Image description: A four page black and white comic of my tortoiseshell cat, Bunny, complaining that I won’t let her in from the screen porch.
Page 1
Panel 1: A small tortoiseshell cat sits on the other side of a glass door, looking up sadly, saying, “Mama! Mama, help! I’m in the screen porch!”
Panel 2: She scratches at the door. “Mama! Mama I’m trapped! I’m trapped in the screen porch! Mama!” she cries.
Panel 3: She looks through the glass with her sad, innocent expression. “I see you, Mama! Can’t you hear me? Why won’t you let me in? What have I done, Mama!”
Panel 4: The left corner is dominated by a close up of her face, as she reminisces about the cat tree in the screen porch. We see her perched on the very top, looking out over the backyard.
She says, “Was I not grateful enough, Mama? You gave me a throne, here in the screen porch! A place where I could look down upon the world as a god!”
Page 2
Panel 1: While she’s perched atop her cat tree, it begins to rain outside. Bunny looks askance at it from behind the screen.
“But I couldn’t touch it, Mama!” she narrates, now in boxes instead of word balloons, “I could see the rain lavish the earth, but never feel its cool caress!”
Panel 2: A paw rests on the screen. On the other side, two birds chirp, unbothered by the presence of Bunny.
“I could smell the blood of the song birds, but never taste its warmth! I lived as Tantalus in this screen porch, Mama!”
Panel 3: Sitting on a cushioned chair, bunny looks out over the yard, barred from her by the porch screen.
“Tormented by what I could never reach!”
Page 3
Panel 1 : Another reminiscence, this time of Bunny running through the open door to the screen porch earlier that day while I was taking out the garbage.
“And yet I returned, again and again and again! Was that my sin, Mama? Is this my punishment? To be condemned forever to a hell of my own choosing?”
Panel 2: Returning to the present, Bunny looks up from the otherside of the door, her eyes wide.
“Is this what you call justice, Mama?” She says. “Is this what you call love?”
Panel 3: From Bunny’s perspective we see me; I am ignoring her, going about my business. She calls out to me, “Answer me, Mama! Mama!”
Panel 4:I glance back at her, unmoved by her cries. “Mama!” she yells.
Page 4
Panel 1: Pulling out we finally see more of the wall which has the door to the screen porch. Directly beside it is a cat door that goes through the wall, out into the screen porch. Another cat, Bunny’s sister Maggie, is coming through the cat flap with no issue.
I say, “ Bunny, I know you know how to use the cat door.”
Clawing at the window, tears in her eyes, Bunny screams “MAMA!!”
End ID.
I feel like “is this what you call justice, Mama? is this what you call love?” is going to enter my “cats being dramatic” lexicon the same way “you KICK miette?” and “father is…evil?” have.
why is “report hate speech” not one of the default options with “report spam” instead of “report sexually explicit material”. i’m not a cop so i don’t care if people post hole & pole but i would love if i didn’t have to explain every time why it’s bad when there are nazis
Frankly, if I’m the odd one in a group I’d rather be mislabelled than singled out. “All right, ladies – oh, and Dave” like, don’t put me on the spot like that. For the purpose of this exercise I will answer to “ladies”.
7-11 CLERK: lovely day outside, isn’t it ME: uhhh ME INTERNALLY: shit. I didn’t notice. How do I continue this conversation MY INNER MONOLOGUE: Service workers love it when you tell them the things mortal men were not meant to know, when you speak to them of principalities and powers upon the earth ME: In the sun a wheel, in the wheel another wheel. Do you see? 7-11 CLERK: Yes, I see! ME: For each turn of the outer wheel, one thousandth a turn of the inner wheel. And within the inner wheel a point of perfect darkness 7-11 CLERK: Right, growing, devouring. The death of all light ME: Wanes the light - right - wanes the light and waxes the solar eye. Wanes the day of flesh and blood and waxes the night of crawling beasts. Chewing and swallowing. The name of the night to come is khoshek ha-gibbor 7-11 CLERK: Is that hot dog a quarter pound big bite or a spicy bite. They’re priced different ME: Which one is cheaper
Plato makes up Atlantis as an allegory and over 2,000 years later people are still looking for it. You might as well be looking for Narnia.
Plato: Luxury and unlimited power are forces that corrupt human beings and lead them to being colonialist and stupid. The gods will punish Athens if we continue to exploit others for our own gain. I have invented this society as a parable to illustrate my point because I tend to use metaphor for a lot of things.
Everyone: But where are you hiding it though
Plato: I’ve purposefully included details like a mud shoal west of Iberia that doesn’t exist and references to a volcanic eruption that we all have cultural memory of as an obvious indication that I made this up. Are you paying attention? It’s a metaphor. I’m using literary references. You can go west of Iberia yourself. It’s not there. I explained where it is and it’s not there. You all know it’s not there. Please stop it with the luxury and exploitation. That’s my main point here.
Everyone: Yeah but where is it though
Plato: Orichalcum is just a fancy looking metal. It’s kinda like fancy copper. I made it up for this fake parable city.
Everyone: So it’s magic, then.
Plato: I want Athens to be a bit more like Sparta.
Everyone: Where’s the magic metal
Plato: I just think that greed is bad, generally. We should stop doing that.
I’ve got hiccups which is incredibly annoying but it does mean that every 4 seconds or so I’m reminded to think about fish evolution which is pretty cool.
Please talk about fish evolution and how it relates to hiccups I am SO curious
Okay so the thing about hiccups is that you have them by default. There’s a special region in the brain that suppresses hiccups. “Yes hiccups” is the default. “No hiccups” was an ad-hoc addition.
Why?! Why would your body want to hiccup by default? what purpose does that serve? Well, none, for you. But it was very, very important for your ancestors.
Hiccups are a fish reflex. They’re a remnant of the convulsion that fish automatically perform to pull water over their gills. When this system was repurposed for lungs, we eventually evolved a workaround that tells the gill twitch not to fire any more. When this fails, boom. Hiccups.
It’s just your fish nervous system trying to be a fucking fish again.
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