comics – Page 7 – PretenseSoup

Em oi! #397: It also Means “of the Greatest Importance.”

Here is something interesting I found out about cardinals: If you are a priest who is ministering somewhere that it might potentially be dangerous for you to be made a cardinal, the pope can make you a cardinal in pectore, which means he makes the appointment but keeps it secret (from everyone, including the apointee). Later on, he can reveal the appointment. But if he dies (or retires from the papacy, I guess?) before it is revealed, the appointment expires and the cardinal goes back to being a priest (or bishop). This kind of blows my mind, but I guess it is related to how the college of cardinals functions–not surprisingly, for a group that is full of old dudes, seniority is important.

Our yard might look like this picture if any of our trees (save the evergreens) had any leaves on them yet. Also we sold the swing set, it is not there anymore. And Edgar has dragged about a dozen sticks (many of them as big around as my forearm and longer than he is) out of the woods and piled them up in the middle of the lawn. He seems quite pleased with himself. If they start building ramparts, I’m going to get worried.

We’ll file this under ND1329.3.C37 L86 2014 for Painting–Special subjects of painting–Portraits. Group portraits. Self-portraits–Special subjects, A-Z–Cardinals. No, I am not sure why this is a call number.

Happy Pesach everyone! I hope you had a good seder (or seders if you are more ambitious than I am) and that you are having a good week of not eating bread. I have not had any bread in several days now, yes indeed! Although I must admit I have eaten some tortillas. A line has to be drawn somewhere I guess.

(Ok, actually the rabbis drew it on the side of don’t eat things with flour in them other than matzos during Passover. But they never had to go out to dinner in a non-Jewish city during Pesach.)

I guess this comic is somehow timely because Easter is coming up this Sunday. Happy Easter to all my priest relatives (and priest-to-be somehow-related-by-marriage people)! Actually, this is not a joke, I have one relative who is a priest, and also two of B’s relatives are priests-in-training. That’s a lot of priests for a Jew to be related to. It seems unusual. I also have a relative who studies the medieval Church although she isn’t herself Catholic. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but I can get questions of dogma answered all over the place.

After Easter though, comes the holiday we’ve all been waiting for: Cadbury-Creme-Eggs-Go-on-Sale-Monday.

You were waiting for that too, right? (Cough) I just started training for a triathlon, so I’m trying to stop buying junk food. I’m trying to eat less sugar. I’ll let you know how that works out. Right now I am very hungry and have been eating like it was my job. Probably because I can’t fill up on bread all the time.

It’s, um, Wednesday. Pesach ends Monday at sundown, I think. Be strong.

Em oi! #396: Airplane Hell

This was on a flight from Salt Lake City to Denver. Let me just say that I am super paranoid about my headphones–not only do I worry about disturbing others, I worry about damaging my hearing, so I keep music/podcasts turned down REALLY low. Evidently this guy didn’t give a fuck if everyone could hear his music or not. He’ll probably go deaf, serves him right I guess. Or that’s about what I was thinking. But at the end, when we got up to get our luggage, I started to lean over the seat to vent spleen on the guy. As I did so, I saw some of the stuff he was texting to a friend on his phone (well, we were on the ground, I guess). Essentially he was in his 30s or 40s, on his way to visit a woman his family disapproved of (they believed he was a sinner because he was going to see her, and she had posted some “mildly sexy” photos of herself on the internet), his family also disapproved of his lack of religiosity… I just lost steam. Poor guy was old enough that he should have a life for himself, but he was so totally caught up in his family’s feelings.

It would have been easier if he was just the stupid teenager I’d assumed he was. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a terrible person. But I didn’t yell at him; his life seemed rough enough already.

Anyway. We’ll file this under BJ2139.L86 2014, for Social usages. Etiquette–Etiquette of travel–Special topics–Airplane travel.

