Cartooning 201 vs The New Yorker
Posted on January 26, 2024 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

A couple of years ago, I published this rant about the illogic of various cartoons published in the esteemed New Yorker magazine.  I now have occasion to add insult to injury, thanks to the recent New Yorker cartoon below:

If you haven’t figured it out already, allow me to ask, in what direction does the mat on a treadmill travel?  Once you answer that, you may make one of two inferences:

(A) The cartoonist (in haste) did not consider the direction that treadmills travel before incorporating the treadmill’s motion into the premise of the joke.  If so, we may justifiably disrespect the cartoon and cartoonist, never mind the clothes hanging on the bars.

(B) The cartoonist did in fact realize that treadmill mats do not travel forward, and he/she used the absurdity of the protagonist’s comment as a kind of “comic spice” in the cartoon.  The cartoonist hoped the reader would think: “Obviously, the guy never uses the machine, so no wonder he doesn’t know what direction it goes!”  This (if intentional) would qualify as second-level humor.

It’s my experience that the humor-level of New Yorker cartoons, by some editorial decree, falls somewhere between 0.4 and 1.2, so anything above that level would mean someone hasn’t done his/her job.  Therefore, I’m more inclined to subscribe to Inference A.

Dear Sirs and Madams at the New Yorker: I await your call to be your next cartoon editor.  Under my iron-handed rule, no cartoonist could flout the laws of logic or physics without a decisive humorous payoff.

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CHC Comics No. 14: Art Nerd Edition
Posted on January 24, 2024 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

“Henri, what part of  ‘too loose’  don’t you understand?”

 

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Reader Reviews of The 100 Billionth Person
Posted on January 19, 2024 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

[Editor’s Note:  You know that these reviews are genuine since a few of them are not five-star.]

Fabulos (Brenik Francišak, Belarus)

I read The 100 Billionth Person over and over and it is definately the best wesbite.  I show to my brother and he talks, same thing.  Good site for us to hack tomorrow.

Just what you’d expect from a lib (Hess Stark, Montana)

I thumbed through a few of your posts.  I thought this was supposed to be a humor site but it’s not funny.  Dumping on President Trump is not respectful to our past and future president.  He only wants to make Americans safe from foreigners who are poisoning our blood and stealing our future.   I am cancelling my subscription to your blog, I don’t care that it was free.  Freedom is not free as every real American knows.  Get with the pogrom.

Not as cheeky as I am! (Ricky Gervais, England)

Plonky title for a site full of pissy little rants, right?  You do a few lame jokes but it’s mostly bo-oring shite from what I can tell.  I searched your site for videos of cats landing on their feet but couldn’t find any, so you haven’t even done the basics!  Have you ever listened to a BBC shipping forecast?  Try it some time, it might give you a vague idea how to entertain English-speaking people.  Oh sod off, I’m wasting my time here.

Your website changed my life (Dazi D., Tampa)

This is real.  I am not a kind of person who writes fake reviews for money.  This is a review that no one paid me to do and that is the honest truth.  I usually review luxury skin creams (my favorite is Abeille Royale Honey Treatment Day Cream, only $180 on this site) but your sincerity is an inspiration to all.  This skin cream changed my life — I hope it changes yours!  Keep up the good work.

For the (Beatles) Record… (Yoko Ono, New York)

Your posts have mentioned The Beatles 39 times — I counted.  And for the record, I did not break up The Beatles.  They just grew up.  Imagine Peace, Y.O.

P.S.  A personal message to Paul:  AIH-AIH-AIH-AIH AIH-AIH-AIH-AIH AIH-AIH-AIH-AIH AIH-AIH-AIH AIH-AIH-AIH AIH-AIH-AIH AIHHH.  Imagine Peace, Y.O.

I found a mistake! (Pippa Pedant, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY)

Ha Ha!  In your 2015 post titled Just Saying, you said, “I’ve always been fascinated by the similarites and differences among languages.”  SIMILARITES!  Would they be the people who inhabit the land SIMILARA?  Ha!  Gotcha!

I love this site but… (Arlene, Idaho)

Hey.  I was born in Amarillo, in the Texas panhandle.  Then my parents moved two hours north to Hooker, in the Oklahoma panhandle.  I lived in Hooker until I was old enough to read The Book of Revelations, then we moved another seven hours north to the Nebraska panhandle, to a place on Jenkins Road outside a village called Melbeta.  I was just a teen, and I remember thinking, this isn’t much of a panhandle.  Then I met a boy at Chadron State College two hours north but still in the panhandle, and we hit it off.  You know where this is going — he proposed, I accepted, we got married, and we moved to Coeur d’Alene in the Idaho panhandle.  Now I’m a part-time swim instructor and he’s an executive assistant for an asphalt supply company.  May you be lucky enough to live in a panhandle just once in your lifetime.

Scrute this! (His Holiness D. Lama, Tibet)

Your blog, compared to more interesting blogs, is like Mount Kilimanjaro compared to more interesting mountains.  They’re out there but harder to climb.

 

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