There’s nothing wrong with a good pun. The reason puns are thought of as lowly, or cheap, is because truly good puns are very difficult and very rare. They are not a pointless scrambling of words and letters, and they should not be so obvious–or so reaching—as to elicit nothing but groans and rolling eyes. In fact, puns are so difficult, an entire sub-genre of humor has grown up around them: jokes about how bad puns are. (See Pearls before Swine.) I’ve done maybe two or three good puns in my entire career. I count the above as one of them.
Clear as Mud
By Jimmy Johnson
Recent Posts
Ghost of Christmas Past
This holiday Arlo & Janis comic strip from 2022 is similar in concept to the new strip that ran yesterday. I thought the latter ...
Spearhead
I have produced a number of comic strips related to Veteran’s Day. Especially in latter years, I have tried to emphasize the universal experience ...
Dark Passage
Remember: it’s that weekend. The return to standard time can be a bit of a shock in the late afternoon, but I rather enjoy ...
What’s old is old, again
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to build a web site, but there are similarities. Everything needs to be just right, or ...
Back to the ol’ drawing board
I don’t have a lot of time this morning. I wasn’t going to post anything, but I’m tired of looking at that old photograph ...
Thursday’s Child
On Sunday, I teased you with the suggestion there are more changes coming here. There are. They will appear soon, and I think you’ll ...
281 responses to “Clear as Mud”
When he nods his head, hit it. Knucklehead. Why you…Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck, nyuck.
My favorite mushroom is the shiitake, which is not Japanese for you might think.
Same here, GR6. My favorite dishes are gyoza, sukiyaki, and okonomiyaki. In the winter I especially enjoyed nikuman with hot mustard. I never really enjoyed sushi.
All of the above…including sushi. “Raw fish” describes toro even less accurately than “fish eggs” describes beluga caviar.
GR6, I did accidentally try sashimi just once. Thought it was something else, not prepared for the onslaught of intense flavor. Never again!
Wow! Sand and Loon, thanks for the pix!
It’s been hours since anyone posted. What was on TV tonight?
I think that it was a hypnotist. I was asleep at 8:30.
Trucker, as someone with two neurostimulator implants in my chest and brain I was curious what an icd was. I looked it up and I still don’t know. Could you explain?
Good morning Villagers….
Evan, what a great story teller you are. I read it twice, I enjoyed it so much. Creativity in your writing skills, I read…thanks.
Love the shroom puns, and Denise, that is what they’re called here…shrooms 🙂
Loon, glad sand posted those pics…the one Denise mentioned, the shot of the mountains is glorious, it would be a nice background from any patio.
GR 😉 , never thought about a fractured cheekbone. Ian didn’t want to go to doctor, been having a lot of auger problems at #1, and the little hens are laying little eggs. They have to be hand picked off the rod conveyor.
I copied your thought for the day and will give it to Ian, as The Boss and him are to be at The Corp at 1 pm for a meeting. With his black eye, he will stand out.
Wisconsin and Minnesota are on state alert because of this Avian virus. I’m assuming that is what the meeting will be about. The 5 million birds that were depopulated is about the same size of The Corp.
Gal..thanks for your prayers….I’ve been really depressed over this incident. Ian was sitting in the passenger seat with the seat belt on when he got hit. I went in to get paper towels for his nose bleed, and when I handed them to Ian, why didn’t I slap Andrew across the face…with one continuous flow of motion from handing the paper towels to his face…he stood that close to me.
TR….I slept through TV….again. Got up had a pumpkin muffin and a glass of milk and went to bed….
gotta go…
ya’ll have a blessed day
doing OK Indy Mindy in the old store?
today’s grin: (that’s funny, because it’s what I call the teens sometimes…idjits)
http://cheezburger.com/8482263552
Jerry, AICD stands for automated implanted cardiac defibrillator. Instead of just pacing the heart’s rhythm like a pacemaker, it senses when the heart’s rhythm becomes abnormal and shocks it back into normal patterns. It’s used for people who have arrythmias that drugs won’t control.
Does the person know it when it happens? Do they require battery replacement periodically? My batteries last about two years so every year I have to have one or the other replaced.
Jerry, yes to both. From what I’ve read in my work, the patients usually use the firing of the defib as a cue to call their doctors. And if the batteries run down they start to get their symptoms back, so they know something is not right.
