Archive for the 'ChadWatch' Category

Return of the Chad

Cidu Bill on Jun 17th 2009

JP:

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Nicole: I am surprised that there haven’t been a lot more references to the 2000 election. Perhaps if GWB was still in office, or maybe it is just the celebrated American short term memory at work.
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Filed in Bill Bickel, ChadWatch, Iran, comic strips, comics, humor | 38 responses so far

Grand Slam

Cidu Bill on Nov 18th 2008

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Nicole sent this for ChadWatch, Comics That Made Us Laugh Out Loud, the Arlo Page, and the Ewww Files

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, ChadWatch, Ewww, comic strips, comics, comics that made us laugh out loud, elections, humor, lol | 13 responses so far

Ted Rall’s Hat Trick

Cidu Bill on Sep 18th 2008

Nicole sent this one as a candidate for the Arlo Page, the Ewww Files, and ChadWatch.
Personally, I’d lean toward Ewww… Continue Reading »

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, ChadWatch, Ewww, Ted Rall, comic strips, comics, humor, political cartoons | 11 responses so far

ChadWatch: Television Division

Cidu Bill on Sep 3rd 2008

Rob Eboch III: So I don’t know if this qualifies since it’s not a comic, but I couldn’t help but submit a commercial I just saw for ChadWatch. It’s the new Maytag repairman commercial. Dozens of people are crowded impatiently around a voting machine complaining about being delayed when the Maytag repairman comes out with a stack of papers in his hand. He states that he just fixed the machine and hands the papers to an employee at the voting center. The employee looks down and sees a bunch of partially punched ballots and yells “oh no, not again!”

Filed in Bill Bickel, ChadWatch, humor, politics | 3 responses so far

Chad Rock

Cidu Bill on Jun 9th 2008

Wasn’t that the name of a singer on The Flintstones?

Anyway, this was sent by both Arthur T (who added, “This is not directly related to chad, but it probably would not have been written or understood without the 2000 ‘butterfly ballot’ problem”) and by Kristen Shaw:

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Filed in Bill Bickel, ChadWatch, Close to Home, comic strips, comics, humor, politics | 11 responses so far

Rules are Rules

Cidu Bill on May 31st 2008

Nicole: While I disagree with the premise , I would have to say that this is a chad
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(Newer visitors: Please check out the FAQ for an explanation of the ChadWatch strips)

Filed in Barack Obama, Bill Bickel, ChadWatch, Hillary Clinton, elections, humor, political cartoons, politics | No responses yet

Hanging Chads

Cidu Bill on Mar 13th 2008

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Spotted by Pinny and Nicole

Filed in Barack Obama, Bill Bickel, ChadWatch, Hillary Clinton, comics, humor, political cartoons, politics | 6 responses so far

Nicole: ”Let the Chads Begin!”

Cidu Bill on Feb 26th 2008

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(The ChadWatch is explained in the FAQ)

Filed in Bill Bickel, ChadWatch, Tom Toles, comic strips, comics, humor, politics | 6 responses so far

Something You Want To Send Me?

Cidu Bill on Jan 14th 2008

If you have a CIDU, or something for the Arlo, Ewww or ChadWatch collections, please e-mail them to cidumay2004 (at) yahoo.com (If you post it here in the Comments section, I might or might not see it). It would be best if you could send me both the comic and the comic’s URL, because sometimes a comic sent as an attachment doesn’t make it through, and sometimes URLs stop working.

Filed in Arlo Page, Bill Bickel, CIDU, ChadWatch, Ewww, comic strips, comics, lol | No responses yet

ChadWatch 2008: And So It Begins

Cidu Bill on Jan 8th 2008

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I somehow suspect it won’t be the last.

Filed in Bill Bickel, ChadWatch, Clear Blue Water, Florida, comic strips, comics, humor, politics | 4 responses so far

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 | 12 responses so far