Selkie 799
Jul11
on July 11, 2016
at 12:20 am
Fun little extra to share today. My girlfriend and I participated in a street-painting event this weekend where we got a 6×6 square of street pavement to paint as we pleased. We decided to do a view into Sarnoth. So here’s a little bit of a peek into what Sarnoth’s buildings look like.
Today's edition of the Secret Commentary is empty, because Dave failed to come up with something for it.
Is “can be drank” a typo or a local quirk of Wisconsin speech? Ordinarily one would expect to see “can be drunk” in this context… but maybe “drank” really is the word that naturally springs to Todd’s lips?
Drunk is, I believe, technically correct, but to me (with my fairly generic American-English ear) the distiction on which to use when isn’t always immediately obvious, and I quite recently wrote drank in a sentence then went back and corrected it later.
But the fact that I can make that mistake if I’m not paying attention tells me that Todd could very easily make it in conversation as well. Maybe he would get it right if he was thinking carefully, maybe he doesn’t even realize it’s wrong, either way it’s what I’d call “realistically incorrect word use”.
It’s also possible that Dave didn’t mean for him to use the wrong word and didn’t catch the mistake, which (since Todd isn’t an English teacher or someone with unusually flawless diction) just proves that it’s a realistic way to talk.
(Of course, in the grand scheme of things, if enough people consistently make the same mistake, eventually it just becomes accepted use.)
“I drink it today, drank it yesterday, could drink it tomorrow, have drunk it in the past.” That’s regulation, I’m pretty sure.
However, just like a lot of terms, regional areas can have variations. The weirdest one I came across in recent memory was in an Alice Cooper lyric: “I swoll right up” being the past tense of “swell,” which in my dialect is very regular. But “swoll” is one of those strong-change verbs in that dialect, and interesting because I had never heard it before.
I use “dreamt” (over “dreamed”) sometimes, and there’s a few others that pepper my speech, either due to dialect or due to wanting to be a bit different but within range of okay. I use “y’all” half the time, and think “you guys” is gender-neutral, and I’m currently on a mission to shift my natural pronunciation of “room” to the lax oo (as “wood,” “foot”): You don’t have to stick with the dialect choices you were born with 😀
“Gittin’ yer tars changed and havin’em check the spark wars, too, at the fillin’ station, Hon” is what I often have to put up with. Where wire and war are distinguished chiefly by context, and tar and tire are similarly treated. “Hon” is the local gender neutral pronoun, often more at hawn, like sawn, than at hon like funny, even though it is a shortening of “Honey.”
Also, and I should have said this first… I love all the expressions on this page. Every last one of them!
Tea! TEA IS AN ABSOLUTE GOOD.
Sarnoth’s buildings are scary and alien, but then so are Cardiff’s.
What? I’m a small-town chap.
I myself prefer an orange flavored tea. Black tea with Citrus is good. Though I also like a black tea with peppermint.
Still beats London’s Death Ray Monolith.
So what does Milk Chai taste like?
Tastes wonderful.. especially if you put some crushed cardamom or crushed ginger into it!!
Have you tried the prepackaged Yogi tea? Cardamom, and black pepper, and oh my gosh, so good!! I am unwilling to put the obligatory teaspoon of butter in it, especially because “just no” but also, “because yaks’ butter is so hard to find on the East Coast,” is a valid excuse.
Chai is tea that’s been flavored with Indian spices; then you add milk to it. The recipe I use has cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom; I’ve also seen recipes with ginger and pepper.
In honesty, it tastes a lot like it smells. On a related note, they do sell chai-scented wax cubes. (I absolutely love the scent of chai.)
You can also pick up instant chai mix packets at your neighborhood megamart. “Oregon Chai” seems to be the dominant brand. It comes in a purple box.
I always found it’s a bit like gingerbread. It’s a really nice drink to have in the winter.
Fun fact (since folks covered the chai flavor pretty well already): “chai” means tea, so ordering a “chai tea” is literally ordering a “tea tea”
Chai also (originally) had nothing to do with the spices/milk, but was just the tea itself (other terms were used to add the extra fun stuff) but because more than 1 non-English word makes folks scared to try new stuff, it simply became “chai”.
Huh, I just had a thought on the flavor that’s worth adding. If you’ve had horchata before then you’d find some similarities in the flavors (milk, cinnamon, sweetness) though horchata is straight up milk based instead of having milk added to the base. Everyone likes cinnamon.
Except my wife, unfortunately. You can also get reasonable chai at your local Starbux.
