I Guess Caulfield Will Have to Think of Something Else This Year

Cidu Bill on Jun 14th 2009

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Filed in 1984, Bill Bickel, Frazz, Halloween, Jef Mallet, Randy Milholland, Something Positive, comic strips, comics, humor | 15 responses so far

15 Responses to “I Guess Caulfield Will Have to Think of Something Else This Year”

  1. Pete Jun 14th 2009 at 06:23 pm 1

    Why is this cartoon included? It’s not a CIDU, Arlo, or Ewww. Maybe a LOL, but not listed as such. What category is this supposed to be?

  2. Cidu Bill Jun 14th 2009 at 07:00 pm 2

    It’s the Just an Observation category. Feel free to ignore it.

  3. Sal Jun 14th 2009 at 07:05 pm 3

    Pete, you must not read Frazz, every year the character Caulfield ( who has a lierary reference for a name ) thinks up a halloween costume based on a famous literary work. This strip is a harbinger of what Caulfield might use this year.

  4. Mitch4 Jun 14th 2009 at 08:28 pm 4

    I knew some people who made a big deal out of it when the year 1984 actually arrived. Classmate Eric, for instance, put the dates in his notebook in the style “January 7, Orwell” for several months. And though it wasn’t such a big deal for me, I’ve gotta say there is some difference in how it feels looking at it as just another of those bad-hair years versus some unpredictable dreadful future.

    I wonder if people at NASA were disappointed when 2001 came and went and there was no hint of a Moon colony or even a large, flourishing, permanent space station.

  5. Nicole Jun 14th 2009 at 09:42 pm 5

    Mitch — I re-read 1984 during the Bush years. I was shocked at how prescient the novel was when I compared it to that administration’s behavior. To be sure, it wasn’t as bad as the government of Big Brother, but I saw parallels where there should have been none.

  6. WordSprite Jun 14th 2009 at 10:19 pm 6

    Why can’t there just be a “great comic” category? Anyway, what do you call an awesome comic that doesn’t make you laugh, maybe that just makes you think? Or just say, wow! (I mean, we call superhero comic books “comic” when they are not, well, comical…) Maybe there is a better name for this category than “just an observation.” Ideas? Bill, I love how you show stuff I NEVER would have otherwise seen, but just love!

  7. CIDU Bill Jun 14th 2009 at 10:36 pm 7

    Well, for now I guess, if I throw a comic online without one of the standard tags, we can just assume that it falls into the “Hey, looka this!” category.

    When I was with About.com, I did have a category of story that was essentially “This is cool and if you read it you’ll probably end up telling somebody else about it.” If I can remember what I called the category, maybe I’ll recycle it here.

  8. Patrick Jun 15th 2009 at 01:28 am 8

    I think you should call that category: “Hey! Looka’ Dis!”

  9. MrKenneth Jun 15th 2009 at 05:29 am 9

    Nicole - as a frequent contributor to the great site, you have a gift for clever stuff. In no way would I like to see this become another political chat room. You take a shot at the previous admin (not a great 8 years) however your comment seems to tell the world you have not been paying attention since Jan 20 if you thought Pres Bush was approaching Big Brother status.

  10. Lola Jun 15th 2009 at 06:42 am 10

    CITTBA - Comic I though to be awesome
    CTAM - Comic that amazed me
    CIJHTPO - Comic I just had to pass on
    CTMYT- Comic that’ll make you think
    TCCIAG - This comic’s creator is a genius
    XXX- This comic is unrated but not in a way you think (This will, by far, get the most hits ever)

  11. anaceofkidneys Jun 15th 2009 at 11:50 am 11

    The creator of this comic thought of a badass idea for a Halloween costume, and decided to share it with the world. That’s really all there is to this strip. And man, what a badass idea!

  12. BGneiss Jun 15th 2009 at 11:54 am 12

    OK, a political comment in direct reference to the comic is within the fringes of OK (whether I agree with it or not), but this isn’t the place for a political debate.

  13. Nicole Jun 15th 2009 at 01:06 pm 13

    For those who think that CIDU is a place where we don’t discuss politics … I would like to refer you to
    http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/2009/02/20/the-2009-what-the-hell-were-they-thinking-award-goes-to/#comments
    and
    http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/2008/07/16/and-jonathan-swift-didnt-really-want-people-to-start-eating-babies/#comments

  14. Keera Jun 15th 2009 at 02:02 pm 14

    Bill, how about just “Lookit!” as a tag for stuff that has that “things that make you go hmm or blurt ‘Ooh!’” quality?

  15. Zak R Jun 15th 2009 at 10:45 pm 15

    On the off-chance that anyone is actually confused (and the dialogue in the last panel did take me a while), here’s a quick explanation. Walking in on a nearly-daily continuity-based strip with years of back-story does make this one day’s installment difficult to understand. Let’s just put it this way: Davan is a depressingly hate-filled misanthrope who has been spending time being a father-figure to Rory, a kid who might have been his but is not, while Rory’s equally cynical and caustic mother generally goes even one step beyond Davan’s horrifying parenting, as happens this day when she bemoans that Child Services would quickly give up on her brat and send him back, rather than keeping him and allowing her to live in peace once again.

    If, however, you are familiar with the back-story and still don’t get it, my explanation is that Rory’s mom is doing a one-hand other-hand sort of thing, where the one hand is that the costume is horrifying and the other hand is that even if she let him go out like that, he would still come back eventually.

    If you’re confused about the costume itself, perhaps a 1984 refresher is in order?

    Yeah, I don’t know why I read a daily about such horrible people, either. Maybe it makes me feel better about my own dysfunctions? At least SP is open and honest about everyone hating themselves and everyone else, as opposed to the Lockhorns!

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