The Dumbing of Age Book 7 Kickstarter has funded! Thanks, everyone! And as of yesterday…
DOUBLE DUKES MALAYA and LUCY magnets are now unlocked! They’re both 2″x4″, and you can pledge for them separately, pledge for them coupled together, choose them as one of your PICK THREE or PICK FIVE MAGNETS options, or put it all-in for COMPLETE MAGNET POWER!
Loading ...
“Now just hold this Not Tea and this Tea and show you are clearly a heavy-duty philosopher.”
Inappropriate sexing, inappropriate drinking… what’s next? Meth?
They’re gonna get hopped up on goofballs, obviously.
“Chip, I’m all jacked up on Mountain Dew!”
>Warren Zevon<
David Walkerton, pay attention,
‘Cause everything’s going boom,
And we’re drinking straight tequila,
On the stairs…of doom.
>/Warren Zevon<
Hopped up on goofballs? No way! Nobody gets to sniff me but ME, ya hear?!
The drinking’s not inappropriate (yet?), just a little illegal.
By virtue of being with Walky, I mean. It is inappropriate to walk around teaching and drinking, despite also being common af.
Well, Jason hasn’t been officially fired, so at this point he is still Walky’s TA…
Also, they’re sitting on dorm steps in the middle of the day, which is MAYBE not the place for it, but whatever.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart,
“I drink, therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed…
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed!
I believe Socrates said it best when he said, “I drank what?”
Worse than Meth. MATH.
All these inappropriate things…. how NotTea
I know this reference! I played the Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy text adventure.
I was going to say Walky needed to go remove the common sense particle from his brain, but he seems to have taken care of that already.
The sense that is common is not the same thing as good sense or a sense of self preservation – points to opinions and actions by the general public.
Jason will tutor him in the basics of methmatics
Jason, between your build and the red bowtie, the Pee-Wee Herman comparisons were easy enough already. Now I mentally associate you with Tequila.
Hands up if you can totally picture Jason dancing like that.
*Raises hand*
Yeah, I can see him dancing like that.
If he danced like that, he’d have been more well-liked.
*applause* The visual was appreciated.
Now that Walky’s apologized for ignoring all of Jason’s problems, the healing can begin… after some hard drinking
Jason’s lastpanel face is giving me Coco vibes for some reason
And it’s freaking me out
🎵”Remember me
Although I might poison you, remember me!” 🎶
*plays Paul McCartney’s “English Tea” on the hacked P.A. speakers*
*followed by the theme song for Mexico, One Plate At A Time*
In Britain, doesn’t “South of the Border” Just mean, like, the ocean?
It’s not like there’s much of the old empire left.
It can mean the Republic of Ireland.
If you’re talking Britain then “South of the Border” could also refer to England.
Huh, I always figured it to mean beyond the law (which, given the ethymology stated in Cambridge dictionary is not a good thing).
South of the border would be England. Scotland is North of the border. Source: a Scot.
Or it could be more regional – like maybe Pool or that den of Pirates – Penzance.
Well, France, depending on where you are.
this strip is now NT Complete.
NT?
Apparently, what that means is those problems that, given the result of one less than the input, can be solved in polynomial time. (Not sure what a natural example would be…)
in this case, it means it has Not Tea.
(that was a joke.)
What you are referring to is “NP-complete”.
Where NP stands for: Not Pee.
Somehow I see Jason as more of a vodka or scotch man than tequila. But I’m open to the possibility.
You have a point.
Maybe he’s stressing the wordplay?
Sounds like something Walky would say, scotch being from Scotland which is in the UK which is in Europe and vodka being from Russia which is partly in Europe, since Walky tends to conflate things stereotypically British and sometimes European with his idea of Jason being from the UK. Plus, tequila is typically associated with the Americas which would also foul up Walky’s thinking. Still, though I was not expecting tequila, but I guess the tea pun was mandatory.
It’s more a matter of the hip flask. Not that I know anything about this from personal experience or anything, but people who carry around hip flasks tend to fill those flasks with the cheapest drinkable alcohol, which is often good vodka, and less often good scotch or good tequila.