I was just reading over on Quora, in a question about what Chinese people find weird about the West, someone wrote that in China, cinnamon is only used as medicine, not as a spice.
Maybe that’s why, my wife is Chinese.
O_o But… Cinnamon is part of Chinese five spice powder!
The reason we say “chai tea” instead of just “tea” is simply to make a distinction, as just about every “chai tea” you get in america is prepared or flavored similarly to masala chai. It became popular enough that simply saying “chai tea” was enough of a distinction between it and the other black/green/fruit teas that are also available.
It happens a lot in the english language. The la brea tar pits are a good example, as brea literally means tar in spanish.
That’s pretty much what I was getting at, I just forgot the original term (masala) which is funny, given I was thinking about other masalas (namely chicken) and thought that couldn’t be the right term (spiced is spiced)
English bothers me more often than not, and it’s my native language :-/
Also, any time someone talks about Mt. Fujiyama I cringe (also ATM machine/PIN number/etc.)
Absolutely divine. It’s spiced black tea blended with some amount of milk. So it’s smooth and thicker than normal tea, with extra flavor from the spice.
*cough* That’s “can be DRUNK”, Todd (and Dave).
I’m just starting to realized that Selkie has this ideology were if she doesn’t like the way something tastes then it’s bad and she should discriminate against it, and she probably justifies this by the fact that plants are bad for her, but what do you expect she’s eight.
I love the street art! The buildings have a mysterious glow 🙂
Nice work on the skreet!
I’m particularly pleased that Todd didn’t tell her “it’s important to try it”, but rather “it’s important to know that Sarnothi aren’t necessarily poisoned by plants”. She made the decision herself.
Panel 3 is kinda anvilicious, isn’t it?
When a child is involved it’s called a teaching moment.
Sometimes adults need teaching moments, as well.
I learned a new word today 😀
I believe it’s a obvious lesson now (plants) that will lead to a not-so-obvious revelation about certain other things in Selkie’s life that she thinks will always be bad.
Sometimes things that people try to convince you aren’t true, really are true.
Socialism isn’t that bad, look at Sweden!
(Actually Sweden is libertarian, had a brief stint in socialism, and turned away from it when their market began to suck)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425800/bernie-sanders-socialist-success-sweden
Abortion isn’t that bad, it protects the life of a mother!
(Actually, no a mother’s life has NEVER been saved by what is ultimately an aggressive an barbaric procedure. And those who say it is okay in case of deformity, the fetus has been shown to repair itself)
Moral relativism is okay in some circumstances, but in others not so much.
What is usually true, is heavy-handed “perhaps you’re wrong about what you think is true” is almost never right. It smacks of coercion, something that should never be done to a child.
Um, Samantha? Putting “Actually” in front of a statement that many people disagree with doesn’t make it true. Here’s a statement I’m guessing IS true, however: Based on what I’ve seen him say in the past, I believe Dave would not like his comments section to be turned into a debate about socialism or abortion. So I’ll focus on disagreeing with the last thing you said.
I think that it is a sign of wisdom to be willing to pay attention to evidence that contradicts what one has always believed to be true. Examine its credentials, why sure. Test it carefully, by all means. Not every new idea that comes along is true. But don’t brush it away and pretend it doesn’t exist just because it doesn’t fit with your current ideas. If you can’t handle change, you can’t grow. If you can’t grow, can’t change, then as the world changes you will suffer, and you will make other people around you suffer also by your refusal to adapt.
Doubt is the road to truth. The best recipe in the world for being wrong is to be absolutely certain you are right about everything.
This is a lesson children need to be taught, by precept and example, on small occasions, so that they can grow into adults able to think on their feet and re-evaluate a situation.
Actually, it doesn’t make it false either.
And yes, this is right. The point about this, it can be proven or disproven by looking at surrounding examples (other socialist countries, Sweden’s history, etc, etc). Which I’ve found in the past.
Anyway, this is an Example. As in, we are NOT turning this into a debate. Sorry, everyone, I know you were hoping for it.
I think the thing that made me irked, is that plenty of people try to teach their kids “critical thinking” but actually, what they mean is “You’re being stubborn (because you don’t agree with me). You need to open your mind (and change your thinking until it matches mine).” This isn’t restricted to liberal or conservative, but it is restricted to bad parenting.
I honestly think he could have stopped talking at panel 2 and not been pushy.
In panel 3, Todd is generalizing the specific lesson about tea. He’s not pushing, he’s teaching. He’s saying, this happens. Our ideas can be wrong. Finding that out is a good thing.
