I never realised how much being a fish feels like being a bear

[freckles_and_doubt]

Good lord, actual internets. I shall grab it quickly and post ere it vanishes into the aether like a mocking ghost. We have had no internets for two days, bar the occasional spasmodic ten-minute connection designed specifically to get our hopes up and then dash them cruelly and jump on the bits, laughing. This is because of Seacom, the new hearty curse. Apparently there's a relay down on a random bit somewhere between Mumbai and Mombasa, plunging large tracts of South Africa into the eighties. Repairs may take up to a week because they need to blunder around until they actually find the cable. Also, giant squid. And probably pirates. And serve them all bloody well right. After two days without internet, Extemporanea rends random passers-by with her teeth.

However, in the Department Of For Every Action A Reaction, I should probably note for posterity that my Evil Landlord, last hold-out of the Germanic Luddite Army, actually acquired a cellphone recently. In itself that's enough of a wibble in the space-time continuum to put Seacom out of action for weeks. I may have compounded the problem by taking my new netbook into a five-hour meeting this morning and using it to check student records, which was curiously satisfying.

Today's subject line courtesy of today's Wondermark, which for some reason completely broke me. The man's a genius. Then again, lack of internet access has some very odd effects on the brain.

Comments

[stringgeek.livejournal.com]

Dear heavens! He's on the slippery slope now. Soon he may devolve into getting a LJ...or worse, a FB account!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I think he's actually fairly safe for the moment, I haven't yet persuaded him to switch the damned thing on.*

* Circumstances may be slightly exaggerated for comic effect.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

That comic makes no sense.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

There's a sort of surreal juxtapositionary logic in it. Wondermark has its own slightly demented version of "sense".

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

.. even for Wondermark.

[(Anonymous)]

I loved it too.

scroob

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

I too loved it too.

It is nonsense, but it is also about sense, colliding two seemingly contradictory yet effortlessly integrated systems of meaning. Between 37% and 82% (depending on the reader's own emotional disposition) of the humour value comes from the poignancy of the fish-bear as universal standard-bearer of those who meekly accept the manipulation of their reality - even identity - by the strongly wrongly minded.

Alternatively it shows that bear costumes make fish very forgetful.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Exactly! It's beautiful because it's both demented and poignant. Also, I never really trusted people who fish.