I went out to Black Earth to run the Black Earth 10 Mile Race today. It was quite entertaining–I knew about a third of the field, it felt like, or they were friends of friends. It was especially funny to hear people say “Here come the fast people” as I approached with my friend R. Not sure how long I’ve counted as a fast person. We kept a pretty steady 8:00-8:30 pace for the first 9 miles–it was an out and back course, very flat, so it was relatively easy to keep pace, and I knew when we hit the turnaround that I was in 9th place, so it was easy to drive just a little bit harder on the second half to move up a few spots to 7th. Just shy of the 9 mile marker, two people we’d passed earlier (a man and a woman) came up behind us looking to make a move. I dropped the hammer and took off. For a while, I was running about a 6:40. It was amazing, I was flying.

My hands started to tingle. I realized that I could only hold that pace for a limited amount of time, and the clock was running down. I was very shortly going to have make a choice between passing out and slowing down.

I finished, I believe, in 8th place. I didn’t win the free shoes gift certificate. But I learned something new about how fast I can really push myself to–maybe if I start doing intervals once a week (my PT suggested this), I will actually be able to hold a 6:40 pace for a little while longer.

That’s enough of that. Here are some pictures of dogs and other animals I took.

Bear, who stayed with us for a week while his person traveled.

Anyway I think my SAD is over so I will try to post more frequently now. I still have a couple of reviews in queue and a few more to write, plus I’ve recently fallen down a post-colonial studies rabbit hole and I’m excited to talk about that (everyone in real life is tired of listening to me talk about it, actually).

Em oi! #395: I Kant Believe It

This started as more notes to myself on the noumenon, because I have been reading The Parallax View and had to look it up. I dragged through A Critique of Pure Reason in college and also parts of Critique of Judgement and (if I’m recalling correctly) The Metaphysics of Mortals, but I can’t say Kant’s theories ever really resonated with me. Yet since reading First as Tragedy, I’ve had a new respect for him. In particular, I was struck by this passage:

The recent Revolution of a people which is rich in spirit, may well either fail or succeed, accumulate misery and atrocity, it nevertheless arouses in the heart of all spectators (who are not themselves caught up in it) a taking of sides according to desires which borders on enthusiasm and which, since its very expression was not without danger, can only have been caused by a moral disposition within the human race.

Which is to say, while “actual history is confused” on the question of whether or not true [i.e. ethical] progress is possible, spectators across Europe were remarkably sympathetic to the French revolution (Zizek, First as Tragedy, then as Farce, 106).

I think now that this quote is less affecting out of context. Anyway, the remarkable thing was for me that I looked up the noumenon, made my notes, and then suddenly understood exactly the point Zizek was making and sailed on through another several pages. (Then he came to some argument rooted in Hegel and I got bogged down again.)

Anyway I should add that according to Wikipedia, the conflation of the noumenon and the ding-an-sich is not quite so straightforward as the Ziz makes it seem. But you probably already suspected as much.

At any rate, having read my comic, perhaps you are now in a position to appreciate this one by Zach Weiner.

Ok, I have now somehow passed an hour looking at pictures of cats on imagur. Probably time to call it a night.

We’ll file this one under B2799.N68 L86 2014, for Philosophy (General)–Modern (1450/1600-)–By region or country–Germany. Austria (German)–By period–Later 18th and early 19th centuries–Individual philosophers–Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804–Special topics, A-Z–Noumenon. Before you say “Don’t hurt yourself on that topic heading there,” I just want to let you know that PT2100.K3 is German literature–Individual authors or works–1700-ca. 1860/70–Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832–Biography and criticism–Biography–Personal relations–Relations to friends and contemporaries–Individual friends and contemporaries–Other friends and contemporaries, A-Z–Kant, Immanuel. So just be careful what you wish for.

By the way, I posted two reviews lately that you might have missed: this one of the play Red and this one of First as Tragedy. More reviews soon!

