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humourous

2025-04-05 View on smbc-comics.com → 2 revisions
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humourous
Votey panel for humourous
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Explanation

The comic imagines a world where all foods are renamed using "traditional alchemical names" instead of their modern labels. A presenter announces this change while showing examples: "Fortified Flour" becomes "Enriched with green vitriol," "Beans" become "Bursting with oil of hartshorn," "Broccoli" is labeled "an excellent source of brimstone," and "Tuna" is "loaded with quicksilver."

The exclamation "My God!" from an audience member signals the horror of this realization.

The joke works because all of these alchemical names refer to substances that sound terrifying but actually correspond to real nutrients found in these foods. "Green vitriol" is iron sulfate (iron fortification in flour). "Oil of hartshorn" is ammonium carbonate or ammonia-related compounds (beans do produce gas). "Brimstone" is sulfur (broccoli and cruciferous vegetables are high in sulfur compounds). "Quicksilver" is mercury (tuna is known for mercury content).

The title "humourous" uses the archaic British spelling and also references the medieval/alchemical "four humours" theory of medicine. The comic satirizes how the same chemical substances sound either beneficial or terrifying depending on whether you use modern scientific names or archaic alchemical ones. It plays on chemophobia -- the irrational fear of chemicals -- by showing that even wholesome foods sound dangerous when described in old-fashioned chemical terminology. There's an extra edge to the tuna/quicksilver joke, since mercury contamination in tuna is a genuine health concern, making that particular "alchemical renaming" uncomfortably accurate rather than merely funny.

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