My friend carries around a hip flask, more often than not with decent whiskey inside.
In my experience, people who drink cheap booze tend to be too cheap to buy hip flasks – it might be cultural though.
Tequila always makes me think of Tila Tequila, and I really wish that was not the case.
It makes me think of Star Trek: First Contact.
Imagine if the first contact the Borg* had with humanity was with Tila Tequila.
*Note that I do not actually know Star Trek things and just looked some stuff up. I don’t really know what I’m saying.
That’s good, because the Borg’s first contact with humanity only happened in that movie in the strictest chronological sense (yes, time travel was involved).
UGH. Don’t remind me of that disgrace to bisexuality.
When I was in middle school and looking into LGBTQ+ stuff, she was basically who I found as far as representation of bisexuality went. That’s probably why she’s stuck in my mind as much as she is, even though I’ve never even watched a show she’s been on.
Jason, the last thing you need right now is to be making the Joe face, stop that
Well, considering the class, I can easily see why he needs a drink. And he’s not Walky’s teacher anymore so why not?
He hasn’t been officially fired yet, though.
This would be a real bad time for someone who has influence on that decision walk by.
That’s a Jason problem, not a me problem. 😛
I’d like to point out that unless Sal herself denounces him, or he comes forward and confess, it is very unlikely he’ll get fired on hearsay?
And knowing the way America is with this kinda stuff, she could denounce him, he could confess, and the board would still bend over backwards to keep him in.
How does it happen in other countries? I don’t recall hearing anything one way or the other.
Dunno other countries, but in mine there is no such thing as a TA, people who are still going through college are considered either too immature or lacking in knowledge to teach their peers.
College teachers tend to be respected professionals with years of experience, and thus they tend to be….less sexy than jason, so to speak.
How old is college in your place? Here in Germany, you can teach a small group of students (20ish) provided you have the knowledge, which you are assumed to have by passing the course well enough. So usually you are in at least your second year of university, so about 19.
I taught night school for a number of years after graduating to supplement my income and murder my student loans.
I had an advantage attaining those postings due to being a student tutor.
What got me in trouble was that I tutored classes that I was taking at the time. Turns out you can get in hot water if you know the subject matter better than the instructor.
He doesn’t intend to defend his case because he doesn’t believe he deserves to defend it, though. Like, even if Sal doesn’t say anything, when they ask, Jason is just going to say “yeah, I did, and I deserve to be fired”. Therefore, he is as good as fired.
I’d like to point out that unless Sal herself denounces him, or he comes forward and confess, it is very unlikely he’ll get fired on hearsay?
His only option is to plead his case at a tribunal – provided he can successfully mount a counterargument with the affected student.
Which is actually a Catch-22: Trying to mount the counterargument requires him to admit that there is an affected student, iow there is a reason to fire him!
Well, I think this depends on what Penny told them. The only way it really makes any sense is if she described the girl or the circumstances or something. Then Jason could bring Sal in and she could say she was there, but it was just tutoring and by the way, Jason’s lousy at it, and he’d be all set.
Of course, Jason isn’t planning on doing that, because he knows he’s guilty and he’s beating himself up over it. Who knows if Sal would go along with it either.
Plus now he’s supplying alcohol to a student, which he’s apparently had and presumably been using throughout his work day.
Aaand that’s what I’m trying to say, Penny didn’t know shit, she was making it up and she happened to hit the nail in the head.
Also, question: while we do know it happened, what are the chances that, in a real world situation not depending on Webcomic Drama, the board would listen to Penny’s accusation with no proof, no students coming forward, and in the position she’s in, AKA, being fired for diddling a student?
While I agree that the American drinking age is bullshit, it’s still more than a little illegal for him to be offering tequila to an 18 year old, and imprudent to be doing it in broad daylight in public
Yes, it is illegal, and I am told that Indiana takes that drinking age more seriously than some other places. I’m more along the lines of ‘not mad at Jason as a person for this’ rather than ‘this is a perfectly good idea’.
