Ice, Ice, Baby

Cidu Bill on Mar 11th 2010

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Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Frazz, Jef Mallet, comic strips, comics, humor | 28 responses so far

28 Responses to “Ice, Ice, Baby”

  1. Arthur Mar 11th 2010 at 12:09 am 1

    She feels stupid. He reassures her by pointing out that there is a large
    number of adults who are stupider than she.

  2. Elyrest Mar 11th 2010 at 12:18 am 2

    Yes, Arthur has it that there are lotd of stupid people. There are always reports of some idiot ice fisherman on one of the Great Lakes who has ended up on an ice floe. It’s March. Ice melts.

  3. Ian Price Mar 11th 2010 at 12:38 am 3

    I honestly don’t get it. Usually if I try to understand it, thirty seconds of undivided attention can get some semblance of a joke. But no. The ice fisherman thing came right the #$%@ out of nowhere.

  4. Arthur Mar 11th 2010 at 01:00 am 4

    Ian, does it help that the question she missed had something to do with temperature?

  5. Kamino Neko Mar 11th 2010 at 01:07 am 5

    It’s one of Frazz’s occasionally ‘anyone who enjoys X is a moron’ strips. In this case X is ice fishing. (Which I’ve only done once, but is just like regular fishing, except kind of chilly.)

  6. Pete Mar 11th 2010 at 01:10 am 6

    “You had me feeling smarter at ‘ice fiusherman’”

    So, ice fishermen are stupid per se, even when the ice is solid?

  7. Tullia Mar 11th 2010 at 01:53 am 7

    I’m with Arthur. I guessed that it was a joke about ice fishermen muddling up Celsius and Fahrenheit and not knowing how warm it really was (though this would fit better if the fishermen were going from Celsius to Fahrenheit — how hard is it to remember zero degrees? 32, I can see — and the US doesn’t do Celsius much).

    As for ice fishermen, my brain has two categories: one is for the serious fishermen, about 1% of the whole, and the other 99% is for the guys who want an wintertime outdoor sport that lets them go drink beer somewhere out of the house while under shelter, just like fishing and hunting function for a lot of guys during the warmer months. The 1%, pretty smart, I would guess. The other 99%? Maybe not so much.

  8. Michael Mar 11th 2010 at 08:09 am 8

    Being from southeast Michigan, it made perfect sense to me. It’s not that ice fisherman are stupid per se. It’s that every spring, the news has reports of ice fisherman getting trapped on the ice, because it’s getting warmer and the ice isn’t as sturdy. Often what happens is the wind is blowing gently, and a whole section breaks off and starts floating away from shore. There are warnings not to go on the ice. They (some) do it anyway. Last year, there were even cases where people used planks of wood to cross gaps in the ice. How much more of a clue do you need? These are the ice fisherman referenced in the comic.

    I don’t see anything wrong with using ice fishing as a excuse to drink beer, but please don’t do it in March.

  9. Nicole Mar 11th 2010 at 08:12 am 9

    Pete #6 … No, Ice fisherman are stupid for sitting on the ice for hours on end freezing their butts off.

    Which reminds me of the time I was invited to go winter camping. So, lets see if I got this straight. You want me to go in the woods in the middle of February, when the temperature can easily drop to the single digits, with a structure that amounts to a piece of cloth to protect me from the elements … and no toilet of any kind — so I have to drop my pants in said single digits to pee. Make a fire in the winter winds to cook, dehidrated food .. And lets not forget the chance of a snowstorm to top things off … is that what you are suggesting we do for fun ???? Ummmmmmmmm …… no.

  10. Marshal Mar 11th 2010 at 08:20 am 10

    Fun fact for the day.
    -40 degrees Fahrenheit = -40 degrees Celsius

    .

  11. mitch4 Mar 11th 2010 at 08:53 am 11

    Arrrgghh! I’ve misread the first panel a good half-dozen times!

    I couldn’t understand why you all were talking about temperature scales. And equally I couldn’t see in what sense she could miss a Census question … is that like skipping a question, so the Census bureau sent it back? Or is the joke that they would routinely send back your Census forms, marked up and graded, so she might know which question she got wrong? And why is the schoolage kid doing her family’s Census form? And why is Frazz’s response such a non-sequitur?

    But y’know what? Even with an at-long-last corrected reading of Celsius, Frazz’s response leaves something to be desired in the logical connection department.

  12. GP Mar 11th 2010 at 09:13 am 12

    Nicole #9,
    Many ice fishermen sit in heated ice houses with satellite TV and some kind of kitchenette. The pole sits over a small hole in the floor and alerts them when they catch a fish. For many of them, it’s more comfortable than fishing from a boat in the summer. Far from sitting on the ice and freezing their butts off, they sit around in warmth, drinking, eating and watching TV with friends, with the occasional possibility of catching a fish.

