three (3) stupid things [UPDATED]

This one you're really gonna have to click to enlarge:

"I little black dress, therefore I am"? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Reminiscent of this baloney.

How could I forget?*

O.K., let's see.

First one? A suicide-bomber joke. Yep, that's right. Now, I'm not even going to comment on the fact that it's a suicide-bomber joke—NO COMMENT—but is it even a funny one? Does it even work? The 72 virgins idea (which I've heard is basically anti-Islamic slur, but I don't know, and it doesn't really matter either way) is that you'll be rewarded for your heroism with sexual bliss—yeah? Something like that, anyway. So then what is this cat being rewarded for? Does the suicide bomber blow himself up alongside a bunch of virgins? Are the virgins the ones in charge? Are they the ones promising themselves to him? And it isn't a reward for killing yourself: it's a reward for dying while doing something supposedly heroic and noble. So this cat is running off a cliff alongside a bunch of lemmings to no evident effect (beyond plummeting), asking one of the lemmings for confirmation that he gets 72 of them for doing this. Verdict: NONSENSE.

Second one? Nothing to do with lemmings or cats, AND doesn't make any sense.

Third one? THE CAT IS THE ONE WHO'S TALKING. One of my least favorite things people do when writing (or, more to the point, judging/selecting) these captions is ignoring what's actually going on. This caption might make sense—wouldn't be funny, mind you, but might make sense—if a lemming were asking the cat this question: the idea is, "I'm a lemming, what's your excuse for running off a cliff?" Yes? But what fucking sense does it make for the cat to be asking the lemming that? So either this one doesn't make any sense, either, or it just flagrantly ignores the content of the cartoon.

Yes it makes me angry! (For further delightful commentary on the captions, click "fuck this feature" below or to the right. God bless America.)

xoxo,

Short Round

[Below please find a discussion via e-mail with my friend the highly functional wino (a.k.a. the eloquent drifter), in which he schools me regarding the above:

THE HFW In a retarded inversion, I think it's supposed to be curiosity killed the cat,† so whereas in reality the lemmings have a much more substantial/cartoon-cliché claim to obvious purpose in that visual context, the caption writer stupidly inverted it so that cats—being obviously curious, and thus apt to jump off cliffs—are the ones who always end up jumping off cliffs. So I guess it's funny because the cat doesn't realize that the lemmings actually have a longstanding and widely understood "excuse" whereas the cat's own excuse doesn't really track very strongly in that context?

SHORTY‡ Persuasive...but then do you think the "what's your excuse" (usu. pronounced "what's your excuse?") cliché is just a coincidental parallel or some shit? (Couldn't figure out how to phrase that just now.) If not, and the cliché is in full effect, then how does it operate in the context you're postulating?

THE HFW It's supposed to reflect the fact that, in the urban legend (rural legend?) lemmings cliché, "nobody knows why lemmings commit suicide," whereas we all know that "curiosity killed the cat." So the mass suicide of the lemmings is arbitrary and meaningless, whereas the death of the cat due to suicide has a cogent telos.§

The cartoon, in its "B meaning," is thus even cleverer because of this inversion: because it takes the familiar scene of the lemmings and renders it meaningless (or draws out its traditional connotations of meaninglessness) whereas it takes a wild and arbitrary image of a cat plunging off a cliff and gives it a deep and natural sense of cliché-destiny.

O.K., so I was wrong. Pinghan Chua has written the most brilliant cartoon caption ever. You happy now?]

* I took this picture on May 11.

† I was pretty dumb to miss this.

‡ Actually not having read the HFW's e-mail quite carefully enough, it would appear. Fortunately the HFW was generous enough to advance the argument even though I didn't ask the right question.

§ Yeah, no, he actually said that. This is why I love winos.