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Well, all right. I'll poke a little fun here. The phrase "...in a PIG'S eye!!" virtually guarantees that this artist is kind of on his way toward becoming an old fogey. The phrase evidently means "yeah, right" or something similar, but I've been thinking about it for a while now and can't really figure out how the phrase originated. Whatever the exact meaning or original context, it apparently spells doom, because when the woman who is presumably his wife says it to him, he looks like he's unsure of whether to cry or vomit. It's fun to laugh at anachronistic mannerisms like this, which is why we laugh at Mr. Burns and T. Herman Zweibel, but I'm sure he didn't use it so that someone like me could come across it while mining for ironic humor. He probably used it because the phrase came naturally to him. We are not the intended audience, and he probably couldn't give a damn if people outside the intended audience thought it were lame. That's kind of how it has to be at times. I have to counter what I said on the last page by observing here that sometimes if you really want to wow a reader, you have to alienate another reader. People often laugh at similar comedic patterns and styles, but they're hung on different hooks. If you're ready to firmly set your joke into a specific world and cater to a specific audience, they'll love you. The only thing is, you have to remember to cater to the other audience the next time if you want to keep them. Myself and the other baseball writers on this site have a lot of readers who will laugh unless we talk about baseball, and a lot of readers who will only laugh if we talk about baseball. A lot of the conflict lies in deciding whether to ration your troops bread and water every day, or to ration them a beer and a Thickburger every other day. You have to choose one of the two, and I like Thickburgers, so that's what we do. |