Okay, wait, I just remembered something I have to tell you about Kant. It’s a story my father told me when I was a kid: (and just to ruin it, I have forgotten the setup but) there is a guy in a neighborhood in Germany (well, Prussia). Every day he goes out for a walk at the same time. Every day he comes back at the same time. One day, his neighbor is raking leaves in the front yard and sees this guy walk past, and he has one foot on the sidewalk and one in the gutter. And half an hour later, sure as clockwork, back he comes, one foot on the sidewalk, one in the gutter. And that was Immanuel Kant. Later on, Dad told me that Kant broke philosophy, because he thought of it all. I don’t know if that is exactly true (philosophy has certainly continued after Kant, and gone down a lot of new and interesting alleys), but it perhaps explains to you what a huge and insurmountable obstacle he is in the study of philosophy. You Kant get there from here without going through him.

. . .

Ok, now I’m really going to bed.

Em oi! #394: Secret Messages

To write “sum chees” I used my right hand. I’m not sure if this proves that my right hand handwriting is as good as my left or that my normal handwriting is that terrible.

Anyway, this is based on an event that actually happened, sort of. As proof, here is the piece of paper that Edgar was actually toting around (click to embiggen):

I saw an article yesterday that alleged that black dogs are adopted at a lower rate than dogs of other colors. It’s the Daily fail Mail, fair warning. But I’ve heard the allegation elsewhere before. I don’t know if I believe it–I certainly see a lot of black labs around the dog parks–but if it’s true it’s quite sad. Black dogs are awesome. Their fur blends in to any color of carpet that’s not white, and who wants nasty white carpet anyway? Sometimes they hide in the shadows and you don’t see them! And all they really want out of life is to hang out with the cat and maybe get belly rub:

That’s my public service announcement for the day. It looks like there is no LC number for secret dog messages, so I’ll file this under SF422.33 L86 2014, for Animal culture–Pets–Dogs–Communication of information–General works.

In theory I am depositing my thesis tomorrow. (It was going to happen today, but then Kinkos decided to be a bitch.) I have promised copies to several people, so I will email those out soon. Also I need to send copies to my other committee members and to, uh, a couple of journals. Also need to apply for some jobs, finish a massive copyediting project, get hair cut, take dog to vet for annual checkup, do laundry, vacuum every horizontal surface in house, learn good method of removing wallpaper, order shower curtain, watch some old episodes of Dr. Who, finish novel, finish applying for unemployment, contact guitar teacher, contact a bunch of other people, decide if I can run a 50k this spring, develop positive outlook on life, get enough sleep, and put some stuff up for sale on Craigslist.

Piece of cake, right?

I keep thinking about starting a tumblr for my comic, but then my readers wouldn’t be subjected to these entertaining little chats–they’d just see the comic. And that would be sad, wouldn’t it?

Em oi! #393: Domestic Dog Comics

A few scenes that didn’t work exactly right on their own, so I thought I’d put them together. I have one more dog comic to do and then I’ll get back to drawing comics about philosophy and suchlike. And yes, Maya does actually stick her entire face into the snow and seem to be sniffing it. What is she smelling? I ask myself this constantly. What can she smell under there?

We’ll file these under SF427.45 L86 2014, for Animal Culture–Pets–Dogs–Exercise and amusements.

Anyway, it’s the new year, and I have to admit that if another website I’ve had passing interactions with sends me a year-end summary, I’ll…delete it and be quite cross. (I mean, it’s an email, what can you do?) But to provide a few exciting(?) facts for you, my dear readers:

This was the most popular comic of the last year.
I ran 2,163.86 miles, biked 396.6 miles, and swam 291,425 yards (165.5 miles) last year. I missed my goal of 2,500 by just a bit, probably because of the whole plantar fasciitis thing.
I ran nine different distances of race last year. The top times were: 24:40 (5k), 54:41 (5 mi), 50:25 (10k), 1:56:41 (20k), 2:00:07 (13.1 mi), 3:21:41 (20 mi), 4:08:43 (26.2 mi), 5:09:44 (50k). I placed in the top ten in five races, or in the top five in four!