That’s fair. I’m not, like, personally affronted by it, but I would be lecturing him for endangering the job he technically hasn’t lost yet over it
Yeah, even if he was considering it a lost cause, this is a pretty boneheaded move.
That’s totally fair as well. Jason’s a crappy teacher but if he wants to keep his job, he should probably have thought this through.
I for one am looking forward to obviously drunk Jason and Walky trying to talk their way out of this with campus security. Between IU’s dry status, the drinking in public, and the ‘technically still a TA and student factor’ it’ll be a hot mess. And then Jason reveals it was Sal he slept with, probably.
Sounds like a fun time!
The other factor in this, aside from supplying alcohol to a minor, which is a daily occurrence on pretty much any college campus, and him being a TA, assuming he still officially is, is that he’s carrying around a hip flask of tequila in the first place.
He may be fired now, but he wasn’t when he went into his office bringing his flask with him. Unless there’s some special explanation for him having it today, I’d guess he’s been drinking on the job pretty regularly? That don’t look good.
Considering how “well” he can deal with people I think he really needed that alcohol…
It’s still gonna get you fired.
Most people don’t actually get better at dealing with people with alcohol. They just think they do.
He has been carrying that flask around for months, just on the off chance he can make that tequila joke. His patience finally paid off.
18’s not a minor. Unless you count as a minor at different ages for different things, which is even greater rubbish than drinking simply being illegal till 21.
It’s actually just a tea brand that happens to be named “Quila.”
It could be a combination. Tea Tequila, a lovely drink of tea with tequila for the whole internet to love!
*5 seconds later* We regret to inform you that Tea Tequila is a misspelled anti-Semite
For once I agree with Jason, the drinking age in this country is bullshit. If you can join the military and get injured or killed in a war when you’re 18, you should legally be allowed to drink at 18 as well.
At least 18 as the voting age stuck from that whole thing.
Voting age won’t change without a Constitutional amendment. Good luck with that these days!
Incidentally, it was the fact that young adults were dying in Vietnam and couldn’t vote that got the amendment in the first place.
More amendments in the near future aren’t actually that unlikely. Republicans currently control 35 state legislatures out of 50. If they get up to 38 they can start writing amendments.
Barring some serious shenanigans, they’re not likely to keep moving up though. It’s looking like Trump’s poisoned that well.
I mean, yeah, that was explicitly what I was referencing.
Agreed
In addition, the higher age leads to alcohol being Forbidden and Cool and makes for dangerous drinking habits.
I’d still rather drive at 16 and drink at 21 than have to wait until 18 to do the former. It’s also nice living in a country where acquiring a driver’s license doesn’t cost more money than it does to acquire a decent used car.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind a driving age of 18, but it’d be a lot better if we could also get more decent public transportation in places.
I kind of by default want a different age for drinking than for driving, though, because while it seems to work for some countries, I’m cringing imagining American 18 year olds celebrating both those things at once.
The way I see it it makes more sense for people to have already been driving before they become an adult and maybe need to depend on that skill set, so driving age of 18 doesn’t sound like a good idea for that reason.
Is there a specific country you’re thinking of with that claim.
Australia you can drive at 16 and drink at 21. Best of both worlds.
You mean, drink at 18.
My country also has the drinking age higher than the age of majority, voting, and enlisting age. The idea is to give it a year to mature as adults before you drink.
Iiiiiiiid doesn’t usually work out like that. But on the other hand, it’s only a year, so it’s more likely for an 18 year old to go ‘well, it’s only another year’ than if the age was 21 like in the states.
19? That’s interesting choice in drinking age. Don’t think I’ve heard that one before, but I suppose 18 and 21 are fairly arbitrary in and of themselves.
I mean we have 18 here and that is mostly just because that’s close to the age you finish high school and have to start being an adult.
I live in Canada, where depending on province it’s either 18 (age of adulthood) or 19.
It’s fun times on provinces with different ages that border each other. For example, Alberta and BC, particularly since parts of the BC interior are really dependent on Alberta tourists.
