Out of le service
I wonder if you can imagine a member of the small regular cast of this comic who might make a sign that says “out of le service”.
Bad Machinery
New comics by John Allison
I wonder if you can imagine a member of the small regular cast of this comic who might make a sign that says “out of le service”.
It’s a good thing Lottie is 100% fluent in French so she can make totally authentic “Out of le service” signs.
I think it’s a variant of Swiss French run through a free Quebec translation service
The two-eye-dots-and-turned-down-arc face is an international symbol for “Sorry, you’ll have to use your hotel room or find a nearby bush”
She is très good at la Frenchness. Vraimently.
The late, great Alan Coren wrote a regular column in Punch magazine titled “Let’s Parlez Franglais” in which conversations were very much in this style…
E.g. A job interview in which the applicant screws up royally…
“Donnez moi un second chance, squire!”
I would not be surprised if our John has channeled Mr Coren from beyond
Actually it was Miles Kington. However, this might provoke me in to grabbing the books back from my mother’s attic next time I visit. Hmmm… that’ll mean I can also snag my Colemanballs collection…
Regardez!
https://books.google.com/books?id=OUciCwAAQBAJ
Je suis super happy!
You are correct, thank you.
I’m old and my memory is … what’s the word?
My favourite bits of Franglais were ‘Sur ton bicyclette!’ and ‘Dit ca aux Marines!’.
I’m sure she also picked up a little when Mimi Broussard was staying with her.
Like Emily in Paris?
I think you mean she’s fluent in Fronch.
The actual French for “out of service” is “hors service”, which could be backtranslated as “outside service”. No article there.
Though you’re about equally likely to see “en panne”. Aviation or sailing nerds may recognize the word “panne” as the origin of the “pan-pan” distress code.
In English-speaking countries, “hors service” might be very badly misinterpreted by the spelling-impaired.
I remember Pearson’s Fractured French, where “hors de combat” was translated as Camp Followers.
Le hors de combat is, of course, actually the stallion a knight rides into battle. (If it’s a mare, it’s la horse de combatte.)
And this is, obviously, where “an old warhorse” comes from.
There’s also the life work of a horse = hors d’oeuvre. Nowadays their works get consumed so casually. almost without a thought.
Bravo
Who’s to say Lottie didn’t make it and put it there herself
Are you saying that Charlotte Grote, who is, in fact, a “member of the small regular cast of this comic who might make a sign that says ‘out of le service'”, could have done what John implies such a person might have done? Gasp!
You meant to say, “Le Gasp!”
Wasn’t that one of the catchphrases of Th’ Lone Groover of NME fame? I remember another was “Eek alors!”. Tony Benyon are you out there?
Oh my, that takes me back a bit. I may have to dig out The Single Off The Album and annoy the neighbours.
Lottie and Claire had to put the two signs up to force the nihilist gang into using the middle stall
Otherwise the surprise would not have worked and Lottie could not ‘J’accuse!’
And just being in the two outer stalls with the doors locked would have alerted the nihilistics to other people being in close proximity
Sometimes I don’t think it all the way through
But wouldn’t it have been better if they could grab the jewels back from them BEFORE they flushed them?
Better for the rich pigs, yes!
Not for the lucky plumber.
Jewels being quite weighty things they may still be resting in the bottom of the pan, requiring only the services of a rubber gloved cleaner. Whether they will ever be worn again, even after the expert attention of said cleaner rubber gloves, toothbrush and bucket of bleach, very much depends on our heiress’ level of squeamishness as regards toilets.
My father-in-law recently lost his signet ring and we searched the house to no effect. He found it two weeks later in the lav, where it had happily (or not… probably not, too ghastly for words) sat in the bottom of the pan for, one must assume, the entire time.
I have to wonder what the next step in the plan was. They’ve discarded the disguises, and are dressed in brightly coloured, highly identifiable suits. I think I have it; they were inspired by Nina Katchadourian to dress up as portraits in the Flemish style, using nothing but the toilet paper from that cubicle.
https://web.archive.org/web/20241215012555/http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/photography/sa-flemish.php
It’s a bold strategy Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for them.
Thank you for the link. That’s fantastic.
Are we absolutely sure that’s not P J Harvey?
I hope that poor woman will recover from her dementia (although the photographs are quite good!)
My gods that link is genius.