That’s all my interesting things at the moment. Currently I have one race for the spring I’m actually signed up for (The Ice Age 50 mi/50k/half marathon [I’m doing the half marathon]), and two other races I’m pretty sure I’m going to do (the new duathlon and the Mad City 50k). My big goals are to hit 1:45:xx (or even 1:40!) for the half marathon and go sub-5 hours at the MC50k. And don’t get injured. Right.

The rest of my life is spent alternately searching for jobs and convincing myself that getting a job makes me an exploited tool of capitalism. So I guess actually I’m searching for jobs and alternately I’m reading and fomenting rebellion. Fun times. It has been cold here, but it turns out that I can run on the dreadmill and read at the same time, so I’ve been enjoying myself.

Em oi! #392: Such Truth

I should clarify straight away that “Lupton Fact” is the term B uses for claims that I (and my brothers) claim that occasionally turn out to not be true, or not be entirely true.

Usually when I do comics about history or philosophy I fact check them pretty closely. This one, I did not–mostly it was a good story that I wanted to transcribe. To be honest, the word “mystery” in the term “Mithraic Mysteries” (or “Mysteries of Mithras”) means that you didn’t get to find out much about the rituals and so on until you had been initiated into the religion–it’s the modern-day equivalent of Free Masonry. Or Scientology. No writings from the Mithras cult survive, as far as I know, and all of what we know about them is based on supposition drawn from artworks, artifacts found in caves (where they held their rites), and a few contemporaneous writings, including one early church father. In short, we don’t really know what they believed or who they stole from. They were contemporaneous in time with Christianity, certainly, but whether they were contemporaneous in geography is a question. It seems that at least some of the similarities between Christianity and the Mysteries of Mithras may have been drummed up by the New Atheist Movement to score points on Christianity.

That said, it’s a good story.

I wanted to make this chat longer, but I’m really tired, so I’m just going to file this under BR128.M5 L86 2013, for Christianity–Relation of Christianity to other religious and philosophical systems–Special, A-Z–Mithraism. And now to bed.

OH, by the way. If you read my book, and you happen to be on Goodreads, it’s on there–you can leave a review! Exciting, eh?

Update!

Sean messaged me this morning to provide an alternate account of the connection between Mithraism and Christianity. It goes something like this:

The religions of Rome were very ritual-centric, rather than focusing on belief in a specific deity, so much so that late empire writers complained that no one understood the meaning behind or origin of the rituals yet had to fulfill them.
When Rome adopted Christianity as its religion, these people might have brought some of their rituals with them to Christianity.
A lot of religions make a connection between their deity and the sun [For perhaps obvious reasons, since you’d want to connect a life-bringing deity with the life-bringing sun.–Ed.]. In Islam, for example, the angel Gabriel appears to Mohammed (BPuH) as a giant in the sky. In the Hebrew Bible, G-d is frequently described with solar/light-related metaphors.
A lot of Roman cults had resurrection myths. But Jews (and especially the Nazarites) did sin offerings. [Ok, there are appearances of offerings all over the Hebrew Bible–for example, the “scapegoat” thing in Lev. 16:8 or Hannah dedicating her son in 1 Sam. 1:24. So I don’t know if this was just especially a Nazarite thing or what–Sean didn’t specify. Jews in general made offerings.–Ed.] It’s not a big step from an offering one person makes to clear one person of sin to an offering made to cleanse all of humanity of sin. So Christianity could certainly have picked up a lot of its beliefs from extant Jewish mythology.
In summary, certainly a bunch of the harmless stuff, like bunnies that lay eggs, Christmas trees, lights, etc. probably came from Roman cults. But the rest, it’s hard to say, and harder still because some of the people who are interested in propagating this train of thought are doing so to discredit Christianity as a religion. [Whatever that means. I don’t see the fact that a religion has particular sociocultural/historical roots as incompatible with believing in it, but even in my religious days I was never a literalist.–Ed.]

Em oi! #391: One Forty Point What?

