Cornish

Cidu Bill on Jul 3rd 2009

cornish.gif

Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Rina Piccolo, Tina's Groove, comic strips, comics, humor | 29 responses so far

29 Responses to “Cornish”

  1. Nicole Jul 3rd 2009 at 12:40 am 1

    Well .. goggling ‘Cornish lobsters’ yields very little’ I was going to suggest that Cornish lobsters are very small — till I cam across an article that was about one that was more than three feet long.

    So .. we move on to plan B

    it is a Cornish Lobster and it costs 3 pounds sterling

    That is all I got

  2. a Jul 3rd 2009 at 01:02 am 2

    it would have made more sense if they used “pound”, i don’t think english currency is ever “lb”

  3. Mitch4 Jul 3rd 2009 at 01:03 am 3

    Maybe it is analogous to “Cornish hen” or “Cornish game hen”, which are smaller than your average chicken.

    Nicole — the play off “pounds sterling” is appealing, but the artist (or do I mean “dialogue inker”?) wouldn’t abbreviate it as “lbs.” then. Of course, the waiter and chef can’t see that …

  4. Judy Jul 3rd 2009 at 01:04 am 4

    It has something to do with cornish game hens and how they are smaller than chickens.

  5. Nicole Jul 3rd 2009 at 01:31 am 5

    perhaps — but he clearly thinks the lobster is 3 pounds — so it might have something to do with Cornish game hens, but three pounds is three pounds so Cornish game lobster. Three pounds is a pretty large beast. SO unless you add in the three pounds sterling it doesn’t make sense

  6. Derek Jul 3rd 2009 at 03:18 am 6

    Three pounds sterling is very cheap for a lobster. The customer wouldn’t be complaining if that was the price.

  7. Pete Jul 3rd 2009 at 06:09 am 7

    The author has got it back to front.

    English pounds are 16 ounces (0.453 kg), and American pounds are 12 ounces (0.373 kg). That means that a 3 pound Cornish lobster would actually weigh MORE than a 3 pound American lobster, not less.

  8. Powers Jul 3rd 2009 at 07:15 am 8

    There’s a joke here trying to get out but failing. Any of the mentioned options are possible, but there’s something seriously wrong with each of them.

  9. Ian Jul 3rd 2009 at 07:32 am 9

    Pete–

    American pounds are 16 ounces, not 12.

    IAN

  10. Nicole Jul 3rd 2009 at 08:18 am 10

    according to this wikki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_%28mass%29#International_pound both the US and the UK use some thing called the avoirdupois pound. As Ian pointed out in this system one pound is 16 ounces.

    However it seems that 3 pounds is not necessarily 3 pounds … who knew

    The same wikki page says that at one time the UK used something called the Tower pound this was 12 ounces. So if the Cornish lobster was weighed using tower pounds the lobster would be much smaller than a lobster that was weighed using the avoirdupois pound. Of course this is somewhat obscure knowledge and seems an unlikely answer, but I present it for your consideration

  11. Pete Jul 3rd 2009 at 10:47 am 11

    “American pounds are 16 ounces, not 12.”

    Ah, I misunderstood the definition given here
    http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pound

    (in the U.S.) an apothecaries’ unit of weight equal to 5760 grains, divided into 12 ounces (0.373 kg). Abbreviation: lb. ap.

    Sorry, my mistake.

  12. Susan T-O Jul 3rd 2009 at 10:51 am 12

    Several people have mentioned that Cornish game hens are smaller than chickens. This is not really accurate–Cornish hens ARE chickens. They have just been slaughtered at a young age (usually a few weeks old). Saying that a game hen is smaller than a chicken is like saying a child is smaller than a human.

    But yes, I think the comic is trying rather unsuccessfully to make a play on how a Cornish lobster would be smaller than a regular lobster.

  13. eeyore19 Jul 3rd 2009 at 11:31 am 13

    I’ve read that Cornish game hens are actually pigeons, which are smaller than chickens. While Googling does come up with some sites that would indicate that this is true, the reputable sites give the same explanation that Susan T-O just did.

  14. Todd Jul 3rd 2009 at 04:19 pm 14

    At least at one point, there was only 12 ounces in a pound of gold. Which means that a pound of gold weighs less than a pound of feathers. Or an ounce of gold weighs more than a pound of feathers.

    Does any one know why we use ounce for both weight and liquid measurements? Is there some liquid where an ounce of it weighs an ounce?

  15. Don Jul 3rd 2009 at 04:43 pm 15

    Yes, it’s called water.

  16. Fnord Jul 3rd 2009 at 05:32 pm 16

    I don’t believe for a minute that the cartoonist was going for a British/American measurement system conversion joke.

    It’s clearly supposed to be referring to the smallness Cornish game hens, but the cartoonist made the mistake of referring to actual poundage, so the whole idea falls apart. It might have made sense if the guy just complained that his lobster was too small.

  17. Andrew Jul 3rd 2009 at 07:44 pm 17

    If only it had been from Turkey, then it could have been 36/42/whatever troy ounces.

