Help me bury this
on June 12, 2013 at 12:01 amRemember a few days ago when I said I’d allow myself some credit for maybe sticking the arrow pointing upwards on purpose because all that credit would get taken away later? Â Yeah. Â Here we go.
To everyone in the world but me, this last panel is an amazingly obvious sexual innuendo. Â Danny has a comedically large bone. Â He wants Joyce to help him “bury it.” Â May folks think this is the actual joke!
IT IS NOT.
The implications never registered with me. Â Danny was a dog. Â I thought it’d be funny if he wanted to bury a bone, and as you may note from Joyce’s first appearance, I have/had a thing for oversized props. Â That was it. Â I swear.
But I’m like visiting my dad at the time. Â This may have been during the beginning of my parents’ separation/divorce? Â I think? Â It’s all kind of fuzzy. Â All I remember is that it was just me and him. Â And he read this strip, and gives me this look. Â And I have no idea what’s going on. Â And my dad of all people ends up being the person who tells me that I’ve just drawn this naughty thing. Â And he’s super-pleased, and I’m absolutely scandalized. Â And he won’t believe me that I had no idea — he just thinks I’m embarrassed at being caught at writing dirty jokes by my father.
Man.
I keep telling you Joyce is autobiographical. Â And that I just didn’t know it yet.
Loading ...
He wants to bury his bone with Joyce? She should be happier about that at least.
So if Joyce = Willis, then somewhere inside Willis was Anti-Willis, just as Joyce had an Anti-Joyce inside of her. Maybe he’s the one who wrote this strip.
So, did you end up making peace with Anti-Willis, or did you just become him?
I think he may have shot him. And then probably flew away on a jetpack. Then got sued? And then when he went to write about it a musical, height challenged aliens, shortness challenged aliens, a giant honeybun and possibly a gorrilla, as well as a car and the almighty janitor got involved…………..
I think I may have gotten sidetracked here.
…I wanna see an It’s Walky! musical now…
Anti-Willis throttled Willis and now keeps him locked up in his toolshed.
This is called serendipity. Just let it happen.
Never worry, David! I’m never seen the dity aspect of this joke before, and I’ve seen this strip several times.
Me too. I guess I don’t have the filthy mind I thought I did.
Same. Perhaps it’s just Roomies! Goggles…not really on the lookout for that sort of thing here
Yup. I’m 43 and embarrassed to say I didn’t notice ’til you pointed it out
I’m not really prudish, just oblivious. I didn’t catch the Dig shirt in Dumbing of Age ’til you pointed it out, either… Pretty pathetic.
I never catch these kinds of jokes, if I’m not looking for them.
But then I’m an incredibly dense asexual, what’s everyone else’s excuse.
Me too. He’s a dog with a bone, dogs bury bones. It’s just an offhand remark to reinforce that they are animals in case you didn’t notice and that Danny isn’t paying attention to Joyce’s confusion. I guess when obvious joke is obvious, my brain doesn’t go searching for innuendo.
Maybe if it were Joe saying the line, since we expect that sort of thing from him.
@Ae Daily: Does not being a native speaker and thus being less familiar with English-language-specific double meanings and figures of speech count?
My excuse is that I’m incredibly dense in general.
Kicking Young Willis while he’s down seems kind of mean, but… people might not be quite so quick to jump to the amazingly obvious innuendo if the actual intended joke had any discernable funny at all.
Nah, thinking the younger you was kind of a dweeb is just a sign you’ve improved. Ever met a dude who won’t shut up about how cool and popular he was in high school? It’s never someone who’s cool now.
I never brag about how cool I was in high school. I knew, and know, full well, that I was a dweeb. For me though, nothing has changed.
Honestly, I never caught the accidental sexual innuendo until now. I think it’s due to my affinity for comedy of the absurd, and the casualness with which he reacts to being a dog and goes from answering Joyce’s question to attempting to enlist her help to bury a comically large bone.
Okay, what I’m trying to say is that I am a big fan of Monty Python, and…you know what, the Pythons would have absolutely put the joke in for both interpretations at once. Where was I going with this?
Still not the wierdest sex dream a Joyce has had.
Rub your huge bone on my tummy, Danny!