It didn’t initially seem fair to me that I should get laid off the week after Thanksgiving, three weeks before Christmas. Although I neither celebrate nor enjoy the latter holiday, it seemed like the scene out of The Christmas Carol that Dickens couldn’t stand to write. But I guess that the culturally mediated significance the greater United States places on these few weeks are no match for capitalism–and what is Christmas anyway but a holiday whose cultural meaning has long been surpassed in the minds of most Americans by its attached capitalistic values. In other words, as Marx would say, capital really does drive change, and no one, not even a corporation that makes a pretense of having “values” and caring for their employees, is going to let some religious nonsense stop them from doing what’s good for the bottom line, especially as Christmas is religious nonsense pasted on top of previous levels of religious nonsense (or, if you prefer, folkloric nonsense), itself probably resting on previous levels of superstition, all of it drummed up to assuage the old monkey brain fear that the sun is going to go out and the cold winter is going to last forever.

In other words, to quote Ford Prefect, “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

In other words, bah humbug.

I was carrying out my main Christmas tradition this evening, which is making fudge for my husband’s relatives while sulking, and I decided to listen to This American Life’s episode “Christmas and Commerce” (no. 47). It has the long version of David Sedaris’s “The Santaland Diaries,” which if you’ve never heard it, do yourself a favor and listen. I am going to listen to it every year from now on. Anyway, the third act is David Rakoff talking about playing Freud in the window of Barney’s department store in NYC, and he says, “If psychoanalysis was late 19th century secular Judaism’s way of finding spiritual meaning in a post-religious world…retail is the late 20th century’s way of finding spiritual meaning in a post-religious world.” I think that sort of sums up what I’m thinking about.

The decision that I (and several of my coworkers) was laid off came down nearly three weeks ago, and I suppose I should be done with my sulking and on to the next step of the process, finding a new job. But I’m lingering. I don’t know why, exactly–probably the stress from thesis and other things. And, well, “as happy as a Jew on Christmas” is not an expression for a number of very good reasons–this is a difficult time of year, in short. And I’ve been reading Žižek, that doesn’t help.

Filing this under HD5708.5 L86 2013 for Industries. Land use. Labor–Labor. Work. Working class–Labor market. Labor supply. Labor demand–Unemployment. Unemployed–Layoffs. Plant shutdowns. Redundancy–General works.

Here’s a picture of my cat Kali and Edgar the dog chilling out together. Gaze upon it and repeat to yourselves, as I do: It’s only a job. Life goes on.

Em oi! #389 and #390

In honor of defending my MA thesis (successfully), two comics about the final throes. I have discussions in the vein of #390 with those who copyedit my fiction as well. Hm. We’ll file these two under LB2385 L86 2013c and LB2385 L86 2013d for Theory and practice of education–Higher education–Academic degrees-M.A. You can also check out LB2385 L86 2013a and LB2385 L86 2013b. You know, for all that I seem somewhat frustrated with my advisor, he’s really been a good fellow to me, and given me a lot of space to make my own discoveries, which I’m kind of glad about. He said some really nice things about my thesis during my defense, and we shook hands. I guess that’s, finally, a détente.

I’ve recently seen a spike in traffic, probably all you crazy people who bought my book. What fun! But looking over the blog, I see that like 99% of the posts I’ve written since July have been about how terrible it is to be in graduate school. And…to some extent this post is not a change from that. Whoops. Sorry. Next week I will have comics that are not about being exhausted and stressed out. I promise. I already have them drawn, even!

Anyway, the big news can be seen in this photo:

No, not the copy of House of Leaves in the background. The postcards are here! If you want a signed one, send me your snail mail address to ehlupton+postcards(AT)gmail(dot)com [ehlupton plus sign postcards at sign gmail period com]. As you can see, I have a lot of postcards, and I believe thus far only three people have asked for them, so get your order in!

