles away, and the attacks become a symbol with an infinite variety of overpowering emotional associations. That’s part of the reason why the Bush-Cheney administration had an easier time using the attacks to sell its agenda to voters far outside of New York than to those in the city in those first years of the “War on Terror.”
Posted by acilius on November 18, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/11/18/venue/
There don’t seem to be any rules in English about which collective nouns will be treated as singular and which will be treated as plural. By some arbitrary process, English speakers settle on singular forms for some collective nouns and plural forms for others. Yesterday’s Andy Capp got me thinking about this:
Of course, the joke doesn’t make sense- no one says “”I was just wondering how my saving is doing?,” no matter how logical it might be to say such a thing.
The question that all this raises, of course, is why I read Andy Capp. To which the answer is, it was in the paper when I was five, and I thought then that the reason it never made me laugh was that I wasn’t sufficiently grown-up for it. By the time it occurred to me that there might be a different reason, I was in the habit.
Posted by acilius on November 18, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/11/18/singular-and-plural/
I'm sure it works every time!
Posted by acilius on November 17, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/11/17/clever-commuting/
A herd of cows; a flock of sheep; a pride of lions; a pack of dogs.
A murmur of starlings; an exaltation of larks; a murder of crows; a parliament of owls.
Just in time for Halloween, David Malki’s Wondermark offers a list of collective nouns for beings of species less well-documented than those above (click the image to read a legible version of it on his site.)
Posted by acilius on October 30, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/10/30/some-collective-nouns/
The highlights from recent editions of Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird include a story from the 30 August collection about an alternative lifestyle catching on in Japan. Some Japanese men and a few Japanese women have taken to carrying dolls around with them and identifying these dolls as their significant others. One man “said he would like to marry a real, 3-D woman, ‘but look at me. How can someone who carries this doll around get married?” The 6 September collection included this story under the heading “can’t possibly be true”:
The August issue of Gourmet magazine highlighted the apparently high quality of sushi prepared and sold at a BP gas station near the intersection of Ridgeway and Poplar in Memphis, Tenn. A sushi chef works on-site and reportedly sells 300 orders a day. [Commercial-Appeal (Memphis), 7-23-09]
This issue includes some jokes that are old, but genuinely funny. For example, “Planet Proctor” includes these old warhorses:
“If you try to fail and you succeed… which have you done?”
“The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao asks nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.”
Jon Winokur’s “Curmudgeon” column preserves some funny lines this month as well. From William “Blackie” Sherrod, “”If you bet on a horse, that’s gambling. If you bet you can make three spades, that’s entertainment. If you bet cotton will go up three points, that’s business. See the difference?” From C. Wright Mills, “Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than than the man who inherited his father’s store or farm.” From Ambrose Bierce, “Finance is the art or science of manging revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager.” Bierce’s point is made more emphatically by Fred Schwed: “A out-of-town visitor was being shown the wonders of New York’s financial district. When the party arrived at the Battery, one of his guides indicated some handsome ships riding at anchor. He said ‘Look, those are the bankers’ yachts. And over there are the brokers’ yachts.’ The naïve customer asked ‘Where are the customers’ yachts?”
M. D. Rosenberg makes some points. For example: “Whenever someone says, “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart,” all I hear is, “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart.” And something I’d never thought of: “I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.” Also a question that I’ve been trying to answer for the last few decades, “How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?” I’ve seen it done- I saw my mother fold a fitted sheet neatly, so that it looked like it did when it first came out of the package. That was in 1977. She hasn’t done it since, and I’ve never come close.
Posted by acilius on October 30, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/10/30/funny-times-november-2009/
Eve Tushnet promotes her review of some recent film release with a mock headline declaring it “A terrific date movie! Unless you’re heterosexual or something.” I love that “or something.” I’m not sure whether she includes her non-heterosexual self among those for whom the picture is a less than terrific date movie.
Click to read
Friend of the blog Duncan Mitchel has recently put up two posts (here and here) about something that Tushnet’s line reminded me of. In a 1985 edition of her strip Dykes to Watch Out For, cartoonist Alison Bechdel lays out a test for movies. “One, it has to have at least two women in it; who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man.” Duncan calls this “Liz Warren’s Rule,” because Alison says she got it from her friend Liz Warren. In his first post, Duncan looks at some published works that predate the DTWOF strip and include precursors of the Rule; in his second, he describes a South Korean movie that surprises him by meeting the requirements of the Rule. Some of the precursors seem to me a bit harsh; for example, in an essay published in 1975 Samuel R. Delany wrote that “any novel that does not, in this day and age, have a strong, central, positive relation between women can be dismissed as sexist (no matter the sex of the author) from the start.” A woman who had written a novel which did not have such a relation at its center might be rather surprised to find Mr Delany dismissing her work as sexist, but that’s what the guy said.
Posted by acilius on October 18, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/10/18/sexuality-women-and-the-movies/
Mrs Acilius and I have had this “Crankshaft” strip on the door inside our bathroom since 22 February 2008:
The missus is a sociologist with an interest in what happens among people when they label each other; she also has a mobility impairment. So this strip has both an intellectual and an emotional resonance for her.
Here’s today’s “Beetle Bailey”:
I read “Beetle Bailey” mainly because I keep trying to figure out what the Walkers would rather be doing than producing it. Here they tell us. This joke would make sense if the strip were about someone with a mobility impairment who has trouble finding usable restrooms and who has a service dog. Mrs Acilius meets that description. The Walkers should meet her, they could base a strip on her life.
Posted by acilius on October 17, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/10/17/the-necessary-room/
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