Category Archives: Humor

The Impudence of Dogs

The Count de Dardille has a little problem. His wife, the Countess Amélie de Figule, demands a divorce after only six months of marriage. The Count has no choice but to ask his friend, the Marquis, for advice. What is the reason for the broken marriage? The decommissioned officer and battle leader simply does not want to succeed in fulfilling his marital obligations in bed together.

The marriage bed will be the battlefield of the coming century.

It is understandable that the countess in this tragicomedy in four acts no longer wants to stand idly by. She wants children, and if her husband is unable to impregnate her, she wants to have the marriage annulled in order to try her luck in a new marriage with a capable man.

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Are there differences in love? Tots philosophize about profound things

Occasionally a comic book falls into your hands where you wonder where it has been all these years? That’s what happened to me with Pico Bogue, a comic book series about a boy, his family and his friends, characterized by tenderness and wit, contrasting the smart-as-nails protagonists with the adult world.

The fact that the style of the illustrator Alexandris Dormal is similar to that of Sempé, who is known among other things for the illustrations for Little Nicholas, makes things easier. In combination with the soulful and cheerful stories of the scenarist Dominique Roques results in a very sweet overall work.

Even the first short story (see illustration) shows this vividly. Pico philosophizes over a piece of cake with his little sister about whether love is similar. Is love for a girl comparable to love for a piece of cake? His sister thinks it is, and distracts her brother. When Pico turns around again, her little mouth is seen smeared with cake, and emptiness yawns on his plate where the same cake was before. With wise words she concludes the discussion on love:

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From Dunning-Kruger To The Much More Harmful Trump-Pence Effect

In a film that was intended as a homage to old science fiction films and B-movies, aliens attack the Earth and cause a massacre among humans. The American president and his advisors are not quite at one with each other as to what the right course of action should be, and above all, the president’s poll ratings should not suffer as a result. The reactions to the invasion are therefore hesitant, uncoordinated, and ultimately deadly for the president and his staff.

The 1996 film Mars Attacks! by Tim Burton, starring Jack Nicholson in the role of the American president, was not a box-office success, but it skilfully parodied everyday US politics. It depicts a world that cannot exist in reality in this way. Or can it?

Replace the word alien with the word coronavirus, and we’ve got ourselves a situation. And not only that, the situation is actually even worse than the movie wanted to portray in its parodistic exaggeration.

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Mafalda in Buenos Aires

In my youth, I came a few times across a comic strip with a little heroine called Mafalda. At that time I didn’t really know the meaning of this precocious girl, she had been nothing more to me than the heroine of a comic strip like Charlie Brown from Peanuts. Later I learned from an Argentinean friend how well-known and popular Mafalda was there. But only a vacation in Buenos Aires and an analysis of Mafalda in the form of a political and socio-historical investigation brought me closer to the comic strip and its significance for Latin America.

If one strolls through the streets of Buenos Aires, one cannot overlook the amount of Mafalda drawings in the city. On a small square between the streets of Defensa and Chile there is a queue of people at any time of the day, patiently waiting to take a picture with Mafalda and her friends.

A line in front of the Mafalda statue in Buenos Aires

The statue is located opposite the house where the cartoonist and inventor of Mafalda and her friends Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, better known by his stage name Quino, lived. Since the statue was erected, this area of the San Telma district has become a tourist spot. Every weekend an artists’ market is held along Defensa.

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Otto Waalkes vs Harry Potter Puppet Pals

Does anyone still remember the viral sensation from 2007, Harry Potter Puppet Pals? Yes, exactly that one with the rhythmical tic-toc and the names of the characters that are sung by the puppets.

Well, by enjoying some Otto-Compilations in the evening I stumble across an old sketch by Otto Waalkes in what must be from the 1970s, in which he is using the same rhythm and counting names of former dictators.: Dubček, Mao Zedong, King Kong, Idi Amin, Saddam, Honecker, …

It seems that Otto’s sketch is also based on older material, and the Harry Potter Puppet Pals had the same as inspiration. Does anyone know what the original song is?