Comments on: Thwak

By: name

name — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:41:59 +0000

Maybe the frog’s tongue is supposed to be rotating the fly’s eyes like optometrists rotate those little dials in the phoropter to adjust people’s glasses prescriptions? Maybe??? But flies’ eyes don’t rotate… I don’t know. This “cartoon” is really weird.

By: paperboy

paperboy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:09:06 +0000

chemgal #47 and Alban #57, plead to Odin I’m wrong; I went through the “Alternative Comics 1990’s” where the joke was (wait for it) there was no joke! ha ha ha. It was “ironic” for awhile, then got flabby.

By: SpaceFetus

SpaceFetus — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:35:11 +0000

J-L, your interpretation @ #23 is so much funnier than whatever this is supposed to mean.

By: J-L

J-L — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:33:57 +0000

If it’s any consolation, myiuki (#58-59), I think your interpretation is considerably funnier than what the artist was going for. (If only the caption had read “Therapy for flies” instead!)

(If you want to read what I think the artist was going for, read my comment at #56.)

By: myiuki

myiuki — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:07:29 +0000

…wait stupid ass subtitles

ok. then i’m with you guys.

By: myiuki

myiuki — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:04:38 +0000

wow! i am surprised this did not come to anyone’s mind before.

i thought this was a hilarious joke about exposure therapy!!!!

see the fly is afraid of being thwacked with a flyswatter, and being eaten by a frog/toad. and so exposure therapy is when you are exposed to the things that really freak you out–phobias. systematic desensitization. However, the fly is supposed to be afraid of the flyswatter, so therefor he cannot uncondition that response. he is instead presented with an insurmountable wall of fear, that even the most skilled of therapists cannot overcome. it is a survival instinct.

the joke is the fly is seeing a therapist…trying to get rid of his anxiety issues…but his fears are rational, so the therapy cannot work

when my friend showed this to me i thought this was hilarious, and then saw the name of the site, and realized that no one else got it…i guess i’m a psych nerd.

By: Alban

Alban — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:07:53 +0000

The phorpter does look like fly eyes, but wouldn’t the frog use his hands to change the lenses? I think most of you are onto something, but it’s more plausible that Paperboy @25 is right. We assume there’s a joke, so the mindf**k that ensues when there isn’t one is funny only to newspaper cartoonists, which is in itself the joke? I don’t know…

FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU–

By: J-L

J-L — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:49:18 +0000

Oh, oh! Thanks to the comments here I think I might have just figured it out!

PepperjackCandy’s comment (#31) made me think that maybe the phoropter should be in front of the patient’s head. And Andrew Wheeler pointed out in his comment (#45) that the phoropter looks like a fly’s head. (Check out the picture in the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoropter . It DOES kind of look like a fly’s head!)

Back to explaining the joke: Because a fly’s head kind of looks like a phoropter, the frog doctor mistakenly thinks that the phoropter is already in front of the patient’s head, and tries to adjust it as if it wer. (Why exactly the frog doctor uses his tongue to adjust it, I’m not sure — maybe it’s because frogs pretty much “do everything” with their tongues.)

Naturally, because the phoropter really isn’t in front of the patient’s face, the patient’s vision doesn’t get better at all. (*snap* “How about now?” “No change.” *snap* “Now?” “No.” *snap* “And now?” … and so on.)

What’s a bit confusing is why the fly is saying “Worse” instead of “No change.” Perhaps he’s saying “worse” as compared to his old prescription. Or maybe those “thwaks” to the head are making him see worse.

So now I’m thinking that the artist is simply trying to make a joke out of the fact that a phoropter kind of looks like a fly’s head.

By: Igelino

Igelino — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:53:31 +0000

@Elyrest #52: Oh cool! Thanks.

@Molly #53: Actually, I didn’t get it either. I can only suppose it’s Deerings way of smiling at us for our discussion about the Frog discussion.

@John @54: LOL

Speaking of doctors tasting their patients: http://comics.com/rubes/2010-01-31/

By: John Small Berries

John Small Berries — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:03:25 +0000

As luck would have it, I had an eye appointment yesterday, so I printed out the comic and brought it along.

I asked the optometrist if there was a joke there that would be immediately obvious to eye care professionals. He stared at it for at least a minute, then ventured, “I guess the frog is… licking the fly’s eye… to try and make it better? I’m not really sure. Is it supposed to be funny?”