Bad Machinery by John Allison for October 17, 2023

So yeah, that’s why we haven’t seen much of Mildred in this case. I’m not sure exactly what Lord Bath’s Excellence Awards are, but according to Mildred over in the parallel Bobbins strips: “I’ve been helping old people learn the internet. Old people like the internet so much that they are going to put young people off using it. If they understood right-clicking, it would be over for the rest of us. But they never seem to understand that.”

As for Lottie, one fist is Maths and the other is Implausible Flights of Fancy, but she couldn’t get that to fit, so she just has the Maths.

Upstaged by a gel pen! How embarrassing!

László József Bíró (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈlaːsloː ˈjoːʒɛf ˈbiːroː]; born László József Schweiger; 29 September 1899 – 24 October 1985), Hispanicized as Ladislao José Biro, was a Hungarian-Argentine inventor who patented the first commercially successful modern ballpoint pen. The first ballpoint pen had been invented roughly 50 years earlier by John J. Loud, but it was not a commercial success. Good thing his name was not Furtwangler. Ballpoint pens since that time have evolved along the lines of smoother writing and closer to liquid ink. Trying to capture the quality of a fountain pen without the smearing. There are rollerballs out there that are filled, and refilled with bottled ink. Not as smooth as a good fountain pen, but still very nice.

i believe that Lottie is using the word “apologia” incorrectly, but that’s to be expected.

Charlotte is jealous of the male attention the new pen is drawing.

Hey, everybody loves suplise.

Only fountain pens are worth stealing.

That was just Lottie’s dirty trick for have the nice pen.

Lottie perhaps does not always realize that Shauna is not well off financially. That gel pen could have been a significant purchase for her, and Lottie should not have confiscated it so thoughtlessly.