Yogurt
Yogurt
[Cueball is holding a yogurt cup at arm's length. Waves of stink are rising from it.] Cueball: Oh God, how old is this yogurt in your fridge? [Someone speaks from off-panel.] Friend: What's the expiration date?
[Cueball holds up the cup to look at the bottom.] Cueball: May 12th, but there's no year. [From off-panel again.] Friend: It's May 7th. So it's fine.
[Now the second person is on panel, and Cueball speaks from off-panel. The second person is sitting down working on a laptop.] Cueball: I'm not sure. When it was packaged, was civilization using the Gregorian or Julian calendar? Friend: Okay, I'll throw it out. Cueball: No, it might still be good!

Most packaged food has an expiration date that indicates when the food will probably no longer be suitable for consumption. This could be due to any number of reasons; most products will rot or grow mold after their expiration date passes, but some processed foods will "dry out" or just generally become "unpleasant" long before they actually spoil. The expiration date is sometimes called a "best before" or "use by" date for this reason.
Some products don't list the year as part of the expiration date, on the assumption that by the time the year becomes an issue, the food will obviously be spoiled. Cueball is encountering this issue; clearly the yogurt has gone bad - it's raising "stink lines" and appears to have visible mold - but the expiration date only lists "May 12th" and it's currently May 7th, so the characters reason that it must still be good since the expiration date hasn't passed yet. Somehow, they fail to notice the terrible smell coming off of it.
The Gregorian calendar was initially adopted in the Catholic European countries in 1582 to correct the slow drift of the seasons relative to the calendar year that occurred under the Julian calendar. The Protestant and Orthodox countries were slower to adopt it. The British Empire, including the American colonies, adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Cueball (in a seemingly sarcastic manner) wonders whether the expiration date might have been printed under the Julian Calendar, i.e., at least just under a century prior (there were some nations in Eastern Europe who changed from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar only around the time of the First World War).
The Gregorian calendar (our current calendar) is mostly the same as the Julian calendar with two major differences:
The last line spoken by Cueball may mean one of two things: either 1) he is continuing to be sarcastic toward his friend, or 2) he is genuinely considering that it may not have gone bad, despite all the clues saying otherwise.
The title text is Randall's own (absurd) [ citation needed ] view: for a short period of time preceding the expiration date of any food, no matter how many years have passed, it suddenly becomes good to eat again.
[Cueball is holding a yogurt cup at arm's length. Waves of stink are rising from it.] Cueball: Oh God, how old is this yogurt in your fridge? [Someone speaks from off-panel.] Friend: What's the expiration date?
[Cueball holds up the cup to look at the bottom.] Cueball: May 12th, but there's no year. [From off-panel again.] Friend: It's May 7th. So it's fine.
[Now the second person is on panel, and Cueball speaks from off-panel. The second person is sitting down working on a laptop.] Cueball: I'm not sure. When it was packaged, was civilization using the Gregorian or Julian calendar? Friend: Okay, I'll throw it out. Cueball: No, it might still be good!