Also an unpleasant shock at that border: BC sales taxes >=|
Those of us who live near the US also have to deal with young adults who come up north to get wasted. My sister once brought three American friends home for the weekend and all they really did was get trashed.
Way back when, in Illinois it was 19 for beer & wine.
I find it interesting that whenever I hear this, it is a complaint about the drinking age and not about he military age.
New respect for Jason.
Oh Jason. Wasn’t this supposedly a dry campus or something?
Deeeefinitely has rules against public intoxication, I just checked. So uh. Sure hope campus security doesn’t come by!
What are they going to do, fire him?
Here comes the bromance.
Agreeing with Jason: one can vote, buy a car and cigarettes at 18, but somehow alcohol is the Devil’s water until the magic age of 21
at 18 you can sign away your rights to go to war and kill other people.
But you can’t get drunk.
Used to be you couldn’t vote at 18.
But you could still get drafted and made to go kill other people.
GFDI, what is WRONG with america?
We uh…we fixed it with an amendment. So at least there’s that?
If you actually *do* join the military, however, you can buy booze in the shops on base. The More You Know(tm)
I believe that was the premise for one of the more tragic Depressing Comics Week Cyanide & Happiness strips.
If your going to give military rifles to 18 year olds, do you really want them to be boozing?
After they use those on people they might really need that booze.
You can enlist at 17. My son turned 18 in boot camp.
that…
That sounds even worse. Fucking hell, at 17 I was still watching cartoons (not that I ever stopped, but you get my point)
In Oregon, they can’t sell you tobacco until you’re 21!
Doesn’t invalidate your point, though.
So Jason is going to get both the Walkerton siblings drunk. Only instead of Sal begging for a fight since Marcie isn’t there to stop her, it will be Walky begging for a…sex? McNuggets? I don’t know. I was going somewhere with this and it petered out on me.
He’s gonna pull a Danny and go after Amber.
With beer goggles she’s just a brown-haired Dorothy.
Huh? JAson’s never gotten Sal drunk. Has he?
Nah, she was drinking in a bar he happened to be in, and he helped her back to her dorm room after it was clear she was REALLY drunk
Should take a note from Germany: drink at 16, take a couple years to learn how to responsibly drink before driving and doing other shit at 18
Well, drink beer and maybe wine at 16, tequila and vodka is 18 only.
What kind of irresponsible goof leaves his room with only eight sugar packets?
He hasn’t been to his room (or the dining hall) to restock for a while.
Whatcha talkin’ bout, hovertext? Adding both lemon and milk to tea just gives you a curdled, lumpy, disgusting mess. Surely Jason is English enough to know better…
I just assumed one or both were for company.
Depends on which part of the lemon you add.
I always thought of that as an either/or. Perhaps Jason is prepared for all tea circumstances.
Billie: *Hands them bottle of rocket fuel* “You are both nerds”
Ruth appears and brings Nuka Cola mixed with that radioactive fluid from the rockets in Fallout New Vegas. “You are noobs.”
Hm yeah, sneaking alcohol only work in theory. The breath always gives it away, if anything XD
It’s interesting that you don’t hear much about the NMDA Act, with how many people think the drinking age of 18 is dumb. I was going to say that I guess a lot of people aren’t that familiar with why states set the age at 21, but I guess for a lot of older (than me) people that might not be the case.
Gotta love it. Since the feds lacked the statutory power to set a national minimum drinking age, they just blackmailed the states into doing it.
For all you young people, they tied highway funding for the states to their raising the drinking age to 21.
The most dangerous was when different states had different ages. Young people would drive long distances to states with lower ages >>> many traffic accidents & dui’s among 18-20 year olds.
I seem to remember they tried to do that to try and force some states to lower their highway speed limits as well. Didn’t go over too well.
When it was 18, there were s lot of teen drunk drivers and drunk over lunch students. I enjoyed that but it wasn’t good for my grades.
As far as drunk over lunch, a lot of schools, at least in my area, have closed campus lunch now, so that might cut down on it.
