Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for June 13, 2009

Most of us are, Val … most of us are.

Especially when she had to get up to answer the phone.

Everyone at Joan’s house is sick. Over at Val’s only Alix is sick. Joan owes Val a lunch for falsely accusing Alix of getting Max sick when it is quite obvious that Max is patient zero. Just not the lunch that you just lost, ok Joan.

“patient zero”? what does that mean? Alix was sick before Max was.

And why assume that no one else is going to get sick? I count 10 main characters in the strip, plus the dog. Five have gotten sick so far - Alix, Max, Andy, Wally, and Joan. I guess we can leave out the dog, because humans and animals usually don’t share diseases (there are some notable exceptions), and also Val’s policeman boyfriend Phil, because he doesn’t live there, and probably has the sense not to come over when something is “going around”. So that leaves Val, Holly, baby Luci, and Gramma, whose name slips my mind alas.

Time will tell - that’s the fun of having a new episode each day!

Note from the grammar police: Joan is rarely nauseous (“causing nausea; sickening”). At the moment she is nauseated. Dilbert made the same mistake recently.

From Answers.com: Traditional critics have insisted that nauseous is properly used only to mean “causing nausea” and that it is incorrect to use it to mean “affected with nausea,” as in Roller coasters make me nauseous. In this example, nauseated is preferred by 72 percent of the Usage Panel. Curiously, though, 88 percent of the Panelists prefer using nauseating in the sentence The children looked a little green from too many candy apples and nauseating (not nauseous) rides. Since there is a lot of evidence to show that nauseous is widely used to mean “feeling sick,” it appears that people use nauseous mainly in the sense in which it is considered incorrect. In its “correct” sense it is being supplanted by nauseating.

Thanks filhodeangola! I love the way the language keeps evolving (and pity the grammar police’s attempts to stop it!)

Sounds like what happened to “like” and “as” due to a certain tobacco ad of years ago. “Like” replaced “as” and now “as” is being used where the correct word would be “like.” Leaves this pre postwar baby boomer really confused.

And no one has commented on the poor Surls being typecast as bad-tempered and unfriendly! (Yes, I’m kidding!)