It Isn’t Easy Peeing Green

Cidu Bill on May 6th 2010

It’s one for the Ewww Files, but I don’t get it. And I Arlo’ed it because it might offend.

2010-05-06-pissgreen.png

Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, David Willis, Ewww, Shortpacked, comic strips, comics, humor | 24 responses so far

24 Responses to “It Isn’t Easy Peeing Green”

  1. Tullia May 6th 2010 at 07:11 am 1

    I don’t know the character, but it looks like his urine is glowing, not just green. I guess the joke is that he thinks that’s normal and that that’s the colour of pee? Ha, he’s poisoned or radioactive or is related to fireflies or something! And he doesn’t know he’s weird!

    Unless the joke is that the dark-haired guy is trying to figure out how someone could think glow-in-the-dark green is “piss green.” My guess is that this just isn’t funny, but I have never liked _Shortpacked_ anyway.

  2. mitch4 May 6th 2010 at 07:35 am 2

    (Disclaimer: I don’t know the characters either, or the usual outlook or methods of the comic.) As I read it, first the guy on the left in the bottom half makes his remark, opposing some shades of green, and using the urinary term to characterize those colors as unpleasant, but not meaning it literally. The guy on the right in the bottom half understands it as literal, and the whole top half is his imagination of a scene embodying that literal meaning. And finally he utters his remark about seeing a doctor, in response to his imagined scene above them.

  3. Dave May 6th 2010 at 07:44 am 3

    That’s either a very weak stream, or a high-gravity planet they live on.

  4. mitch4 May 6th 2010 at 07:49 am 4

    P.S. Check out xkcd’s color-names survey result at http://blag.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

  5. George P May 6th 2010 at 07:50 am 5

    I guess Tullia’s explanation is the best. The first two frames show that someone has glowing green urine.

  6. Kamino Neko May 6th 2010 at 08:04 am 6

    The shade of green used for the toys in question is a colour that if ever produced by the human body, should involve medical intervention - the fact that it’s frequently glow in the dark just makes it worse.

    The fact that the strip is tagged with ‘neon’ suggests it’s intended as a generalization of this tendency.

  7. yellojkt May 6th 2010 at 08:14 am 7

    Perhaps he is unknowingly a member of the Green Lantern Corps.

  8. Ellen C. May 6th 2010 at 08:25 am 8

    I originally thought that the guy on the left was confusing “pea” with “pee” so that “pea green” was “piss green” to him. Like mitch4, I assumed that the upper part of the comic was just the image that came to mind when the other character heard the phrase. Hence his reaction to get to a doctor…

    Reading the comments, I can see where the neon part fits in. There would be no reason to show the darkened blue window unless it was to highlight that the toilet scene has a glow-in-the-dark urine stream.

    Pea green is definitely not a neon color.

  9. Lihtox May 6th 2010 at 10:19 am 9

    Just to set the context, the guy on the left is some random customer whom we’ve never seen before, and the guy on the right is one of the main characters, who occasionally takes issue with the ignorant comments made by customers (as is typical in a workplace comedy).

  10. padraig May 6th 2010 at 10:21 am 10

    Of course, Bill knows that anyone can learn to tango.

    (I’ll explain later if Bill doesn’t)

  11. Rusty May 6th 2010 at 11:23 am 11

    Having fluorescent yellow/green urine is usually a sign of (over?)consuming certain vitamins, particularly B-vitamins.

    More than you probably want to know:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine#Unusual_color

    Now glowing urine is unlikely unless his bathroom light is a black light, or he’s been eating glow sticks or something….

    But yeah, the joke is that he has unusual glowing neon green urine, and complains that a neon green toy is colored like piss.

  12. NBR May 6th 2010 at 01:51 pm 12

    I think the joke is that the guy in the pink pees green, so he thinks pee is green, that’s why he calls the green toy “piss color”. And the other guy is concerned that his friend has green pee.

    It is sort of stupid.

  13. Dave Van Domelen May 6th 2010 at 02:05 pm 13

    A recent thread about some toy on the AllSpark board complained that it was “piss green” and Willis noted that if the poster actually pissed that color he needed to see a doctor. Then he turned it into a strip. :)

  14. David N May 6th 2010 at 02:22 pm 14

    Nuclear asparagus might do it. Won’t be doing that testing myself, however - I hate asparagus. :)

  15. Kamino Neko May 6th 2010 at 03:53 pm 15

    Seriously - while it’s vaguely possible the buyer does have radioactive piss, it’s far, far more likely Ethan’s just imagining that in response to someone using a completely inappropriate pejorative to describe the colour. See again the ‘neon’ article I linked earlier, or the AllSpark thread Dave referenced.

  16. Mary in Ohio May 6th 2010 at 05:40 pm 16

    At school we always referred to that color as “Monkey Vomit Green.” But there is an old joke:
    Q:What’s the difference between the chacha and pea green paint?
    A: Anybody can learn to chacha.

  17. Mark in Boston May 6th 2010 at 08:35 pm 17

    Here’s one we thought was hilarious back in third grade (try it on a third-grader).

    You have to say “pea green soup” after every question I ask.

    What did you have for breakfast?

    What did you have for lunch?

    What did you have for dinner?

    What did you do all night?

  18. The Bad Seed May 6th 2010 at 10:20 pm 18

    I assumed he was peeing by the light of an LED from an indiglow watch or night-light of some sort, or maybe an iPhone - but why would you choose green for your iPhone flashlight? But in any case, he now associates his pee with fluorescent green, because he apparently never pees in daylight anymore… or just doesn’t pay as much attention when he does.

  19. mkilby May 6th 2010 at 11:58 pm 19

    Unfortunately, the opening line to Hamlet’s Bathroom Soliloquy has already been massively overused (Google produces over 231000 hits for “To pee or not to pee …”)

  20. mitch4 May 7th 2010 at 08:26 am 20

    Okay, let’s go to an earlier scene in Hamlet: “For this relief much thanks!” (Credit Stephen Dedalus for applying that to urination.)

  21. mkilby May 7th 2010 at 09:44 am 21

    I didn’t like the version I found, so I composed a new one. I hope this doesn’t land in the moderation queue:

    To pee or not to pee: that is the question;
    Whether ’tis warmer in the pants to suffer

    The stinks and yellows of outrageous urine,

    Or to take aim against a sea of troubles

    And, by releasing, end them. To pee, to piss

    No more – and by a piss to say we end

    The gut-ache and the thousand natural squirts

    That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a constipation

    Devoutly to be wished. To piss, to $#!+

    To $#!+, perchance to wipe. Ay, there’s the rub,

    For in that piss of death what dreams may come,

    When we have unraveled this paper roll,

    Must give us pause. There’s the aspect

    That makes absurdity of such long streams.

  22. padraig May 7th 2010 at 10:23 am 22

    OK, OK, quit clamoring.

    Q: What’s the difference between the tango and pea green paint?
    A: Anyone can learn to tango.

  23. Elyrest May 7th 2010 at 10:47 am 23

    mkilby (21) After reading that now I have to pea!

  24. Mark in Boston May 8th 2010 at 07:27 pm 24

    How To Catch Elephants

    Dig a big hole in the ground. Fill it with ashes and line the rim with peas.

    When the elephant comes to take a pea, kick him in the ash hole.

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