J’ACCUSE
Love me a good j’accuse. This wasn’t Lottie’s finest, though, it doesn’t appear to have knocked anyone over.
It’s at an awkward angle.
Looks like the J’accuse got one of them right in the eye!
Not her finest, sure, but still a solid 7 hues out of 10; would jack again (except they probably won’t get the chance to steal again for a long time). There’s also not much space available for the j’accused to be knocked over, so that has to be taken into account.
I don’t think it has as much power if the local language is already French.
Local language is German, they’re in the Bavarian Alps.
So it would have to be “Ich klage!” I think. It’s been several years since I last studied German, so I make no guarantee of accuracy here.
Rest assured that I explored the origins of “J’Accuse” to the fullest of my intellectual ability during the making of the fourth and final chapter of Wobbly Head.
And which member of the small regular cast of this comic figured out their move immediately after the theft would involve using the toilets? That would require deduction of an almost Sherlockian level! Respect!
Not Beate… which is one of the crucial points behind this historical exposé
IF they were really nihilists, what better disposition of filthy wealth-baubles than the sewers?
It would explain why no one found the previous jewels — they weren’t keeping them! A double alibi!
They would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those dirndl kids!
And that damned bog!
Perhaps “dammed bog”
I will be very interested in winding down the road of deduction/induction/outright guessing that brought us to this scene.
I am hoping we will get to wind down at least some of it.
Flushing the jewel down the toilet? Knowing that would happen directly after it was taken? Thinking it would happen in the public rest room, and is that the Men’s or the Women’s? This will involve some explanation(s)!
Many claps and whistles for the best damn detectives around!
My sympathies are entirely with the staff member who is tasked with retrieving the necklace from the lodge’s septic tank.
Not unlike the bitcoin hard drive guy
In unrelated news, GoComics rolled out a new terrible interface at the start of the month, which annihilated all of the existing comments, and they’re now demanding a subscription to access the Bad Machinery archive there.
Boo to that. Boo to that one thousand times.
A very bad April’s fools prank.
A second great comments purge! I enjoyed reading through your detailed context explanations for those old Bad Machinery comics, John.
This is a matter of economics, because they can’t make any money if everyone reads for free. But I’ll bet they still have those damned pop-up ads (because of economics.)
Not unrelated at all!
Yes, they’ve implemented an even more clumsy format, but “compensated” by removing access to Bad Machinery (and others) from the beginning. So much for my BM, A&J and Brewster Rockit binge-reading.
I’m sure it’s the same member that, in the following pages, will explain how she figured out the whole plan.
-And Beate will receive NO credit at all because acting on her own she was no match for the Dynamic Duo…?
Beate has no way to prove she was after the grup of nihilistic thieves. Months of work for nothing, surely a lot of money lost. But I think that’s not enough for make Bea hate Lottie. She has probably done something else, but what?
There is a tragic accident in store for her from the just-before-getting-on-night-train preview we had a few weeks back. I’m assuming enough of an accident to require face surgery and bring evil-lottie to the forefront.
We shall see…
If those boys are doing all this for fun that’s hardly nihilistic.
Judging from what Lottie said in the previous chapter, both the nihilism and the jewel robberies seem to result from boredom, more than anything else. https://badmachinery.com/comic/these-are-some-lovely-memories/
(And maybe an attempt to get back at their parents.)
The comment about getting rid of the thing implies that the symbol of wealth and luxury deserves to be thrown-away. This is a kind of pleasure, fun for them, to restore the pointlessness of reality?
Looks like their plan’s been…. stalled.
YEEEEEAH
I was kinda hoping they’d hit a different language for their accusation. Like “Y’ALL ARE GUILTY”
I think Lottie especially cannot resist saying “J’accuse” on The Continent.
So Beate is left hanging by missing the critical “twin alibi” and the flush of victory.
It remains to be seen WHO knew about their “snatch and flush M.O.”
Wait a second… *small* regular cast? It must have been Claire!
It doesn’t really narrow it down much. It’s not like Mildred is on this case.
It’s the CAST that’s small, not the MEMBER. (Despite the fact that I wrote exactly what I intended to write, I still feel it didn’t come out exactly the way I intended it to.)
I can’t put my finger on quite why it tickles me so much, but the pose in panel 1 is absolutely, exquisitely, iconically perfect.
Are you sure it’s the ‘pose’ you’re besotted with?
For me it’s the eyes… she has a lovely pair