No Grad Students
The Nominees for The Golden Flash (Most Mystifying Panel) are...- No Grad Students - Some sort of parable about Oil Company profits veers into the absurd.
- Called Shot - Mallard calls the result of the 2008 election just a little bit too early, apparently having internalized the Bush credo that popularity outside America is a bad thing.
- Singer-Songwriter - Less than a week after an historic election, Mallard makes an even more historic stand against singer-songwriters.
- Gift Card - Mallard states the completely obvious, for reasons still not quite clear.
- Pop Tarts - The pile of groceries causes the reader to spend 30 minutes trying to figure out why Mom wants her daughter to be a Toaster Pastry. After you finally realizes Mallard didn't mean those Pop Tarts, it is less mystifying, but a lot more cranky.
10 comments:
I'm voting Pop Tart. I don't have 30 mins to figure out what he's talking about.
I have to go with "No Grad Students". The other four may be stupid, pointless, whatever, but at least there seems to be some sort of underlying logic. "No Grad Students" is both stupid AND illogical.
WV: eateduck (honestly!)
I must assume that in Tinsley's first draft, the diner cook's sign originally read "NO COLOREDS", but it was nixed by his editor(?) at the syndicate.
you'd think the guy would know how much it costs to make a burger at home and should be able to deduce the bulk prices paid by the restaraunt and factor in the costs of rent and labour and compare it to the listed price-per-burger.
But maybe his major is useless for real-world application and the underlying joke is "all grad students, regardless of major are full of librul anti-economy propaganda, dur dur dur."
Or maybe it just doesn't make sense. Lay off the jack and cokes tinsley.
The last one has to be disqualified, since you could explain it. "Gift card" is a topic my lovely wife an I have actually talked about, so it's out, too.
The others are all just WTF??
I can't even make up dots to connect. I went with "No grad Students," but damn, it was a close call.
WV: Dench - the smell of a duck. I wish Tinkley was that funny..
As a grad student myself, I feel as though I should vote for "no grad students" out of solidarity, but it's not exactly mystifying to me. "Grad student" is just a stand-in for bleeding-heart/hippie/Naderite. Thanks to the tireless efforts of David Whorowitz, We all know that universities are all breeding grounds for ebil leftist antiamerican blahdy-blah; if "grad students" is nonetheless not a category that most people automatically associate with far-left activism, well give Tinsley a break--his generalized hatred for education in all its forms, combined with his usual alcoholic haze, has caused such fine distinctions to blur in his mind. Sure, it's still a stupid comic with no discernible joke, but it's not much different in that regard from the vast bulk of the man's output.
So anyway, I'm voting for singer-songwriter, since Tinsley's violent antipathy for people who both sing AND write songs presumably speaks to something deep in his psyche that I don't even begin to understand.
Remember, if you fully understand any of them, they are disqualified.
In that case, I can't vote for any of them, since three out of the five are explained by his hatred of the Left and the other two are eventually decipherable. Whereas, however long it's been later, I still have no clue what in plogies' name was the relevance of the Golden Flash.
Pop tarts.
Second: Singer-Songwriter because it doesn't make sense with the line about physics.
I wanted to vote for "No Grad Students" because it shows how BADLY Tinkley needs an editor.
Even the great Bill Mauldin (read "Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front" ) eventually realized that he needed an editor to tell him when his passionate hatred of all things Fascist got in the way of making a comprehensible cartoon. In civilian life, Mauldin's editor would ... after long arguments ... simply re-write the caption. Bill never lost his passion, he just learned to put successful communication ahead of vituperation.
Tinkley's systemic failure to understand that concept is at the heart of the incomprehensibility of "No Grad Students". What or who is it that Mallard dislikes? Grad students? All of them, e.g. engineers too? Even Bill Buckley, author of "Man and God at Yale?" Or just the ones thinking about economic inequality? Or is it the jackbooted government thugs that made Tinkley take down the sign? And what did the sign mean? Does Tinkley not want to hire grade students or sell stuff to them? And why is the guy still holding the sign???
We sort-of understand Tinkley's mad about something but his irresistable protoFascist rage blots out the message.
Still I voted for "Pop Tart" because of the uncomprehending horror in the eyes of the little girl who, true to the spirit of the Brothers Grimm, is about to be baked in a pie.
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