    Of course, when I did it I sat on the ice for several hours and froze my butt off.

  13. Nicole Mar 11th 2010 at 09:25 am 13

    GP #12 — this strikes me similar to the people who say they are going camping and roll out their forty foot RV, with full beds, hot showers and satelite TV — neither qualify as what they are being called.

  14. yellojkt Mar 11th 2010 at 09:26 am 14

    My only context for ice fishing is this clip from Beautiful Girls:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke5TxqvdSmA

    The classic Natalie Portman line is “We call them the drunken dry-heaving cheese-eating filth-eating outhouse boys. Are they friends of yours?”

    The ice fishing house figures in several scenes.

  15. John Small Berries Mar 11th 2010 at 10:11 am 15

    I would’ve thought a reference to the Mars Climate Orbiter would have made for a better punchline, personally. Because sometimes even bona fide rocket scientists get it wrong.

  16. Elyrest Mar 11th 2010 at 11:20 am 16

    yellojkt (14) Thanks for referencing one of my favorite movies. Natalie Portman has the best lines in the whole movie. I’d forgotten about the ice fishermen scene.

  17. Rasheed Mar 11th 2010 at 11:28 am 17

    What about Grumpy Old Men?? Plus one amusing episode of Home Improvement (Family Matters, not so much).

  18. Elyrest Mar 11th 2010 at 11:51 am 18

    Rasheed - All of my knowledge of what an inside of an ice fishing “shack” comes from television. There is also a very funny episode of Frasier set in one. They all seem to use as a common theme losing the car keys down the ice hole. I guess it’s better than losing them in an outhouse.

  19. mkilby Mar 11th 2010 at 12:23 pm 19

    @ Elyrest (18) - Garrison Keillor has mentioned ice fishing on A Prairie Home Companion several times. One semi-related story was about a couple of guys who drove out onto the lake by mistake, but managed to walk back to shore. They then took bets as to when the abandoned car would break through the ice. It was so popular that they later salvaged the sunken car and repeated the stunt in subsequent years. None of this is relevant to Frazz, of course, except that I’m sure that none of those characters knew how cold zero degrees Celcius is.

  20. Keera Mar 11th 2010 at 01:20 pm 20

    Elyrest #16, having grown up with an outhouse, I know that you stand a chance of finding your car keys in one. Especially if you’ve just had it emptied (pumped out). That’s what saved our kitten from drowning.

  21. Chuck Mar 11th 2010 at 02:21 pm 21

    Nicole, SUPER RV camping is not camping, but ice fishing in a warm house is still fishing if you catch fish.

  22. Dave Van Domelen Mar 11th 2010 at 03:26 pm 22

    Important point: he had her at “ice fishermen” which meant “reports of ice fishermen” was enough to make her feel less stupid.

    When do you ever get reports about ice fishermen that are about being smart? If you hear about them at all, it’s because they got themselves stranded or into the drink. You simply don’t get reports about the rest of ‘em unless you follow ice fishing news closely.

  23. Cidu Bill Mar 11th 2010 at 03:29 pm 23

    I’m oddly fascinated by the concept that there could be such a thing as “ice fishing news” (and now I’m hearing the Smothers Brothers singing “My old man’s an ice fisherman”).

  24. Marshal Mar 11th 2010 at 04:59 pm 24

    Here you go. Some ice fishing news.
    http://www.record-eagle.com/outdoors/local_story_070072539.html

    And here is a blog run by the Wisconsin Dept of Natural Resources
    http://blog.govdelivery.com/widnr_ice_fishing/

    BTW, I got the first URL off a post on twitter. Second by just doing
    a search on Yahoo for ” Ice Fishing bogs”

    It would appear early March is for the most part the end of
    ice fishing season.

  25. paperboy Mar 11th 2010 at 07:07 pm 25

    How can there be ice-fishing if there’s global warming?

  26. John Small Berries Mar 11th 2010 at 08:14 pm 26

    /me slaps paperboy with a frozen trout.

  27. Elyrest Mar 11th 2010 at 08:33 pm 27

    “/me slaps paperboy with a frozen trout.”

    Then put him on a Zamboni on a melting ice skating pond.

  28. docdonn Mar 13th 2010 at 11:52 pm 28

    the ice fisherman confused celsius with fahrenheit and were on the ice when it was too warm… it was only a missed question for her, but a matter of life and death for the ice fishermen…so who’s dumber?

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