So she’s saying… usually she throws clementines down the toilet — as one does — and there isn’t any problem, but today she threw a regular orange in and there was??
This one should be read in context with yesterday’s strip:
Kilby, of course they’re talking about the same flooded toilet, but today’s strip seems to be explaining how yesterday’s strip happened.
I just came up with a theory about the concept of this strip: It’s really about Caulfield, a boy genius who acts up because he’s been condemned to spend eternity in Chelm Elementary School. You notice he never really interacts with his fellow students?
It could be more complicated that this, though, because you can also make the argument that CAULFIELD is MRS. OLSON’S personal Hell.
I’m trying to work out how Frazz could actually be Albert Camus, but it’s late.
Yes, it looks like she throws differently-sized orange fruit down the loo, and the bigger ones get stuck. Frazz saying “tell me something I don’t know” in context of the previous strip means only that he has already been informed by some other girl, though it could suggest the toilets are backed up on a daily basis so this news is no news. But with the further explanation Frazz discovers something new – not that standard oranges are slightly bigger than clementines, of which he was presumably aware, but that this weird girl has been chucking citrus fruit down the loo.
Two observations:
In a normal school, Frazz would tell her to stop doing this.
And somewhere, there is a band called Oranges in the Loo.
I read it as “she just took an epic dump, that while not THAT much bigger than usual, was enough to clog the toilet.”
Eww, but probably right, and more normal than dropping oranges. But now what Frazz has been told that he didn’t know he didn’t know is that this young lady – and perhaps all of them – has surprisingly high rectal volume capacity.
I’m not convinced the factoid in Panel 2 has anything to do with toilets.
Go ahead, change my mind.
I think the basis of the strip is that kids don’t eat the healthy fruit in their lunches, and need to find ways to dispose of the evidence so they don’t get nagged by the teachers/lunch ladies/etc.
The brown-haired girl makes me think she’s going to get a job as a government regulator someday, probably with the Dept. of Ag.
It’s natural to read “significantly” as “much” but here there is a paradoxical-sounding point that an object can be “just a little bigger” but “still be significantly bigger”. So that must just mean there is a significance threshhold, and these two fruits though not very different are on different sides of that line.
(I can’t quite accept that the talk of clementines and oranges is displaced,)
Would a person from Tangier mind being referred to as a Tangerine?
Man, Frazz looks really happy in panel 1 at the thought of unclogging a toilet.
I mentioned this quite some time ago about another comic: When we replaced all the toilets in the house and I shopped (not realized HOW MANY different toilets there were available), I saw one that advertised it could flush X[pretty high] number of golf balls. I thought, ‘Now WHO in his/her right mind would be flushing golf balls? Those things ain’t cheap!’
Now I supposed I’ll see adverts about how many clementines (whatever those are – is that a reference to ‘Oh My Darling Clementine’?) can be flushed . . . or oranges. Of a certain size.
Andrea, it may make a difference if you know that a clementine is a citrus fruit, much like an orange. (A quick dip into Wikipedia says that the name is used for a group of hybrid mandarin oranges.) So the business in the cartoon of comparing a clementine and an orange is not so out-of-the-blue.
Clementines are small, I would say significantly (sorry) smaller than most oranges. They are typically sold in boxes or net bags. I bought a three-pound bag at Aldi last week. It takes a while to go through that many.
And a LOTTA work to peel ’em, I assume.
I think Powers may be on to something–it might just be a random fact she’s throwing out there. Unlikely, but possible.
@Andréa – clementines etc are much easier to peel than oranges: “Mandarins are a type of orange and the overarching category that Tangerines, Clementines, and Satsumas fall into. They are generally smaller and sweeter than oranges, a little flatter in shape, and they and have a thinner, looser skin that makes them easier to peel.”
Good to know – if I’m ever in a grocery store, I’ll look for some to try.
To sum up, yes, this girl (or someone she knows) flushes uneaten citrus fruit. I believe the “to cover up for not eating it” reason offered above might be correct, but the reason is not important. “Kids do weird things” is a well-known comedic trope, and it exists for a reason. Frazz is the one who has to deal with the repercussions, and it’s a job he has because he wants it rather than needs it, so he’s philosophic about it. (Also, of course, he’s a fictional character).
