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In Jon Adams\u2019s drawing, a bearded man with long white hair is standing barefoot in the doorway of a small house in the woods and saying something to a disgruntled woman who\u2019s walking away with a duffle bag. \u00a0He looks reluctant to move beyond the doorway, and his left arm is extended back into the house as if he\u2019s holding on to or chained to something that allows him to lean only so far outside the doorway.<\/p>\n
What is the relationship between these two people? He looks older than she is, so he could be her father. Or maybe, despite the age difference, they\u2019re a couple. What\u2019s clear is that the woman\u2019s had enough and is leaving.<\/p>\n
But why are they in a little house in the woods? Is the man supposed to be another Ted Kaczynski, the math professor who moved to a remote cabin and lived as a recluse until he became the Unabomber?<\/p>\n
So many questions, and I don\u2019t know that any will lead to a decent caption.<\/p>\n
Maybe the woman\u2019s leaving because the man will not shut up about the beauty of living simply in nature: \u201cCome back. I\u2019ll stop quoting Thoreau.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Maybe the woman became disillusioned with the man, whom she started dating when he was her college professor: \u201cYou thought my rejection of society was romantic when you were my student.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Maybe the woman really did chain the barefoot man to a fixture in the house: \u201cJust leave me some shoes and the key to the handcuffs.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Or maybe the man really is the Unabomber: \u201cIf you leave I\u2019ll kill myself\u2026.Or maybe I\u2019ll kill other people as part of a domestic terrorist campaign to highlight the erosion of individual freedoms and the threat of modern technologies.\u201d<\/strong> Too soon? Or maybe just too long? Short captions are usually better, but I\u2019ll defend the length of this one on the grounds that the Unabomber was verbose\u2014his manifesto was 35,000 words\u2014and I\u2019m trying to capture the way he talked.<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s see how you did:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the best quarantine joke: \u201cCity folk don\u2019t have toilet paper, either.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Here are the best scatological entries:<\/p>\n And here are the best Unabomber jokes, all five of which are much shorter than mine:<\/p>\n I like the way this next entry, which may also be a reference to the Unabomber, plays on a common question asked by men who are left behind: \u201cWas it something I rambled about incoherently?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a sex joke\u2014\u201cWait! Not the only thing that\u2019s tiny\u2014what do you mean?\u201d<\/strong>\u2014that would be better if it were rearranged to read as follows: \u201cWait! What do you mean by, \u2018Not the only thing that\u2019s tiny?\u2019\u201d Remember to always end your caption with the word that serves as the punch line, and in this caption the punch line is definitely \u201ctiny.\u201d<\/p>\n I really like this entry\u2014\u201cSorry that you came all this way, but I didn\u2019t order a pizza\u201d<\/strong>\u2014but it works only if the woman\u2019s carrying one of those insulated pizza delivery bags and not, as I think it is, an ordinary duffle bag.<\/p>\n In this next caption the woman is not just leaving but escaping: \u201cDon\u2019t forget to write to your dear old captor.\u201d <\/strong>I like to imagine that she has flipped the tables on her captor and chained him to a fixture in the house, in part because that would support my assumption that the man is handcuffed by his left arm to something behind the doorway.<\/p>\n This entry is unique because it assumes that the woman has decided to leave before \u00a0even stepping foot inside the tiny house: \u201cAt least look inside first.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s another unique entry, one which presumes that the woman was ordered to leave: \u00a0\u201cToo much chatter, lady.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Each of the next five entries identifies a different reason why the woman got fed up and left:<\/p>\n\n
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