Ray's Place (08-12-03)

[slink]

After last weeks question from Bella my mom sent me an email telling me how she would fight her for Ray, and wouldn't be at all distressed by the scale issues.
Quite disturbing somewhat! But still, Ray as a father-in-law...

Anyway, still loving Ray's Place.
Over to you guys...

[edit: "This fellow sees you as nothing more than a moist birth canal with pleasurable friction." Busts a damn lung!!!]

Column.

[AugustWest]

Damn, I wish my mom read Achewood!

[Schabe]

Best actual advice: the guy with the ring problem.  Fuck her if she can't accept an honest gesture of love because of a brand name.  

I like how this one is a little lighter on the humor, more heavy on the serious advice.  It makes the advice column diverse and surprising!

[V-Adore]

I was actually kind of surprised at the seriousness and general quality of the advice, yeah. This week, Ray's all about actually helping people.

I, too, feel quite bad for the woman(?) whose girlfriend won't stop talking about her ex. It really is sort of a sad and a difficult situation all around. Overall, this Ray's Place is probably the one where I'm most hoping that things generally work out for these people. (Although the "moist birth canal" girl is probably gonna go and all ignore Ray. Typical.)

[ferocious j]

Best actual advice: the guy with the ring problem.  Fuck her if she can't accept an honest gesture of love because of a brand name.

Seconded.  I hope the girl in question read Ray's reply.

[Schabe]

Also, I actually picked up on the fact that the wannabe-swinger letter was written by a guy, too.  Although I'm not sure what tipped my hat, having gone back and tried to read it more thoroughly.

[satchel]

This week, Ray said that Nietzsche wrote The Metamorphosis of Kafka. I suppose he had confused N.’s criticism of the work with the story itself.

It’s sexist to think that one could distinguish a man from a woman by their attitude or choice of words (for example, the author named ‘Bi-curious’). But in that letter, Ray might have thought Bi-curious was really a man because (s)he:

1. wants to ‘broaden sexual horizons’ after only ten months
2. calls herself ‘lovely’
3. refers to significant other as ‘main squeeze’
4. expresses brutish desire to ‘juice this chick up’
5. brutishly expresses (s)he is ‘out for snatch’

[jay-ell]

Ray also has a little information we don't get -- like, quite possibly, the reader's name.  If it's something like "Bill," that's a pretty clear indication that it's a guy.

[Asherdan]

I was most impressed that Ray was able to drop the hammer on both Canadians and Southerners in a mere two paragraphs.

Ray's touch is really starting to get light here.  Great mix of humor and actual advice this week.

[jough]

I've been most impressed lately with the overall decency that Ray's been showing in actually dispensing some useful (if not obvious) advice.

The ring letter was perfect.  If you ask a girl to marry you and she asks how much the ring costs, I'm sorry, but you just saved yourself years of agony by ditching her.

And I like how Ray got all misty-eyed.  That's a sad situation.

I may actually send "Ray" a sincere question this week.

[CortJstr]

I love how Ray takes the long-running advice column theme of agreeing with the questioner's friends that that guy really is slime/that girl is a ho but finds new and funny ways to say it.

Also the birth canal line made me hunch over in laughter.

[Schabe]

I suppose he had confused N.’s criticism of the work with the story itself.

Friedrich Nietzsche: 1844 - 1900
Kafka writes The Metamorphosis: 1912 (first published 1915)

Ray is just traight up wrong (whether or not this is intentional on Chris's part is another question, as it could be an example of Ray not caring about philosophers, so giving inaccurate advice).

As for the sexist angle, I wasn't trying to say I "knew" it was a man, but the first time I read the letter, before I got to Ray's note at the end of his reply, I initially thought it was a man who had a boyfriend.  I agree though, it probably had a lot to do with the language choice.  "Juice this chick up?"

[junk]

im starting to look forward to ray's place more than the individual strips. with two plus years of archives and ray's place that still make me laugh, i can handle a few unimpressive strips and the dreaded variety hour each week.

[satchel]

Schab, I wasn’t saying you were sexist, it was vaguely sexist of Ray to ask us to find gender-clues in someone’s writing. Also, I thought Nietzsche had written commentary on Kafka, obviously I was wrong as well.

[captainimpossibles]

Guy, guys. You were BOTH wrong.