Debbe, two wrongs really don’t make a right, and that’s why you didn’t hit Andrew. Is Ian still having pain? I keep thinking about Ghost’s mention of a fractured cheekbone.
Yay, Robin is back in today’s real-time strip! I am so torn; I want to see more about Robin and Janis, but I also want more Gene’s family strips. Jimmy always leaves us wanting more!
The mushroom that gets my vote for favorite is the plain old white button, Ghost. It’s so darn adaptable and flavorful that it’s hard not to love. But I think that every shroom is pretty darn good. They are one of the reasons I could be a vegetarian. Bacon is one of the reasons I couldn’t.
While I agree that most mushrooms are good, I generally prefer criminis and portobellos. They just have a better taste and texture to me. And I also agree with Denise that I could be a vegetarian, except for bacon.
Debbe, smacking Andrew a good one might have felt good at the moment, but wouldn’t really have helped the situation.
Ghost, Sweetie, 🙂
Eat a fungus?
One reason Morels are popular for woods picking is they are distinctive, can’t get wrong.
Done in butter all you taste is butter, like Lobster, just eat the butter.
Jerry when that thing goes off you WILL know it. A friend had one and when it fired it almost set him on his butt
From a Calvin comment:
http://i.imgur.com/9xo8NYa.gif
Jean dear 🙂 Ever grill a portobello and serve it on a bun, dressed like a burger?
And yes, Denise, the “the plain old white button” is the mushroom I actually use most often, halved long ways, sautéed, and served in a cream sauce.
Ummm…I don’t know about this.
http://www.popularairsoft.com/files/images/511_tactical_dutykilt.jpg
But I’m sure the guys at the range would get a good laugh.
OF due NOW-1033 CST. emb
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html
Jerry in Fl:
Quoting from Wikipedia: “An implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) or automated implantable cardioverter defibrillator (AICD) is a device implantable inside the body, able to perform both cardioversion, defibrillation and pacing of the heart.”
My personal device is a CRT–D which means that it performs cardio resynchronization therapy as well as defibrillates. I have been told that roughly 10% of us have oddities in our hearts’ wiring resulting in arrhythmias. In my case it means that my ventricles do not beat in perfect synchronicity (like a car with bad timing!). When my sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) occurred my left ventricle had dilated to the point that, like an old balloon, its walls had thinned and lost their strength.
The CRT-D keeps my ventricle beating together, and watches for irregular heart beats. When it finds them it ups the voltage to force things back into a regular rhythm (it’s called ‘pacing the heart’ or anti-tachycardia pacing (ATP)), and if that fails it prepares to administer the ‘big one,’ (which some folks call the ‘Jesus jolt’ because of what we tend to shout when it happens).
The battery on my first device lasted five years and four months before it reached its replacement voltage back in January. My new device is projected, because of improved programming and electronic capabilities, to last seven or eight years.
So far the ATP function has kept me out of trouble. The device records what my heart does as well as the therapies that the device delivers. The doctor has tweaked my medications successfully, so I have not experienced the ‘big one’ yet. I’m not too concerned since it means the device will have saved my life, and there is a high probability that I will be unconscious when it happens.
TruckerRon, I suppose the device means you no longer drive a truck? What does it mean to having any kind of drivers license? I can’t imagine getting the “big one” while driving.
“They are one of the reasons I could be a vegetarian.”
Recent DNA comparisons indicate that, a billion or so YA, after the protozoan lineages leading to today’s [mostly] green plants and to today’s animals [all invert. phyla + us chordates] split, the ancestors of today’s fungi branched off from the early animal lineage. I.e., mushrooms, molds, etc. are more closely related to houseflies, walleyes, and barflies, than they are to algae, moss, blue spruce, and yellow lady’s slipper.
I’m not suggesting we change our terminology, just providing some perspective. Vegetable, vegetarian, and such are culinary, not biological terms. Botanically, a tomato is a fruit, specifically a berry, but gastronomically, it’s a veggie. So is a portobello*.
Bon appetite, emb
Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) and butter soaked mushrooms; does this trouble anyone besides me?
Mushrooms may also be sautéed in oil derived from a certain drupe, as a healthy alternative to butter.