Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for June 21, 2015

Now, this guy is just messing with Pig.

Mr. Patsis, the British spelling is “litre.” Nice semi-pun, by the way.

He’s an imposter! The British spell it “litre!”

Pastis, the world’s best/worst punster/

@ Templo S.U.D. – Sometimes you have to force your pun.

This one ranks high on the laugh-metre.

Just don’t tell Pig to put the gas in the boot.

Sick joke.

As someone once remarked to Schubert,“Take us to your Lieder.”

(borrowed from Tom Lehrer)

I thought the British word for “gas” was “breaking wind”.

Since Cartoon-Boy is published in the USA, the spelling of litre was “corrected” to confirm to local norms. But the joke is aural for Pig, who is predictably caught up in the Aliens Among Us delusion and takes the required comedic pratfall….

I’m a-gassed (aghast) at the forced pun here…….

Well I did try. No worse than some of stephan’s puns!

If the guy was German- Canadian instead of British, we could say he was litre hosin’ Pig.

Although the breaking wind one was originally spelled vert. That’s why “buck verteth” is one of the signs of summer listed in the 13th C poem “Summer is Icumen in”.

No sh** Sherlock

Nothing wrong with the word fart, except to prudish American ears

A British man of the age alluded to in the cartoon would still refer to petrol in gallons. It’s only the younger generations who use metric more than Imperial.

Goat proudly exclaims, " I’ve got gas!".

What if we put a second “T” in liter ?

Reading these comments is almost as much fun as reading PBS! Pastis certainly has an erudite and articulate following!

That’s 2/3 of a pun. P U.

I had to read it a couple of times to get the drift. It was a stretch.

You mean my wife? Trust me, you wouldn’t want to metre…

Reminds me of the Brit who visited the US. He rented a car and was touring when the car started giving him problems. He pulled into a garage for help. The mechanic looked over the problem and said, “It just needs a little elbow grease”…. whereupon the Brit said, “Great, give me two liters”.

those Brits are crazy.

Do you think this is a one time pun or Pastis will try to get more mileage out of it?

My British cousin would ask, “Litre? How much is that in old money?”

some years ago, (30?) a friend was entertaining a british visitor. they were in a restaurant(you could still smoke &dine) and she offered him a cigarette. he said no thank you, maybe later. after getting through more of the meal he said, i’ll have that f-g now, if you don’t mind. she was somewhat taken aback till she realized what was being said. as george bernard shaw said,england &america are 2 countries separated by the same language

“Litre? I didn’t even metre!”

Why do some Americans think that we British people are from another planet?

As much as I enjoy American humour (not humor) I just felt like asking that question.

xxx

In many cases the ‘wrong’ yankee spelling is more true to the spelling from England three hundred or more years ago. Quite a few of the odd British spellings (favour, color, humour for example) only stem from Victorian days when the spelling was formalised in what they felt was a more ‘refined’ way.

Also in many cases it was only in the same Victorian days that ‘rude’ word in English actually became ‘rude’!

As to English weather -we have that in lieu of climate, and for English cuisine our bread is the best in the world if you make sure of staying a good bargepole distance clear of the Chorleywood process rubbish!

It’s like the chips-crisps confusion all over again!

The British pronunciation of ‘litre’ would not sound like ‘leader’.

Yeah, but in Britain we elide those words rather less than the US does. (Never seen the point of that, personally. If you already know the word I’m writing, how does my simply spelling it correctly somehow make it more offensive? What are you – six, or something?)