Em oi! #388: The New Guy

Edgar came to live with us close to four weeks ago. I think it will be four weeks tomorrow, actually. It’s actually surprising how much about him has changed since we brought him home:

He will walk on a leash and not freak out.
He will go up and down stairs by himself, although he’s a bit clumsy.
Weighs 46 lbs rather than 42.
Is willing to walk past cars that are parked as well as cars that are turned on but not moving. Still terrified of moving cars though.
We are reasonably sure he is flat-coated retriever and Aussie rather than part Newfie.
I have decided on the best way to draw him. As you can see in the comic above, there was some experimentation.

At first Edgar was very shy and stayed in his crate most of the time, even though we left the door open so he could come and go as he wanted. I think he appreciated having the little cave to hang out in, because re-homing is incredibly stressful and confusing. And that’s for people; imagine how the dogs feel. Anyway, Edgar is a rescue dog and he had spent a lot of his life in to a shelter before entering the foster care system and then coming to us, so we knew that it would take him longer than it took Maya to warm up to us. After all, Maya was 12 weeks when we got her, versus Edgar at six or seven months–much more life to have traumatized him thus far. However, I am happy to report that he is thriving. I drew this follow-up comic to demonstrate Edgar hanging out in the atrium every morning while I eat breakfast:

I’ll file this comic under SF427 .L86 2013 for Animal Culture–Pets–Dogs–Culture and care. Sadly, there was no entry for “doggy personal ads.”

And here’s a photograph of him I took earlier this afternoon:

And a picture of Edgar and Maya playing in the snow:

So the reason we were able to get another dog is that we recently moved to a new house. I think I may have mentioned this before. But the thing is that we have been slowly going through a lot of stuff at the old condo that didn’t get moved, stuff that we should probably throw away so we can get the house on the market. Earlier this evening while doing this, I came across this piece of paper:

If you can’t read, it says, “ทำงานทุกวันและเล่นไม่ได้ทำให้คุณจากคนไม่สนใจ,” which translates as “Working everyday and not playing makes Jack an uninteresting person.” Nowadays I would spell “Jack” as “แจก” rather than “จาก” I guess. But. I wonder what was going on when I made those notes? It also seems to say “Liz Bernstein–another Jew in Asia,” “มหา [maha] Ghosanada,” “CompLit,” and “No one is soverign [sic] in love.”

…It’s probably a good thing I’m finishing my thesis and graduating soon.

I should mention that the novella is due out at the end of the week. It will be available as a PDF and on all major ebook platforms (i.e., Kindle and Nook). So, uh, prepare to spend money on it? It should be pretty awesome. Here, in case you haven’t seen it yet, is the cover.

Em oi! #387: Bad Dog

Proof:

Oof. Remember when I used to have time to blog? Me neither.

Ironically, I finished this drawing almost a month ago, when we were visiting Baltimore. But I didn’t get it posted the week we came back because we were packing for the move, and then we were moving. After the move, first I couldn’t find the sketchbook. Then I found the sketchbook but I didn’t know where my eraser (the one surviving eraser at this point), so I couldn’t finish the sketch. Last night I decided to get my act together.

I’ll file this under: SF429.S63 L86 2013, which stands for:
Animal culture–Pets–Dogs–By breed, A-Z–Shiba dogs.

More comics about the dog here and here.

I ran the Baltimore Running Festival half marathon on the 12th of October. It was fun. I was going to write a race report, but let’s face it: The chances of that happening are kind of slim at this point. I get up every morning at 5:30 to start work on my thesis, then I work out and do actual work, and after all that I have no energy left. So enjoy a few photos from the run:

go pass — My MTA ticket. I <3 public transit.

pre race — Looking skeptical before the race.

There was a goodly walk from where we lined up to the starting line, the last bit was uphill. It was a bit confusing. I bet people who actually read their race packet knew about this though.

socks — It’s the Natty Boh man. We’re in B’more, hon.

lake building — I’d been reading _From Hell_, and this building looked strangely like some freemason business.

done — Post-race. I finished in 2:00:07.