Oh no, Ethan, my parents can see you rubbing my tummy! They know I want sex. We need to get off these waves! Parents can never know their children have sex!
It’s too bad you couldn’t work some nuts into the strip somewhere.
You know, because squirrel. Yeah, that’s why.
They’re probably in her mouth.
Wow. You know I never thought of that as having a sexual interpretation until you pointed it out.
Dumbing Of Age needs more comically oversized props, I think. But I did spend my teen years watching a considerable amount of Whose Line Is It Anyway, so….
Yes. That show was refreshingly free of innuendo. /wink!
I’ll add my voice to those who missed the “obvious sexual innuendo” here, if only because the last couple of strips featured sexual content that was a lot more obvious.
Didn’t you say once that this bone was the first in a long line of unintentionally phallic things you’ve drawn?
Right here.
WALKYPEDIA AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY
So, does this make it two? Or are there other things Willis drew that were unintentionally phallic that we’ve seen in this run?
I dunno, I haven’t been keeping track.
Incidentally, Walkypedia really is away. It’s down again. This makes me sad.
I await the return of it. Also, could you rename it the ‘Semmepedia’?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there haven’t been any others.
Yet.
Yes, but what is that limb shaped like, hmmm?
My dad and I are like that, except my dad does believe it when the joke goes over my head, because I am in fact that naive and/or oblivious.
So everybody in here is an innocent, hehe. Yeah right!
Or maybe I’m just born with a dirty mind, I saw the damn sexual implication in ‘burying the bone’ first reading.
Guess I’m just evil.
Well, we’re in Joyce’s subconscious, in a dream brought on by seeing a sexually explicit comic strip… why wouldn’t there be an innuendo here?
the innuendo went right over my head when I first read this, and that embarrasses me.
I am ashamed that I didn’t notice it at first, because I am very familiar with “burying the bone” as a sexual innuendo, and completely missed it here.
Willis should make a new list: “mistakes I point out thinking that they’re obvious, only to find out nobody noticed them until I pointed them out.”
I didn’t notice it either, and I’m a DOM. Pretty painful realization.
Wait, this is JOYCE’s dream, so she wants Danny to…
Jeez, why DIDN’T I see that coming?
On another note, David, were you really as over the top as Joyce at the time, or were you more like DOA Joyce?
I was actually wondering about Joyce’s eyes in the last panel, and whether she’s trying to shield them with her hand and whether Danny has pants?
How did you people not get this? Jeeze get your minds into the gutter. 😉
First time seeing this and my eyes widened at the bone that Joyce is dreaming about Danny wanting her help to bury. I have a filthy mind.
Anyone else get a load of old Shortpacked show up on their Roomies and Dumbing of Age feeds.
Yep. And Roomies and DoA both redirected to SP! for a while.
I think this comic’s REAL failing is that Danny’s ultra-casual about Joyce having apparently forgotten that everyone’s an animal and what sort of animal they are.
I mean, even as crazy as Joyce is, that’s a special kind of crazy going on there!
Well, at least the ‘Joe’s a wolf’ bit is intentional…
Stilll…man, how can you write a character who’s a complete horndog and be this oblivious to innuendo?
Is Joe’s “DIG” shirt in the Dumbiverse partly an intentional callback to this strip?
Everywhere you look
There’s a cock
A dong to hold onto
Everywhere you look
There’s a wang
Of somebody who needs you
Am I the only one who sees other implications in Danny, specifically, ‘burying his bone’? As in, he wants to cover up any evidence that he might have sexual feelings?
That would make sense if this were Danny’s dream.
The first time I read this strip, I thought, ‘Wow, that joke is way too obvious, try a little harder Willis.’ It still amazes me to find out that it was unintentional
“harder”?
The wonders of the human brain: letting you see sex where there isn’t.
When I first read this, I had no idea Danny was supposed to be a dog person. I thought the joke had to do with dogs and wolves being similar/related, and Joe being a horndog.
I R SMART.
Wait, that’s an innuendo? I just thought it was a joke about him being a dog now!
Also, wow, Joyce really was autobiographical, wasn’t she? That is so weird.
Welp, I will say that I groked the ‘original’ intent of the joke on its first reading…and before I could finish reading said comic, I also saw the (unintentional) innuendo, too.
Originally posted:
January 6, 1999