Andréa: They’re really good. To best bring out the flavor, I recommend eating them, rather than flushing them down the toilet.
My boss once showed me a little apple his wife – a notorious skinflint – bought ’cause they were cheaper than the good-tasting ones. He was so proud of the fact that they saved all that money . . . as he threw it away.
And yes – I didn’t buy the toilet that would flush all those golf balls, so I daren’t flush the Clemintines. I doubt Hubby would have the same smile on his face as Frazz does, when faced with a clogged toilet.
Seconding Winter Wallaby: Clementines are good (and are easy to peel). I’d say that reading this made me want to eat one, but as it happens I had one just a couple of hours ago anyway, before reading these latest posts. . .
I seem to recall clementines coming from Spain at a particular season (just before Christmas, I think), and it was a time of rejoicing; now clementines seem to come from all over all the time, such that they’ve gotten into branding them — for what it’s worth, in my experience Halos usually cost more, but they peel easier than Cuties…
I once went on a boy scout backpacking trip with my son where they brought a couple bags of clementines. Despite carrying them all that way, I don’t think any of the kids ate any, so I had all I could eat – and I could eat a lot! I told the kids that they were the best thing that we brought, but they seemed uninterested – maybe they seemed too healthy for them to even try.
@ Andréa – Add a “.gif” to the URL will allow it to appear here:
In the season-final episode of PEN15 (officially pronounced “pen fifteen”) from Hulu Originals, when 13-year-old Maya (played by ~32-year-old Maya) has been using wadded up tissue to absorb her first period and has been trying to flush it, causing blockage and flooding, a kindly female janitor (who gets along with the students better than some teachers do, but is not quite a Frazz) warns Maya that pads cannot be flushed, and gives her a tampon! Probably against regs.
Comics I Don't Understand 
This one should be read in context with yesterday’s strip:
Kilby, of course they’re talking about the same flooded toilet, but today’s strip seems to be explaining how yesterday’s strip happened.
I just came up with a theory about the concept of this strip: It’s really about Caulfield, a boy genius who acts up because he’s been condemned to spend eternity in Chelm Elementary School. You notice he never really interacts with his fellow students?
It could be more complicated that this, though, because you can also make the argument that CAULFIELD is MRS. OLSON’S personal Hell.
I’m trying to work out how Frazz could actually be Albert Camus, but it’s late.
Yes, it looks like she throws differently-sized orange fruit down the loo, and the bigger ones get stuck. Frazz saying “tell me something I don’t know” in context of the previous strip means only that he has already been informed by some other girl, though it could suggest the toilets are backed up on a daily basis so this news is no news. But with the further explanation Frazz discovers something new – not that standard oranges are slightly bigger than clementines, of which he was presumably aware, but that this weird girl has been chucking citrus fruit down the loo.
Two observations:
In a normal school, Frazz would tell her to stop doing this.
And somewhere, there is a band called Oranges in the Loo.
I read it as “she just took an epic dump, that while not THAT much bigger than usual, was enough to clog the toilet.”
Eww, but probably right, and more normal than dropping oranges. But now what Frazz has been told that he didn’t know he didn’t know is that this young lady – and perhaps all of them – has surprisingly high rectal volume capacity.
I’m not convinced the factoid in Panel 2 has anything to do with toilets.
Go ahead, change my mind.
I think the basis of the strip is that kids don’t eat the healthy fruit in their lunches, and need to find ways to dispose of the evidence so they don’t get nagged by the teachers/lunch ladies/etc.
The brown-haired girl makes me think she’s going to get a job as a government regulator someday, probably with the Dept. of Ag.
It’s natural to read “significantly” as “much” but here there is a paradoxical-sounding point that an object can be “just a little bigger” but “still be significantly bigger”. So that must just mean there is a significance threshhold, and these two fruits though not very different are on different sides of that line.
(I can’t quite accept that the talk of clementines and oranges is displaced,)
Would a person from Tangier mind being referred to as a Tangerine?
