Rubes by Leigh Rubin for May 12, 2023

C eative wasteland

This is a character-driven cartoon.

The little weeds growing from the sidewalk cracks are cute.

He also can’t say the letter “C” so his friend suggested he use the letter “K”

Another oldie, but … okayie.

If that’s George Perec, he learned how to do without it.

French author George Perec wrote a novel called A Void entirely without using the letter e (except for his name on the title page). Someone did an English translation, also without using that letter.

I have the English translation. It’s not bad.

“I suspected you’d find it here on Sesame Street.”

“Eeeee!”

Great!!! Now we can reform the band.

I find it amazing how adaptable the mind can be. At first I didn’t get the joke until I looked closer and realised the ‘e’ was missing from ‘yes’. I read the balloon as ‘yes’ anyway. It is shown that provided all the letters of a word are present and start and end with the correct ones, the ones in the middle can be completely jumbled up and you’ll still be able to read it with ease. Look here

“It deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”

That may b min . I’v b n looking all ov r th plac for it.

He doesn’t need the E for his response to make sense. Just read the two letters separately and it’s still a good response.

Sesame Street in later years…the letter E becomes a wino on skid row…

E-flat.

It must have run away from hom .

It’s a Y S man who knows his missing letters.

Y_s! H_ did, by golly!

He’s very font of it too.

Looks like he won’t need to buy a vowel after all

My Scrabble game was never the same…

Good one Leigh — LOLOL

E’sy to do. He has trouble with his vowels