Veal
Cidu Bill on Feb 12th 2010
Several people sent me this one Thursday; it was already in the queue, but I decided to move it up and skip Friday Morning Ewww this week. Look for Supersized Ewww next Friday.
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Pardon My Planet, Vic Lee, comic strips, comics, humor | 15 responses so far
Kit Feb 12th 2010 at 12:03 am 1
Well, they are in a cubicle . . .
Louis Feb 12th 2010 at 12:38 am 2
Yep, I’d say it’s a battery farming reference. Which might be the whole joke… Cubicle=battery farm.
fuzzmaster Feb 12th 2010 at 12:50 am 3
My first thought was cattle, too. But wouldn’t it be “You’re right — calves?” Granted, the multiple meanings would render that sentence even odder. But it does make me wonder if “veal” means not “Hey, there’s a cow in the next cubicle,” but something else.
My only alternative, tho, is that they were speculating on the food smell wafting over the wall, in which case “veal” isn’t much of a punchline.
Robert Feb 12th 2010 at 12:54 am 4
I have heard cubicles referred to as ‘veal-fattening pens’; a rather wordy pejorative, but apt. That’s where I went with this.
Bonus obscure reference - in the stage version of ‘Children of a Lesser God’, when the teacher and the deaf woman are eating dinner, she asks what kind of meat it is. He spells ‘V - E - A - L’, which means nothing to her. He signs (using ASL) the words ‘dead baby cow’ and she gets it.
This was cut from the movie version, for some reason.
Frank the curmudgeon Feb 12th 2010 at 01:05 am 5
Is he calling her a heifer ? Young, innocent, naive prey for the office Lothario .
yellojkt Feb 12th 2010 at 05:22 am 6
Robert is right. Office cubicles are often called veal pens due to their similarity to the crowded inhumane stalls that veal calves are raised in.
mitch-4 Feb 12th 2010 at 08:22 am 7
I;ve been reading this comic for a couple months now, and have become rather fond of the visual style, but still a little unsure about the socio-cultural outlook. Many of the characters are everything-is-ironic super-hipsters, but often enough they are taken down a peg or two for that. So I take it the author/artist is more an observer/commentator on that scene than a wholehearted participant.
The Bad Seed Feb 12th 2010 at 11:42 am 8
This reminds me of a “Real Life Adventures” I have on the wall of my cubicle at work: two people are talking over the tops of their cubes, and the man says, “We’re not quite caged, but we’re not free-range either.”
AMC Feb 12th 2010 at 02:39 pm 9
A little cubical comedy….
I’ll be here all week. Try the veal and don’t forget to tip your waitress. You’ve been a great audience! Goodnight everybody!
turquoise cow Feb 12th 2010 at 07:23 pm 10
I’ve been working in a cubicle for almost two years now and although I’ve heard the phrase “cubicle farm,” I’ve never heard anyone compare us to cows specifically, or to veal. Generally, wouldn’t the word “veal” refer to meat that has been or will soon be cooked, that is, has been removed from the animal? To refer to a live animal as such seems odd to me.
Maybe they were playing a sort of “what is that smell” game in which they smelled something food-like and were attempting to figure out what it was and the woman guessed correctly? That seems terribly vague, however.
Phil Feb 12th 2010 at 07:36 pm 11
“veal fattening pen” as a cubicle most famously used in the novel Generation X by Douglas Coupland. The author is credited with coining the term Gen. X
AMC Feb 12th 2010 at 10:06 pm 12
Or, maybe the calf in the next cubicle got a complete make-over, and this was the big re-veal…..
Mark in Boston Feb 12th 2010 at 11:34 pm 13
And the guy on the other side of the cubicle, seeing this guy’s head pop up, says “Prairie dog!”
bullthistle Feb 13th 2010 at 12:33 pm 14
#3 Fuzzmaster - The people who raise them call the calves that are being raised for meat veals (one is a veal).
Kat Feb 14th 2010 at 02:02 am 15
#13 ROFLMAO!