Poll-ish Humor The following is completely true, believe it or not: Today’s poll concerns these three cartoons, which ran on the comics page on April 1. Foxtrot Pearls Before Swine Get Fuzzy Stunned reader e-mails to the syndicates began by 6 a.m.; the syndicates were clueless. At various times through the day, terse statements were issued independently by the three cartoonists, Stephan Pastis ("Pearls Before Swine"), Bill Amend ("Foxtrot") and Darby Conley ("Get Fuzzy"). They are reproduced below: Stephan Pastis: "All I know is that I wrote what I thought was a pretty decent strip and then ran it by Darby to see if he thought it was funny or not. Apparently, he liked it too much. I had no idea that he was so desperate for material. I know he's close to deadline, but that's not an excuse. In the future, I'll keep my ideas to myself. How it ended up in 'Foxtrot' I have no idea." Darby Conley: "Some months ago, Stephan Pastis had run a very bad idea, which did involve a Ouija board, by me to see if it was funny. It was not. During that conversation, however, I gave him a brilliant joke to use for this idea, but he said that he wasn't going to use it. Having written it myself, I decided to go ahead and use it in my strip. And you can ask Bill Amend about it, because I mentioned the whole thing to him that day, and he'd tell you what I just did." Bill Amend: "A while back, Darby Conley bounced some ideas off me while I was helping him learn to use e-mail and one was a really bad joke about a Ouija board covered with cat droppings. I told him it was pretty weak -- even by 'Get Fuzzy' standards -- and suggested a different joke to fix it, but he liked his original version better and was sticking with it. So I used my idea. Obviously, Conley changed his mind or lied or something and incorporated my suggestions without telling me." Based on these statements, and their internal logic, who is most likely telling the truth? a. No one. This was obviously a coordinated April Fool’s Day hoax. b. Pastis c. Conley d. Actually, all of them might be. One of these strips doesn’t work as well as the other two. Which one? a. Pearls b. Fuzzy c. Foxtrot What word best describes the reason that the one strip doesn’t work as well as the other two? a. Semantics b. Drawing c. Consistency d. Cleverness View results Note: This is an unscientific survey of washingtonpost.com readers.
Today’s poll concerns these three cartoons, which ran on the comics page on April 1.
Foxtrot Pearls Before Swine Get Fuzzy
Stunned reader e-mails to the syndicates began by 6 a.m.; the syndicates were clueless. At various times through the day, terse statements were issued independently by the three cartoonists, Stephan Pastis ("Pearls Before Swine"), Bill Amend ("Foxtrot") and Darby Conley ("Get Fuzzy"). They are reproduced below:
Stephan Pastis: "All I know is that I wrote what I thought was a pretty decent strip and then ran it by Darby to see if he thought it was funny or not. Apparently, he liked it too much. I had no idea that he was so desperate for material. I know he's close to deadline, but that's not an excuse. In the future, I'll keep my ideas to myself. How it ended up in 'Foxtrot' I have no idea."
Darby Conley: "Some months ago, Stephan Pastis had run a very bad idea, which did involve a Ouija board, by me to see if it was funny. It was not. During that conversation, however, I gave him a brilliant joke to use for this idea, but he said that he wasn't going to use it. Having written it myself, I decided to go ahead and use it in my strip. And you can ask Bill Amend about it, because I mentioned the whole thing to him that day, and he'd tell you what I just did."
Bill Amend: "A while back, Darby Conley bounced some ideas off me while I was helping him learn to use e-mail and one was a really bad joke about a Ouija board covered with cat droppings. I told him it was pretty weak -- even by 'Get Fuzzy' standards -- and suggested a different joke to fix it, but he liked his original version better and was sticking with it. So I used my idea. Obviously, Conley changed his mind or lied or something and incorporated my suggestions without telling me."
Based on these statements, and their internal logic, who is most likely telling the truth? a. No one. This was obviously a coordinated April Fool’s Day hoax. b. Pastis c. Conley d. Actually, all of them might be.
One of these strips doesn’t work as well as the other two. Which one? a. Pearls b. Fuzzy c. Foxtrot
What word best describes the reason that the one strip doesn’t work as well as the other two? a. Semantics b. Drawing c. Consistency d. Cleverness
