CIDU’s and Don’ts: The FAQ
Cidu Bill on Jan 1st 2008
We mostly discuss individual daily comics here. 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: 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 to virtually all of them: These might seem glaringly obvious to me; and then I might come across a comic I simply won’t get (and I’ll put on the page), which will be 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.
Actually, I’m not keen on my houseguests insulting one another either.
If you post a message that contains more than one link, it won’t appear until after I’ve okayed it — which generally happens very quickly, since I pretty much live online. The purpose of this, of course, is to keep spam from taking over the site.
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 you don’t want to explain to the kids) 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).
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 Us Laugh Out Loud (a weekly, noon-Monday hall of fame for comics we really, really got a kick out of) , and the ChadWatch. ChadWatch are comics that attempt to mine humor from the 2000 presidential elections, usually by making references to hanging chads. I began this section back in December of 2000 in order to try 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 8 years later, we’d still be collecting them.
Sometimes we’ll notice two comic strips using a nearly-identical gag on the same day for no apparent reason. When that happens I’ll post them both, noting the synchronicity. Just because. These rarely call out for explanation.
The site is updated with a new CIDU every day at 12:02AM Eastern Time — except for the two weeks or so following “spring forward” and “fall back,” when the server sometimes thinks it’s an hour earlier than it really is (though it’s a mystery why the same thing happens in the spring and the fall), and the update goes live an hour late.
Additional updates generally show up throughout the day, but the 12:02am update happens without exception.
We don’t encourage artists to explain their own comics, because they’ve already had their chance to make us understand. Also, it’s more fun this way.
Finally, if you have anything to send me — a comic you don’t understand, an Arlo or ChadWatch candidate, a suggestion, whatever — please e-mail me at comicsidontunderstand at gmail.com.
When you’re submitting a comic, it would be most helpful if you both give me a link to it, and attach it — because sometimes attachments don’t survive the trip, and sometimes links don’t work. Just for the record, if you send me a link that contains rbma.com, it will not work.
Thanks to Blinky the Wonder Wombat for providing a better definition for the Arlo Page than I’d been offering
Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, CIDU, ChadWatch, Ewww, FAQ, comics that made us laugh out loud, lol, synchronicity | 10 responses so far
warren main Oct 19th 2009 at 06:07 pm 1
My problem is I do understand what is going on here with the public service push by several cartoonist. At one time I asked one nationally known cartoonist about the fact that sometimes a couple comic strips will follow the very same agenda and he replied that it would just be chance for two people to pick the same subject. This push of the White House agenda flow into sitcoms on television and of course certain television news outlets. The problem is that by putting the white house agenda in a subliminal way in the comics, these cartoonists are taking the sacred trust we Americans lay at their feet and making what should be a vollenteer function into an almost required function.
Suzii Oct 20th 2009 at 04:54 am 2
Actually, “Make A Difference Day” has nothing to do with the White House. It’s a newspaper-created and -promoted event, which is a big part of why cartoonists who want newspapers to buy their product would cross-promote it:
http://www.usaweekend.com/diffday/aboutmadd.html
However, if one of the strips you’re thinking about is Stone Soup, Jan Eliot is sending Gramma off to Thailand to build a Habitat house because that’s where Eliot herself is going to be pretty soon, and she wanted to get the most she could out of the experience: http://www.stonesoupcartoons.com/2009/10/hello-from-algiers.html — clearly, that’s going to take months, and the coincidence of the beginning of the story with last week doesn’t mean much.
Lisa J Oct 25th 2009 at 04:48 am 3
“Make a Difference Day” was Oct 24th, so what was up with all the comic strips about volunteering on Oct 23rd? Just in my local paper, ‘Family Circus’, ‘Garfield’, ‘Dilbert’ (as a carry over story), ‘Blondie’, ‘Pooch Cafe’ (as a carry over story), ‘Snuffy Smith’, ‘Hagar’ and ‘Hi and Lois’ were all about volunteering… The current storyline of ‘Non Sequitur’ could somewhat fall into the making a difference category as well.
Lisa J Oct 25th 2009 at 04:49 am 4
I guess that was them giving us one day’s notice to volunteer on Saturday…
John Small Berries Oct 28th 2009 at 12:25 pm 5
“…these cartoonists are taking the sacred trust we Americans lay at their feet…”
I withdrew my sacred trust in cartoonists when Tom Batiuk decided it was his mission to inflict his personal sense of soul-crushing despair upon his readers.
MrKenneth Nov 3rd 2009 at 10:52 am 6
Not sure how to send something to you but this does not seem to be in the Ewww archives:
http://www.explosm.net/comics/1830/
Huge laugh on this one for me.
Lihtox Jan 5th 2010 at 08:57 am 7
In this FAQ, you should explain HOW people can send CIDU and Arlo’s etc to you. Is the name of the comic and the date enough, do you want a link to the comic’s page, an attached image, or what?
Greg Jan 26th 2010 at 06:29 pm 8
I doubt that very many Americans got this Chuckle Brothers cartoon. It did take a second look before I realized that the family was made up of Robertson screwdrivers.
In Canada, square drive screws are referred to as Robertson Screws and they have been in common use there since after WWII. Their usage in the US has never really caught on.
madkaugh Apr 21st 2010 at 10:06 am 9
Non Sequitur Weds, April 21, 2010 - “OK, one of us is having the mother of all hallucinations.” - While the intended joke is clear enough, it is somewhat incorrect. Either the speaker is having the mother of all hallucinations, “OK, I’m having the mother of all hallucinations.”, which is likely, or two of the individuals are having the mother of all hallucinations, not just one.
Dr. Shrinker Jul 26th 2010 at 04:56 pm 10
Don’t know if you heard, but the brilliant (and twisted) cartoonist John Callahan just died…
http://www.katu.com/news/local/99242729.html