A mother who will eventually cause Ray to have a problem with her feelings on his weight?

DC

The mother we all wish we had.

Would someone let me in on some info: What are steak fries?

That doesn't make sense.

Your face doesn't make sense!

It's not the way I'm meant to be, it's just the way the operation made me.

(boredom man is the girl anachronism)

(It is bizarre that someone replied to my post with this about a week after I started listening to the Dresden Dolls, and about a day after I first heard Girl Anachronism.)

(it is more bizarre that the song was JUST PLAYING on my iPod 5 minutes before i came to this post)

Oh, so steak isn't involved. Disappointing.

it's involved tangentially: they're often served in the kind of restaurants that feature old farming equipment on slat walls for decoration and consider two pounds of beef with a side of cholesterol to be a healthy portion

I was hoping that they would be fried in some kind of reduced steak lard.

One of the better reasons for exploring the possibilities of parallel universes, really.

The sort that provides Godiva chocolates and Orangina to her son's little league team.

what I'm more curious about is this:

So Pat was at Ray's fifth birthday party. Since Pat became gay when he was 26 (August 2006), that means that up until today (november 11, 2008), Pat and Ray have been friends, or at least acquainted, for 21 years.

How can anyone put up with Pat for that long?

If the oldest strips are any indication, Pat being a dick is a recent phenomenon.

I think the real question here is what sort of kick-ass fucking magician employs a duck?

Wow, I've always read that as dried beans. Thanks for pointing this out, it instantly made the whole thing funnier.

Woah, I thought it was "dried beets!" What a misunderstanding!

Wait, so if Ray ate the reason Pat is a vegan, and the reason Pat is a gay is because he is a vegan, does that mean that Ray ate the reason Pat is a gay?

So what does that make Ray? I'm tempted to say absolutely nothing, in regards to this.

I thought Pat was a gay because of an ancient curse, and that Ray was the Guy With A Good Attitude Towards Homosexuality. Have I missed some crucial part of the Achewood universe?

...oh, yeah.

I tried, man, I really did. But I had given out enough chubbies on this page, Friendly.

Your avatar agrees.

Foodstuffs like carob and dried prunes, or Macrobiotic Microbagels. Not a lot of non-vegans flocking to those.

Dude's sister is a reptile with hair. Unless you are also a reptile with hair.

It's certainly not inherently true, but I don't have any difficulty believing that vegans have thousands of varieties of horrible-tasting ingredients that they put in wheat germ, in much the same way that characters will come up with extremely inventive ways to eat rats in futuristic dystopic action movies.

Please tell me that pun was intended.

Is it possible to say a thing like that without knowing it?

Hear hear!

I'd say vegetarians have the widest range, cause you have to find crazy stuff you can substitute in meals. Vegans not so, unless you're really adventurous, I know a few and I've only seen them eat soup and noodles.

Okay now it is very endearing that people are still proposing that people who limit their diet eat more types of food than people who don't.

But seriously. You're selling yourself toupees here.

Yeah, it's a spurious argument, epicurus (appropriate username, by the way). But I think it can, paradoxically, turn out to be true for some people. I was a way crazy finicky eater until I went vegetarian. Cutting out the meat-based meals I used to have all the time prompted me to try other types of food I probably would've avoided otherwise. So my palette definitely expanded as a result of cicumscribing the types of food I would eat. I still find it strange when people harp on this idea when trying to extoll the virutes of the veg lifestyle, though.

Eating six different types of bean and four different types of mushroom does not necessarily mean a wider palette.

That, and the argument, "I got less picky when I limited my means of caloric intake" doesn't mean that there are more options. It just means you had to make that tough decision between starvation and ingesting collard greens.

DC

Pat didn't say there were more options, though. He said that vegans eat a wider variety of foodstuffs.

I'm looking at the comic again. Because I am a relatively sane person, I read it as: "the average vegan in the US & Canada eats a wider variety of foodstuffs than the average non-vegan in the US & Canada." But no, he says vegans eat a wider variety of foodstuffs "than anyone." Y'all are right; that's mathematically preposterous. Anyway, I eat all kinds of meat, and I like collard greens.

Acknowledging that this whole discussion took place two years ago and that you are all most likely dead or at least uninterested in achewood and certainly no longer checking your old discussions just to see what developed, I must say a few things.

Things like this: man, what a lot of stupid stuff several of you are saying! When people have to be more deliberate about their food, they might well get more interested in it. (It's not causal, Epicurus; it's concomitant.) It's totally plausible that a vegan (having to be a bit more creative for dinner) comes to eat a wider range of things. When I went vegan 10 years ago, my food-world got way more interesting and way bigger. And no, farqussus, I don't just mean I started eating more beans. I mean tons and tons of different fruits, veggies, grains etc that I could bore the shit out of you by listing, and I totally will at the drop of a hat, so be cool.

u mad?

I don't know man, macrobiotic microbagels sound like they might be good, as long as the wheat and the water used were correct.

Yeah, like the bagel is a sort of powdery-white color with big splotches of crusty pink stuff here and there.

My cousin has Crohn's Disease, and believe me when I tell you that there is no good way to work that phrase into any conversation involving a rotting colon. I've worked long and hard at the problem, and I have concluded that the problem is, if not insoluble, far beyond my means of discovery.

DC

This is the only time a food reference in Achewood has resonated with my soul. Dang if I don't want to eat a big ol' gamey duck right heah.

SLAP!

I think she was also right about hisCrohn's disease.

Bonkers T MCQuack. Crohn's Disease. I'm dying here...

this comment made me choke with laughter but I have no chubbies left.

I think that Pat's use of the word "foodstuffs" is just more evidence that he is a Dick. Wouldn't the word food, or possibly foods, suffice? Do we really need to bring stuffs into this?

this strip is a great representation of what it's like to try to explain modern things to the elderly.

Is Pat actually trying to be polite to her?

... Maybe Pat wasn't always such a dick afterall.

"I'm not AFRAID of animals! I RESPECT them!" SLAP!

This is Pat, I guess.

Am I the only one who hopes Ray's mom pronounced "veglegon" veg-LEE-gun? You know, like Professor Frink would say it?

Yeah? OK.

Five months later: Sadly, yes.

I work in a natural foods store where I am forced to interact with all types of veglegons all the time and constantly think back on this strip.

Bonkers T. McQuack

oh patrick...

Sondra Smuckles is a perfect characterization of some of the moms I have met

It's nice to see that even Pat can behave himself when Ray's mum is around.

I would get much more enjoyment from eating a piece of duck if I knew it had previously been a magician's assistant.

I at least appreciate that Pat can not be a dick for like 10 minutes while Ray's dear mother comes for a visit.

Speaking as someone who has had a bad experience with almost every variety of waterfowl, I have never had more respect for Ray than right this minute

If Pat's afraid of ducks, why wouldn't he want them killed and eaten? o_O