Comics That Made Me Laugh Out Loud Late in November

…and one LOL that goes on the Arlo Page

He’ll Be Done in a Jif

Delaney Davis donated this for the Ewww Files, Nicole as an Arlo Page candidate (adding “I will NEVER eat peanut butter again!”), and Julie gave it the Trifecta: Ewww, Arlo, and lol.

The November Comics That Made Me Laugh Out Loud collection will be online Friday, by the way.

Holiday Card Observation (OT)

• If you feel the need to include your family’s last name when you sign the card, these people probably shouldn’t be on your list at all.

Nothing

Criticism of comics with a message? Criticism of criticism of comics with a message? Confused writers? Gratuitous Seinfeld reference?

CIDUs and Don’ts

As the new format hits the half-year mark (on November 30), and traffic on the site has increased more than 10-fold, there are a few things I should clarify:

We discuss individual daily comics here, and occasionally entire storylines. We sometimes react negatively to these particular comic and storylines. But this is not a place for people to say “I hate this comic strip and its artist should never be allowed to work in this business again.” The CIDU page is a place for people who love comics, and the artists deserve respect. In the old format, when I chose which comments ended up on the page, it was easy for me to control this. Now I have to trust visitors to accept the rules.

Also: Sometimes, whether a particular person understands a particular comic can sometimes be incredibly random. People send me an average of 2 or 3 comics a day, and I give them explanations of virtually all of them: These might seem glaringly obvious to me, and then I’ll simply not get (and put on the page) a comic that’s glaringly obvious to everybody else. Sometimes when this happens, I get a comment such as “Hey, are you stupid or something?”

My response is generally along the lines of “No, I just didn’t get this particular comic. Leave and don’t come back.” I really hate to ban anybody, but I have no use for anybody who will come into my (virtual) home to insult me.

For those of you who are very new here, or are new to the new format, we’ve moved a bit beyond just explaining comics: We also have special sections for the Arlo Page (comics not appropriate for the young or easily offended) and the related Arlo Award (comics that appeared in mainstream newspaper syndication which obviously slipped by the censors — this being one of the more blatant examples).

(Contrary to popular belief, anybody can send me Arlo candidates: It might seem as if I only accept them from Nicole, but that’s simply because she has a remarkably developed sense of Arlodar)

By the way, the Arlo Page is named after Arlo Guthrie. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Other special categories we have here are the Ewww Files (fairly self-explanatory), Comics That Made Me Laugh Out Loud (sort of a monthly hall of fame for comics we really, really got a kick out of) , and the ChadWatch. ChadWatch are comics that attempt to find humor from the 2000 presidential elections, usually by making references to hanging chads. I began this section back in 2001, because I was curious to pinpoint the very last chad-related gag (because seriously, the joke was well past played out by the time Bush took office). I never suspected that almost 7 years later, we’d still be collecting these.

Then there’s the Politically Incorrect Comic of the Week and Comics That Made Me Groan Out Load. Comics That Made Me Say “Right On!” has been proposed.

Rather than cluttering up the site, I’ve moved most of the advertising offsite to http://www.comicsidontunderstand.com. You can help support CIDU by using this page for your Amazon.com needs, or by checking out some of the links on the page. Or not. I never expected CIDU to turn a profit, or even to cover a month’s worth of hosting fees: When a make a few cents on a sale or a click, I just think of it as somebody making a gesture of thanks. People have suggested I add a PayPal “please give me some money” button but I don’t know… I really don’t feel comfortable doing that.

And finally, if you have anything to send me — a comic you don’t understand, an Arlo or ChadWatch candidate or whatever, a suggestion, a warning that one of my posts contains a rather blatant Freudian slip — please e-mail me at cidumay2004 @ yahoo.com.

Give Us a Rake

Note to Tom Batiuk: Someday, some cartoonist will elicit a week’s worth of humor and entertainment out of a man raking leaves.

This isn’t that week.

Like a Pill

Another one for the Ewww Files

Decaf

When somebody sends me a cat comic, at least sometimes I can explain it. We start getting into latte territory… forget it.

Salad Days

Breaking

Pinny sent this one for the Ewww Files:

Leaving Harry

This week-long Harry Dinkle Rakes His Leaves adventure begs the question of who’s been raking them all the years before he retired (and let’s ignore for a moment the fact that he retired ten years ago although he’s acting as is this is a new development).

My prediction: The next debilitating illness Funky Winkerbean will address is Alzheimer’s: Harry has actually been raking his leaves and mowing the lawn and watching television for the past ten years, but every day he forgets ever having done these things before.

Super Arlol

• This Randy Milholland comic (which has nothing to do with his Something Positive strip) is both very funny and very vulgar (and what more can you ask for?)
• More “Arlol”

The Man Who Invented Surfboarding

I don’t know about anybody else, but I find the mental image of Al Gore gloating — or even smiling — scarier than global warming.

But seriously… since he probably wouldn’t be gloating, what’s the joke here?

No Such Thing as a Free Ride

For those of you who asked… Well, actually, those of you who asked, I answered… so for those of you who should have asked or meant to ask… It’s a song lyric which strictly speaking Tenna shouldn’t have known either.

Good Deed or Scam? (OT)

Maybe somebody who works at Barnes & Noble can clear something up for me:

Barnes & Noble stores has special displays of children’s Christmas books by the registers, and they’re asking customers to buy one or more and leave them in a special box to be distributed to needy kids (because in our county there are no needy kids living in Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist families; but that’s another matter).

I bought and donated a couple of books, and then I started to wonder: Customers are buying these books at full retail price which means needy kids do get free books, but Barnes & Noble gets their normal profit, which is give-or-take half the retail price of the book — and I wonder whether this special display also makes a good dumping ground for Christmas books that aren’t selling (because how many people are going to be very selective about books they’re giving away to strangers?)

If I’m missing a fact or two that might put Barnes & Noble in a slightly better light here, I hope somebody will tell me.

Another record-breaking day for page-views (by a wide margin)

… and I probably owe it all to people searching for lesbians.

What Were They Thinking?

Battlestar Lesbianica

This cracked me up because it’s almost word-for-word how I was mocking the recap just a few hours earlier.

And there’s very little exaggeration here: SciFi made a big point of this entirely gratuitous plot point in at least two separate recaps; and in the final recap, just 10 minutes before the end of the 2-hour movie, the fact that two of the characters had had a lesbian relationship was the only plot point they included.

See two women kiss! In fact, since the DVD contains the “unrated” version, they might kiss twice!

ADD Angel?

PB&J

Okay, maybe I’m missing something — it’s been known to happen — but wouldn’t his reaction have made more sense if her safety seal had already been popped?

(If you can’t see part of this comic, click it)

Creepy Winkerbean

Okay, while last week’s photo business bordered on the creepy, but could have been interpreted as Les simply trying to embarrass his daughter, Summer’s comment in today’s strip…

I felt as if I needed to wash my hands after reading this one.

Arlol

Nicole suggested the Paul Combs as an Arlo candidate and the Heart of the City as a semi-Arlo, but I considered them both LOL material.

Plus ca change…

Well presumably Arlo is getting oddly defensive here, telling Gene that things have in fact changed: They’ve changed the calendar since Gene left for school.

But if this is the point of the comic, why did they change the calendar between September and November (because Gene is clearly home from college for Thanksgiving weekend) rather than, say, on New Year’s Day?

Clams