Now for a joke type that isn’t pun-based. Instead, like snowclones, these jokes are based on formulaic expressions, and involve replacing items in the formulas by (semantically) analogous items; they are analogical extensions of the formulas. One popped up in today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro:
(#1) To understand this cartoon, you have to retrieve the conventionalized N + N compound dog whistle, the basis for dog tuba (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
From NOAD:
(compound) noun dog whistle: [a] a high-pitched whistle used to train dogs, typically having a sound inaudible to humans. [b] [usually as modifier] a subtly aimed political message which is intended for, and can only be understood by, a particular group: dog-whistle issues such as immigration and crime.
It’s sense a that’s relevant to #1, which shows a guy playing a tuba at a high pitch humans can’t hear (note that the other guy is struggling to hear anything at all) but dogs can (note the dog stopping up its ears in pain). So: the dog is experiencing not a dog whistle, but (preposterously) a dog tuba.