  18. Big Machine Jul 3rd 2009 at 08:58 pm 18

    The world around, a pint’s a pound.

    Not really true, since both pints and pounds have multiple definitions.
    There are Troy ounces and pounds for silver and gold, Avoirdupois for most everything else, and Imperial pints for our Guinness.

  19. Lihtox Jul 3rd 2009 at 09:00 pm 19

    I think the cartoonist is making both jokes: the “Cornish game hen” joke and the “it cost 3 pounds” joke. So what if the cartoonist’s balloon uses the “lb” abbreviation; it’s still pronounced pounds. The abbreviation might even be meant to obscure the joke (a little too much, given the reaction here), or it might be abbreviated because the cartoonist needed to cram a lot of words into that first panel.

  20. Mitch4 Jul 3rd 2009 at 09:17 pm 20

    If only it had been from Turkey, then it could have been […]

    And if only it had been a turkey, then there would have been more than enough to please everybody.

  21. Powers Jul 4th 2009 at 09:22 am 21

    Lihtox: “So what if the cartoonist’s balloon uses the ‘lb’ abbreviation; it’s still pronounced pounds.”

    So, the cartoonist works in a visual medium and must consider the way his text looks when executing a joke.

  22. Lihtox Jul 4th 2009 at 09:48 am 22

    @Powers: I find that the funniest cartoons often take a little work to decipher: you read it, you have to think for a moment, and then it all clicks and the joke is even funnier because you had to do some work to get it. Thus obfuscation is a reasonable tool for a cartoonist to use. I wouldn’t say that this cartoon is particularly funny, but using “lbs” for “pounds” is a reasonable thing to do.

    Alternatively, suppose a Brit had read the cartoon: the Brit would have seen “3 pound lobster”, thought immediately of price, and then not understood what the joke was about. Writing “3 lb” makes it clear that the customer is talking about weight.

    Again, not particularly funny, not necessarily executed well, but rational.

  23. Mitch4 Jul 4th 2009 at 10:13 am 23

    Lihtox: Afraid I have to disagree. Your point might hold if we saw, say, a menu posted on the wall, with “lbs.” occurring in a written context. But the customer in this cartoon is speaking, and not spelling. So the choice of how to write it in the balloon is the cartoonist’s, and bears responsibiity to conveying the speaker’s intention — which by this argument must be “pounds as weight”.

  24. Mitch4 Jul 4th 2009 at 10:25 am 24

    Though I ought to acknowledge there has always been something problematic about how to take the speling in dialogue balloons.

    I think it was when reading Moon Mullins when I was a kid that I puzzled over the spelling “sez” for “says”. For everyone I knew at that time, and *almost* everyone I’ve met or heard since, those are pronounced exactlly the same. So what was “sez” indicating? (1) That if the character were called upon to wriite out a note, “sez” is the spelling he would probably cme up with. (2) It’s meant to call attention that the character invariably says “says” even where official grammar might call for “say” — e.g. “And then I says to her …”. (3) The cartoonist belongs to one of the small langauage communities where “says” is pronounced /sejz/ (that is, say plus z), and the ’sez’ pronunciation is for him a class dialect marker.

  25. fh Jul 4th 2009 at 11:12 am 25

    I’m sure it’s supposed to be referring to the smallness of Cornish game hens, but referring to “lbs” was not a mistake. That is the joke. Carlos is trying to deceive the customer — as if a 3-lb. Cornish lobster would be smaller than a 3-lb. Maine lobster. The deception won’t succeed, of course, as Tina (the waitress) recognizes in the last panel.

  26. Mark in Boston Jul 4th 2009 at 05:32 pm 26

    @Mitch4: “sez” for “says” is called “eye dialect”. But just because there’s a word for it doesn’t mean there’s a point to it. Are we supposed to think, “Ha ha! That Moon Mullens is so uneducated he pronounces ’says’ just like … a Harvard graduate or anyone else pronounces it.”?

  27. Sili Jul 5th 2009 at 08:42 am 27

    I thought it was a reference to Sellafield, but that’s Cumbria, not Cornwall, so I guess I’m with the CIDUs.

  28. David Jul 6th 2009 at 12:18 pm 28

    This is probably late enough to not be seen, but for the sake of posterity… Regarding the equivalence of an ounce (volume) and an ounce (weight), the origin of ounce is from ‘uncia’, or ‘twelfth part’ in the Roman system, so a fluid ounce was 1/12 of a pint, and a weight ounce was 1/12 of a pound. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/435401/ounce

    Somewhere along the way, 1/12 became 1/16, so an ounce is either 1/16 of a pound or 1/16 of a pint. Except for troy ounces, where it is still 1/12, or the British imperial system which made the fluid ounce 1/20 of a pint.

    An ounce of water weighs 29.57g at standard conditions, an ounce (weight) is 28.375g, so an ounce of water weighs 1.042 ounces. So it comes close enough for all practical cooking purposes, but that wasn’t necessarily the intent.

  29. Lihtox Jul 6th 2009 at 08:00 pm 29

    @David: hence the saying “a pint’s a pound the whole world ’round”.

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