Anecdote:
When I was in high school, I remember once in an art class, these two girls came to school intoxicated. Like, it was first hour; why are you drunk at 7:20am. Anyway, they didn’t drive themselves, so that part was okay at least. This other girl at our table commented that they were responsible for coming to school even though they were drunk. I didn’t say anything, but I remember thinking that “drunk at school” and “responsible” really didn’t go together.
Jason… should not pun.
But we must *all* be punished…
Seriously Walky, if it was tea it would be in a Thermos. A hip flask is the universal signifier for booze.
unless you like cool tea instead of juice or soda.
What is this barbarous American custom of which you speak?
(Yes, you can totally get iced tea this side of the Pond these days, and it’s actually quite popular. But that’s how Jason would see it.
Honestly if I had a decent thermos I’d probably carry earl gray around with me at college
Chamomile for me. It’s soothing for work stress and doesn’t require sugar.
I myself like using crushed cocoa shells. you end up with a chocolate flavored infusion, like chocolate tea.
I’ll think about that one. It opens up a new realm of possibili-teas.
Japanese Green Tea (I used to know it’s proper name but forgot) or Chai for me. Of course I’m one of those people who needs hot tea because they find iced tea repulsive, so that’s just me.
Matcha?
Much like western tea there’s several varieties with different names. Matcha is powdered green tea, of leaves grown mostly in shade which is called tencha.
The most common tea is sencha which is steamed, rolled and dried directly after harvesting to prevent oxidation.
Oh right the most direct word for tea is ocha which refers specifically to Japanese green tea.
cha is just tea, but said in Japanese. Do we dirty gaijins really use that word for “Japanese green tea”?
Anyway, Rukdug most probably means sencha indeed.
As far as I know in the US, Chai is usually used for Indian spiced tea. More properly Masala chai.
I am not a prescriptivist, but it still makes me smile whenever I hear someone order “Chai Tea.” (Same thing with “rice pilaf.”)
Here’s a nice summary of cha versus te.
Nice. I wasn’t aware of the origins of that.
I’d actually thought of commenting on “Chai Tea”, but let it slide. It does kind of make sense, since in English they’re not actually synonyms. Chai is a particular way of making tea, much like pilaf is a particular kind of rice dish.
That would be the difference between ocha and cha.
Chai.
Ah, so your favorite kind of tea is tea. Good to know.
Masala Chai is good though, apropos of nothing.
The only tea I like is that Arnold Palmer lemonade blend, so I’d fill mine with coffee instead.
I am a fan of that myself. Discovered that it is also really good with some gin added.
“Gunfire” – good strong black tea with a shot of dark rum.
Standard issue to 19th century British soldiers before a morning battle.
How long has Jason been waiting for somebody to set up that pun for him?
It actually gets set up for him every time he pulls out his flask. He makes the pun constantly. It’s Jason’s Joke (TM).
I’m more of an MJ tea guy myself.
Honestly Jason, at least offer the alcohol in a closed-off setting away from admin eyes.
While I appreciate Jason’s sentiment, it would be really bad if he got caught doing this. Because laws.
He’s already looking at losing his green card and the ruination of his career aspirations for corrupting minors. At this point, I suspect he believes that he has little left to lose by offering aid and comfort to a luckless fellow bloke.
was jason attempting a pun?
That’s the best worst joke I’ve heard since the last time MatPat opened his mouth.
“Tea… quila”. Yes, my colonial cousins, that’s the dry British sense of humour that you’ve heard so much about.
I like that Walky finds it difficult to believe that Jason ever does anything wild. It sort of fits in with his world view that Jason is a sort of anti-him in all his perspectives; this is the point where he learns things are rarely that simple!
I was going to feel for Jayson, but I realized in the last panel he deserves every second of this.
Am I the only one who thinks getting Walky drunk when he’s in that emotional state might be a bad, even terrible idea?
I’m sticking with my ‘wild rebound sex that is sorely regretted by both parties’ idea. Getting Walky drunk just makes that more likely.
yes!
Welp. Jason is now officially the best DoA character, by a long margin. There can be no scepteacism about this.
