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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Both of their orders are wrong.

    The first person’s doughnut (pictured) has a single grain on it, so instead of getting “hundreds and thousands”, they’ve got a “one”.

    The second person’s order has been messed up in a more surreal way - instead of rainbow sprinkles, they’ve received a single sprinkle that isn’t actually any of the colours of the rainbow.

    I think it may have been over-complicated by having two punchlines in the last panel. Either of them could have stood on their own but having both on the last panel takes some of the impact out of the punch. Also, having two separate strips about this shop messing up orders would help establish this location in the comic’s world.



  • It’s probably worth mentioning that this doesn’t just stop at legislation. A lot of things in the UK are the way they are, just because that’s the way they’ve always been.

    What’s the official flag of the UK? It doesn’t have one. The Union Jack was a naval flag that became our defacto national flag. Before WW1, people could have lived their entire life without seeing a Union Jack.

    What’s the official national anthem of the UK? It doesn’t have one. God save the King / Queen is our defacto national anthem. It was a song that gained popularity and people adopted it unofficially.

    OK then. What’s the official language of the UK? You probably guessed - it doesn’t have one. English is only the defacto language of the UK. In fact, the only official language anywhere in the UK is Welsh, in Wales (obviously), where the vast majority of people speak English as their first language anyway.



  • True!

    Although, for a clearer comparison, it might help if I described what their normal food was.

    From what I remember (it was about 20 years ago!), and ranked from their favourite to least favourite, the food mix consisted of:

    • Peanuts
    • Yellow flakes and green flakes (which I suspect started off as corn and peas)
    • Scratchy red things (similar size and shape to a chunky watch battery)
    • Scratchy brown things (similar shape but flatter than the red ones)
    • Dark brown stick things

    I guess the closest food we have is dry cereal. If I just had a huge bowl of mixed dry cereal to communally eat from for the entire day, and then one day a whole lettuce was next to the bowl, I’d probably try to eat as much of it as I could before it was taken away too.


  • Ha, it reminds me of when we left our pet mice at my parents’ house while we went on holiday.

    We showed them how much food to put in the food bowl, and said if they ever wanted to treat the mice, they could put in a little bit of lettuce or a slice of cucumber.

    When we came back a fortnight later, we found all three of the mice looking healthy, doing normal mice things. My parents were concerned, though. They mentioned that even though they refilled it every day, the mice had barely touched any of their food.

    This surprised me because normally they eat almost everything. This is by design - the amount we put in takes into account that the mice will eat the bits they like best first, but because it’s nutritionally balanced, they need to eat the other stuff too.

    I wondered if the mice were unnerved or something by being moved into my parents’ house, so I asked if they ever put anything in as a treat. I was told, yes, and the mice always ate it all.

    It turned out that I hadn’t been clear about what a “little bit” meant and they’d been giving them one or two entire leaves of lettuce a day. The mice weren’t touching their food because they’d been living a Willy Wonka-esque existence of having room-sized treats delivered to them on a daily basis.




  • Wow, that’s a lot more complicated than I would have expected!

    Our system, although it’s basically the way it is because things change slowly here, kind of works for us. Between 16-18 here, you’re no longer in school, you go to college (different meaning than in the US!) or vocational training. It’s an in-between child and adult stage, where most people start doing grown-up things for the first time.