Selkie responds in panel 4 with considering eyes, pursed lips, a thoughtful expression — and a spring-green emotional reaction for the background. You can almost hear the new options opening up in her mind. She’s not being pushed around, she’s learning.
And good for her! Because Todd got her thinking about the general case, I would bet she is going to apply this lesson later to other much more important issues than whether tea is yucky.
Hi Samanta,
Apologies if I come off as strident here, but you hit one of my major triggers with your comment about abortion (and apologies to all if I’m derailing this comments section – and if this is TMI).
I have a rare inherited blood-clotting disorder. In the presence of female hormone levels such as those associated with pregnancy, even in the early stages, my blood clots up inside my veins and arteries (I have to take a pretty high dose of blood thinner every day). Years ago, after taking a very low dose of birth control for a week or two, I developed a massive deep vein thrombosis and almost died.
I have never undergone an abortion but I am nearly pathological about using birth control. If I had become pregnant before I started taking the blood thinner, I would pretty much would have had to undergo an immediate emergency abortion before myself – and the fetus – both died. (Before you ask, I am NOT going have any children because the only way I could ever do so would be to basically be on a heparin IV drip for nine months or give myself lovenox shots once or twice a day for those nine months. And it would be a VERY high-risk pregnancy.)
This information comes from an entire team of doctors, including many female doctors who have children of their own, who are associated with some of the best hospitals in the U.S. I feel very lucky, but I am a woman whose life could have been potentially saved by an abortion.
I also counter with a less-personal example: ectopic pregnancy.
I’m not trying to start any pro-life/pro-choice arguments, but it really bothers me when people say there is never any medical reason for a woman to have an abortion. Of course I’d never argue with a woman’s individual decision, but sometimes a woman’s life IS in danger from being pregnant and an abortion can save her life. Also, don’t forget that women have been having abortions in one form or another pretty much since women started becoming pregnant. In previous times women would take combinations of herbs and other things to end an unwanted pregnancy.
On a less-strident note, I’ve been away from this webcomic for quite a while now, but I’m back and REALLY enjoying the way the story is progressing! 🙂
PS: Sorry for misspelling your name, Samantha – I’m sleep-deprived and on a badly-working tablet! 🙁
Turns out the adults are kind and reasonable and weren’t going to hold Selkie down and force her to drink tea. Who’d have thought!
Gee. It’s almost as if some of us have food issues and misinterpreted this. Who’da thunk?
Yay, Todd! Great parenting, dude. You took the pressure off her, but left it all open-ended and explained to her why it was important they hang out during the tea drinking. And, yay, Selkie! It takes courage to try something new you thought you wouldn’t like.
Love chai tea myself, very comforting sweet/spicy flavor but I like hibiscus and fruit teas as well. I make a strawberry hibiscus on ‘perfect’ summer days
Chalk art festivals are tons of fun, and you can find some really cool stuff at them. You should try googling them. A couple of the desktop backgrounds in my rotation are from a local chalk art festival. I like your square; it looks like there’s a hole in the sidewalk leading right down to an underwater city.
I hear Ford Prefect in “Hitchhikers Guide;” “Going through hyperspace is rather unpleasantly like being drunk.” ARTHUR: “What’s the matter with being drunk?” FORD: “Ask a glass of water.”
The tea is betraying you, Selkie. It’s messing with your head so you don’t hate it! Ooh, tea is evil (says a tea drinker).
PS: I say drank all the time.
My dad used to say “Anyone who drinks tea will chase rabbits and howl at the moon.” Which I suppose would be a plus for Selkie.
Of course, nowadays he takes very creamered coffee and drinks a lot of tea (Earl Grey and green), so, y’know, taste buds change over time.
(Example of taste buds changing: When I was a kid, I adored McDonalds sweet & sour sauce. Sometime in adulthood I couldn’t stand it. Now I love it again (I’m in my late 30’s). I don’t think they changed the formula at all. It’s the one example I know of where the taste buds went full circle.)
I imagine Selkie would be pretty down with “tea” made from bonito flakes, especially after told what it is.
That sounds interesting. Fish broth, really.
Also, makes me wonder if Worcestershire Sauce can be made into a palatable tea or flavored drink….
Don’t know about straight–though it might be different for Sarnothi–though adding it to broth would certainly add a lot for them, I’d think.
Dave the street art is beautiful. It’s like looking into Sarnoth from a hole in the sidewalk.