Now why did anyone think Jason was more of an adult than Walky?
With this, he starts to,look more like someone playing an adult without actually being one. The world is full of them.
Oh, and off-topic: why is cinnamon roll kind of a term of endearment?
Because some people weirdly use food as terms of endearment….?
The cinnamon roll thing actually started on Tumblr, after they discovered this Onion article.
Thanks, that explains some things I wondered about.
In fairness… Back when I was a teen in the UK it was really normal to start drinking at around 15 or 16. Apparently they got a lot stricter about IDing people by the time my sister was in her teens though. But when I was 17 I stumbled across a 13 year old who had drunk herself near-paralytic to celebrate completing her SATs (Standard Aptitude Tests. Not the US ones colleges look at) and spent the evening getting water into her and holding her upright and making her walk it off…
18 year olds not being allowed to drink seems quite comical to me though.
Remember that drinking alcohol AT ALL was illegal only a century ago in the United States. The country seems to have always had a more reactionary view of intoxicants than Europe.
Or sex for the matter.
Only for 13 years though. And it was in reaction to a very hard-drinking culture, so it’s not quite that simple.
While I personally dislike drinking, I think it’s ridiculous that beer or other stuff with an alcoholic content about 3-5% should not be available for people older that 16. Hard liquor not being legal for those under 18 or 21, yes, considering it’s very easy to consume toxic amounts of alcohol with that while it’s quite hard with low-alcohol drinks, yeah, good idea.
When I was studying, the organic chemistry lab materials desk sold beer with 7,5% to students and faculty alike and that was perfectly legal.
There are good reasons to keep kids away from alcohol and drugs alike because of their lasting effects on brain and body development but once that’s past, … * shrugs*
People should be allowed to learn from their own mistakes.
Though I’d like to scratch all laws and byclauses that reduce a sentence for violence because the perp was drunk or stoned. It was their responsibility that they were in that state, so there should be no claim for reduced culpability.
There’s at least some evidence that those lasting effects on brain development continue until past 21.
The better argument I think is that teens will drink anyway and keeping it illegal pushes them towards unsupervised binge drinking for their first experiences, instead of having a beer or a glass of wine with dinner.
I’m not sure about making a big distinction between hard alcohol and beer/wine. In my younger days beer was the drink of choice for most and I saw plenty of people get wrecked on it – you just have to drink more faster and they did.
My parents used to buy beer for me when I went to parties even before I became of legal age. They knew that at my age at the time (16-17), I would find a way to get alcohol if I wanted to. Their reasoning for this was both so they could control the amount of alcohol I brought with me and at the same time reduce the chance that I’d drink something I wasn’t supposed to (Metanol poisoning from cheaply made moonshine was a problem at the time).
I thought Walky was using the slang meaning of “tea” in panel 4 and the joke was that Jason didn’t get it.
Now I get why American college fiction is so strange to me. The lack of booze. I’m pretty sure my first year at university constitutes about 90% of all the alcohol I’ve ever drunk in my life.
Are you suggesting American college fiction doesn’t include alcohol? That’s weird to me too.
Hell, this particular comic is a piece of American college fiction and has plenty of booze.
It’s illegal, but it’s not like it’s not there.
For god’s saké, Jason, if you want to bam-booze-le campus security into thinking you don’t have alcohol on you, don’t carry it in a hip flask!
Then again, it’s not like he’s been brandyshing it, it’s stayed pretty well hidden until he decided to sherry.
The Spanish version of that joke “Es Te… quila” is so common and such a DAD joke. And I loved it here. Thanks, Willis.
Jason has learned the art of wordplay and puns. Also, he is breaking college law again.
I’ve read before about teachers and alcohol. Apparently, teachers really like to drink! Admittedly, I’ve only seen this particular habit in a video, another comic and a cartoon (sorry, Mrs. Kribaple). But I read that Stephen King was once a teacher before his break-out novel Carrie and he was so blitzed he can’t even remember the process of writing it. So apparently academic faculties do like hitting the sauce.