Man, Frazz looks really happy in panel 1 at the thought of unclogging a toilet.
I mentioned this quite some time ago about another comic: When we replaced all the toilets in the house and I shopped (not realized HOW MANY different toilets there were available), I saw one that advertised it could flush X[pretty high] number of golf balls. I thought, ‘Now WHO in his/her right mind would be flushing golf balls? Those things ain’t cheap!’
Now I supposed I’ll see adverts about how many clementines (whatever those are – is that a reference to ‘Oh My Darling Clementine’?) can be flushed . . . or oranges. Of a certain size.
Andrea, it may make a difference if you know that a clementine is a citrus fruit, much like an orange. (A quick dip into Wikipedia says that the name is used for a group of hybrid mandarin oranges.) So the business in the cartoon of comparing a clementine and an orange is not so out-of-the-blue.
Clementines are small, I would say significantly (sorry) smaller than most oranges. They are typically sold in boxes or net bags. I bought a three-pound bag at Aldi last week. It takes a while to go through that many.
And a LOTTA work to peel ’em, I assume.
I think Powers may be on to something–it might just be a random fact she’s throwing out there. Unlikely, but possible.
@Andréa – clementines etc are much easier to peel than oranges: “Mandarins are a type of orange and the overarching category that Tangerines, Clementines, and Satsumas fall into. They are generally smaller and sweeter than oranges, a little flatter in shape, and they and have a thinner, looser skin that makes them easier to peel.”
https://www.sandjmandarins.com/difference-between-orange-mandarin-clementine-tangerine-satsuma
Good to know – if I’m ever in a grocery store, I’ll look for some to try.
To sum up, yes, this girl (or someone she knows) flushes uneaten citrus fruit. I believe the “to cover up for not eating it” reason offered above might be correct, but the reason is not important. “Kids do weird things” is a well-known comedic trope, and it exists for a reason. Frazz is the one who has to deal with the repercussions, and it’s a job he has because he wants it rather than needs it, so he’s philosophic about it. (Also, of course, he’s a fictional character).
Andréa: They’re really good. To best bring out the flavor, I recommend eating them, rather than flushing them down the toilet.
My boss once showed me a little apple his wife – a notorious skinflint – bought ’cause they were cheaper than the good-tasting ones. He was so proud of the fact that they saved all that money . . . as he threw it away.
And yes – I didn’t buy the toilet that would flush all those golf balls, so I daren’t flush the Clemintines. I doubt Hubby would have the same smile on his face as Frazz does, when faced with a clogged toilet.
Seconding Winter Wallaby: Clementines are good (and are easy to peel). I’d say that reading this made me want to eat one, but as it happens I had one just a couple of hours ago anyway, before reading these latest posts. . .
I seem to recall clementines coming from Spain at a particular season (just before Christmas, I think), and it was a time of rejoicing; now clementines seem to come from all over all the time, such that they’ve gotten into branding them — for what it’s worth, in my experience Halos usually cost more, but they peel easier than Cuties…
I once went on a boy scout backpacking trip with my son where they brought a couple bags of clementines. Despite carrying them all that way, I don’t think any of the kids ate any, so I had all I could eat – and I could eat a lot! I told the kids that they were the best thing that we brought, but they seemed uninterested – maybe they seemed too healthy for them to even try.
Heck, once she’s gone thru all that work, she may as well eat ’em . . .
https://assets.amuniversal.com/6c66b80016980137832b005056a9545d
@ Andréa – Add a “.gif” to the URL will allow it to appear here:
In the season-final episode of PEN15 (officially pronounced “pen fifteen”) from Hulu Originals, when 13-year-old Maya (played by ~32-year-old Maya) has been using wadded up tissue to absorb her first period and has been trying to flush it, causing blockage and flooding, a kindly female janitor (who gets along with the students better than some teachers do, but is not quite a Frazz) warns Maya that pads cannot be flushed, and gives her a tampon! Probably against regs.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8820820/reference
Good to know – if I’m ever in a grocery store, I’ll look for some to try.
The skins are very thin and will little of the pith common with oranges. I say sections of peel on occasion to dry for cooking purposes later.