1. 

   gurple
   

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   Iza Swede is a longtime Ballard resident who lives in a condo with her husband Jimson. Both are Adams Elementary graduates. Iza won’t willingly offer her age, but then again the only people walking around saying their ages over and over are crazy people. Iza said she would only appear in the cartoon if we featured her completely nude, which is why there's no picture here. Iza's hobbies are obsessing about laundry, making jokes that are funny and topical, and not getting sued.

   (I'm not starting this to be mean, but in the spirit of friendly competition -- folks, let's just show these people another way that this could be done)

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   gurple
   

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   "Ballard has so many species of birds! There are the crows, the seagulls, the pigeons.... And what's that bird that flies really high and sounds exactly like a 747?"

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   gurple
   

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   "Ballard has a strong commitment to the environment. The water in the ship canal is so clear you could run a car off it!"

   Posted 1 year ago #
4. 

   gurple
   

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   "Ballard is such a great place to learn new languages. Every time a cyclist falls on the Missing Link, I hear a stream of words I've never heard before!"

   Posted 1 year ago #
5. 

   gurple
   

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   "Ballard is peace-loving. But if Magnolia fires that cannon one more time, we're going to shut down half of /their/ bridge!"

   Posted 1 year ago #
6. 

   gurple
   

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   "Such a shame about the old Denny's building. The architecture was so unique! All those exotic species of mold living in the rafters!"

   Posted 1 year ago #
7. 

   gurple
   

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   "I love how Ballard is so into recycling. Waste not, want not! And Belltown clearly wasn't using its hipster bars any more."

   Posted 1 year ago #
8. 

   westwas1
   

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   "What Ballard is really known for is its internationalism. Why, at every Sunday Market I run into people who have jetted in from parts of Seattle I've never heard of!"

   Posted 1 year ago #
9. 

   westwas1
   

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   (@gurple - best Forum thread I've seen in months...)

   Posted 1 year ago #
10. 

    gurple
    

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    Good one, westwas1!

    "My husband and I love the new extra-wide parking spots on 20th Ave. And isn't it nice that, every few hundred feet, there's a spot marked for bicycles!"

    Posted 1 year ago #
11. 

    westwas1
    

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    "Ballard has been lucky to become THE gathering spot for all of the area's bearded lumbermen after a hard week's work in the hills. What...they're not loggers? What's an interface designer?"

    Posted 1 year ago #
12. 

    gurple
    

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    "Used to be, Ballard had one church for every bar. Now there's a shopping mall for every bookstore and an airport for every bowling alley."

    Posted 1 year ago #
13. 

    eric
    

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    i have nothing to add except that i can't believe its taken this long for someone to bring up the hilarity that is Ima Norwegian. hate to be cruel, but its brutal, really brutal. not in a funny way, either.

    Posted 1 year ago #
14. 

    angeline
    

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    ITA, Eric!

    I couldn't think of any way to bring up the unfunnyness of the "comic strip" that didn't sound hopelessly crabby, so I've just been wincing and keeping my thoughts to myself.

    Posted 1 year ago #
15. 

    teigyr
    

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    Yeah, it's kind of painful.

    Posted 1 year ago #
16. 

    great idea
    

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    it's pathetic in a 'Ziggy' sort of way without the funny round head.

    Posted 1 year ago #
17. 

    Norge
    

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    And I thought I was the only one that didn't find it funny or relevant to Ballard.

    Posted 1 year ago #
18. 

    BooRadley
    

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    It's being posted as a comic strip but it's the same picture with a different caption. No need to feel bad guys, forced meme is forced. It's a nice gesture for the swedes to host it but it's really not funny. The funny thing to me is there's two names on the credit.

    Posted 1 year ago #
19. 

    gurple
    

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    I'm expecting a twist. Like, OK, it starts out as this mild-mannered aphorism comic. It establishes itself that way for maybe a year. Then, imperceptibly at first, it starts to change. Maybe one day Ima Norwegian delivers her observation with a noticeable shiner. Maybe her attitude toward Lars starts to take on a note of fear. Instead of one panel it's two, and in the second panel we begin to see a hardened gleam in Ima's eye.

    By a year later, it's completely unrecognizable as the Ima Norwegian we know. It's a sprawling 10-panel screed each week. Lars is gone and never mentioned. Ima talks constantly about how the streets of Ballard are safe now, about how they MUST stay safe. And the children? If they ever came home to get their laundry done, oh, the horrors they might find....

    Posted 1 year ago #
20. 

    Alferd Packer
    

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    Gurple, I'll be on the lookout for the imperceptible changes if I don't get bored first. I had assumed it was something about missing nordic genes which was creating the plethora of "huh?" moments I was experiencing.

    Posted 1 year ago #
21. 

    Dweezil
    

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    Do these guys happen to be the same two guys that did a Ballard podcast-thing a while back?

    Posted 1 year ago #
22. 

    gurple
    

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    Proposal: whenever there's a new Ima Norwegian, we post alternate captions based on current events. When the comic is consistently funnier than our alternate captions, we all win.

    Posted 1 year ago #
23. 

    BriarRose
    

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    I thought it was impossible for anything to be less funny than Ima Norwegian. Learn something every day.

    Posted 1 year ago #
24. 

    gurple
    

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    Good one, BriarRose! But you forgot the quotes. Ima Norwegian and Iza Swede always have quotes around their captions, for some reason.

