[panel 1: a large dodo approaches a clean, well dressed vagrant youth sat beside a well fashioned wood and stone building. The youth warily guards a bag holding their belongings and the stick they use to travel with it. The dodo asks “Pardon me, do you have the time?” and the youth replies “yes, it’s -“]

[panel 2: the dodo exclaims “You have the time!”]

[panel 3: a quartet of dodos appear and excitedly chatter over one another: “He has the time.” “The time! he has it!” “At long last! Our desperate search is at an end! The time has been found!”]

[panel 4: they lean in amongst one another and whisper “PSSHHWSSSSPTT SSHSSHHPSSTT”]

[panel 5: the group approaches the youth and asks “Will you… give us the time?” And the youth replies “It’s nine fifteen.” The dodos exclaim “AAAAAHHH! NOW WE HAVE THE TIME!”]

Wondermark by David Malki

        • @feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
          40•3 months ago

          It’s riffing on the common phrase “to have the time”, meaning to know what the time is. Specifically, it is highlighting a potential conflation of the verb “to have” as meaning “to possess or own” rather than “to know” - or perhaps our understanding of time as both an abstract concept and a concrete description of the position of the earth’s surface as it rotates relative to the sun. In this imaginary scenerio, the ambiguity inherent in the language is represented by a small group of dodos who wish to know who has the time, while being in awe of the implications of such ownership. Thus, an irreverent comic sketch. I hope this helps.

  • FuglyDuckEnglish
    28•3 months ago

    well.

    I’m glad that didn’t go the way I thought it might.
    “yes. IT"S TIME FOR YOU TO DIE AHAHAHAHA”
    (I hear dodo were tasty.)

    • NoIWontPickAName
      19•3 months ago

      Supposedly dodo was actually horrible. They found journals of people bitching about it

      • FuglyDuckEnglish
        8•3 months ago

        then why are they trying to bring it back along with the mammoth?

          • @DragonTypeWyvern
            3•3 months ago

            Asking if they could, but not if they should

            (They should, just to flex on the British)

        • M137
          2•3 months ago

          You’re unable to think of a reason other than for our own gluttony…? It would be super fucked up to bring them back just for the reason to eat them. Seriously, that’s some deeply disturbing horror shit. And somehow that’s the only thing you can imagine?

          • FuglyDuckEnglish
            1•3 months ago

            As apposed to “for the science”… which actually is one of the major tropes in horror? Quite possibly one of the oldest (though supernatural horrors were the first.)

            Even if I were that dense… these people are forgetting to ask if they should bring that specific species back. There are so many others to choose from; they went with the media hype rather the useful-science route.

            It’s unlikely that the dodo’s ecological role hasn’t already been filled by something else in the 4+ centuries it’s been absent.

            Its return to the wild would likely pressure otherwise extant species that have stepped into that roll; and it’s unlikely to survive in the wild anyway- it’s not like we’ve stopped altering the world in its absence.

            So that will relegate a species relatively artificial existence to being research or a novelty- a curiosity in zoos or food or something else. Maybe even an exclusive private island tourist trap…

      • @samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6•3 months ago

        If they had tasted good, they’d still be alive today in cages, waiting to be slaughtered.

        …maybe we did them a favor.

        • Jose A Lerma
          8•3 months ago

          Nah, they’d still be extinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon#Hunting

          After being opened up to the railroads, the town of Plattsburgh, New York, is estimated to have shipped 1.8 million pigeons to larger cities in 1851 alone at a price of 31 to 56 cents a dozen. By the late 19th century, the trade of passenger pigeons had become commercialized

          Even if adjusted for inflation, 31 cents a dozen doesn’t sound like a lot, but then market saturation happened and your prediction came to pass:

          The price of a barrel full of pigeons dropped to below fifty cents, due to overstocked markets. Passenger pigeons were instead kept alive so their meat would be fresh when the birds were killed, and sold once their market value had increased again. Thousands of birds were kept in large pens, though the bad conditions led many to die from lack of food and water, and by fretting (gnawing) themselves; many rotted away before they could be sold.

          Those who don’t learn from the past are something something

        • NoIWontPickAName
          4•3 months ago

          The best thing for a species survival in this world is for it to taste good to us.

          Plant, animal, fungi, whatever

  • Decoy321
    4•3 months ago

    Holy shit, Wondermark is still going!!! I used to read this over a decade ago. Glad to see it’s still going strong!

  • Cosmic Cleric
    3•3 months ago

    I’m not high enough to understand this. Can someone ELI5 this for me please?

    It seems absolutely unfunny to me, and I’m a big Monty Python fan.

    Edit: Just to prevent snarky replies, I understand what the humor is supposed to be, a word play, but it just seems so incredibly unfunny, and that’s coming from someone who says dad jokes all the time.

    More power to you if you find it funny, truly, but what I’m asking for is somebody to explain where the humor is in the word play.

    Perhaps it’s a regional cultural type of humor?