thinking
Explanation
This comic takes the classic "what are you thinking about?" pillow talk scenario and gives it an absurd linguistic twist.
A couple is lying in bed. One partner asks, "Are you okay? What are you thinking about?" The other replies, "Nothing." The first partner presses: "It's not nothing. I can tell. Talk to me."
Then the floodgates open. The second partner launches into an intense linguistic rant: "'Nothing' is the only English word that is both a noun, that is the same plural and singular, is a description, and is a verb describing an action the noun can't perform on itself." They continue spiraling: "Glummp glummp can't glummp! Glummp glummp!"
The first partner pleads: "No more, please, no more..." But the second partner, now wild-eyed, continues: "Glumming is something a glummp don't glummp!"
The humor operates on multiple levels. First, it plays on the classic relationship trope where one partner (stereotypically male) says they're "thinking about nothing" and the other insists on knowing what's really on their mind -- only to discover the answer is genuinely bizarre and useless. Second, the linguistic observation about "nothing" is presented as a deep philosophical torment, when it's really just a quirky grammatical factoid. Third, the character's descent into the nonsense word "glummp" parodies how linguistic analysis can spiral into absurdity when you start substituting variables for words. The comic suggests that some people's inner mental lives are occupied by exactly the kind of useless, maddening thoughts their partners feared.