    Posted 1 year ago #
25. 

    Observant
    

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    gurple for the win!

    Posted 1 year ago #
26. 

    chrisjeff
    

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    "Ballard has such a great high school that kids living within a mile north can't get in!"

    Thanks for addressing the lameness of that cartoon Gurple. Great Ballard jokes, albeit a little out of date, were on Almost Live.

    Posted 1 year ago #
27. 

    gelsol
    

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    The best thing about the Almost Live Ballard sketches was the seat belts hanging out of the car door. I still see that from time to time and it cracks me up.

    Nice work on the alternative captions. I hope Ima evolves into something more "dimensional" too, cuz this is some Family Circus #%&!@ going on here.

    OR if they get canned, they should at least kill her off. Perhaps mid-quote she could fall dead of a heart-attack.

    Posted 1 year ago #
28. 

    Ernie
    

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    I was just going to quote my buddies post on the front page but I went to look and it was deleted!? That facebooking friendly good taste is getting out of hand.

    Anyway, here's a paraphrase:

    Wow! I can't believe that it only takes TWO guys to come up with this fantastic material! Family Circle better watch their back!

    Posted 1 year ago #
29. 

    Pastafarian
    

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    @Ernie: That comment is still there.

    http://www.myballard.com/2012/02/19/ima-norwegian-7/

    Posted 1 year ago #
30. 

    iPlod
    

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    All you haters should just relax and have a Tampa.

    Posted 1 year ago #
31. 

    westwas1
    

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    Maybe it's just that none of us are hip to what 'Scandihoovian' really means. If we were, perhaps we'd be laughing our as$es off.

    Posted 1 year ago #
32. 

    iPlod
    

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    Or a Roi Tan.

    Posted 1 year ago #
33. 

    gurple
    

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    Honestly, absolutely honestly... I just don't think they're trying, at all. It's not that I don't find it funny; there are a lot of things that I don't find funny and other people do. It's that it feels like a complete lack of effort.

    That's why I started this thread -- if I thought that these guys were just incapable of humor, then this thread would just be mean-spirited. That's not it -- I think an Ima Norwegian with some effort put into it could be funny.

    Both of the creators have been funnier elsewhere; they're not intrinsically unfunny people or anything like that. We deserve better than this, as readers, and they deserve better than this, as creators of something that people will know them for. The Swedes deserve something that's more like what they probably expected when they signed these guys up.

    They've set themselves a hard problem, actually -- to try to be funny with a bland Scandinavian theme and no visual cues, while being completely inoffensive. That's not easy, and I can respect that. I just don't feel like they're trying; they're probably both very busy, and Ima Norwegian isn't high on the priority list. I want to encourage them to try.

    Posted 1 year ago #
34. 

    iPlod
    

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    So you're trying to urge them into transcending bland.
    But isn't that the essence of Scand?
    Blandinavian.

    (Excellent architecture, embroidery, baked goods & seamanship excluded.)

    Posted 1 year ago #
35. 

    Ernie
    

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    Thanks pasta, I guess I didn't realize there were more than one of those stupid cartoons on the home page.

    Posted 1 year ago #
36. 

    Cate
    

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    I grew up on my father's Sven and Olly jokes, he is eighty and still tells new ones every Thanksgiving. There is some pretty funny Scandinavian humor out there, they just need to find it. I think that they are not trying enough.

    Posted 1 year ago #
37. 

    Pastafarian
    

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    Oh yeah, there are quite a few that have been posted already. None of them particularly funny.

    http://www.myballard.com/tag/ima-norwegian/

    Posted 1 year ago #
38. 

    gelsol
    

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    Bumpin' this. The new comic on the front page is perfect...

    ly horrible. I now think they shouldn't change a thing with this comic.

    Posted 1 year ago #
39. 

    Norge
    

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    I don't know who labeled Tim Hunter and Frank Shiers funny guys but they have a long way to go to get to that Norwegian humor but maybe the Swedes think its funny. My favorite Norwegian joke:

    They changed the names of the Sons of Norway to the Sons of Bitches, that way they can let the Swedes in too!

    Posted 1 year ago #
40. 

    Romanesque
    

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    Norge +1.

    Now that was funny.

    Posted 1 year ago #
41. 

    Thomas C.
    

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    Iza bored.

    http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/funny-pictures-cat-fixes-your-lols-for-you.jpg

    Posted 1 year ago #
42. 

    iPlod
    

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    Hi, I'm Tim and I'd like you to know that all I do is provide the scathingly excellent art for this collaboration and frankly (hee hee, hermph, snerk, haha) "frankly" (HAHAHAHA! hee hee, snort AH HAH HAH!) FRANKLY! (mmmpf) the captions have to be written by Frank because his sense of humor is a much better match for the targeted demographic than the finely tuned sophistication from which I cannot descend.

    Posted 1 year ago #
43. 

    gurple
    

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    All right, guys, shall we do this? Let's post some alternate captions on today's Ima.

    Posted 1 year ago #
44. 

    onederfullone
    

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    We finally got a president that said, "Our energy policy means that energy prices will necessarily increase"...

    "Just like a Norwegian to fall back so soon"

    -Ima Swede

    Posted 1 year ago #
45. 

    iPlod
    

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    "I thought the springs were supposed to 'price ahead', not the gas clocks."

    Posted 1 year ago #

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