The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: Bozack on October 04, 2004, 06:35:46 am
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....I really like this one, but I don't get the punchline. I like the freak out lines on the penis, I like the penis falling off of the table...but what is that? Is that a Kit-Kat bar? A snap-off exacto blade?
I guess I'll just have to wait for someone to enlighten me.
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It's tweezers. I thought it was like in the fable, like he was removing a thorn from the penis's paw - but isn't that backwards? Isn't the little prey animal supposed to remove a thorn from the paw of the big scary predator?
OK, so where's Chris when we need him to cut off our usual baseless speculations with actual information? Dang West Coast slugabeds.
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Yay! I knew it was tweezers! perhaps cause I see them around the house too often not to recognise 'em on the spot...
Anyway, I considered he was using the tweezer on the penis to keep it from falling and he's so light, he didn't need a bigger device... of course, I'm simple minded at times.. especially at close to 7am without sleep.
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I thought beef was simply shaking hands with Mr penis, and utilised lab tweezers so that his proportionately huge paws wouldn't smother the little guy. It's a lovely image.
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See now, I saw it as Beef was using the tweezers to loosen the grip of the one last hanger-on. All the other mice are off the table. This one, too, must go.
Not such a lovely image.
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I love the strip because it's open to so many interpretations. Is Beef saving the penis? Capturing it? Holding it still so's he can hit it with the hammer? Does Beef even know what he's doing?
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See now, I saw it as Beef was using the tweezers to loosen the grip of the one last hanger-on. All the other mice are off the table. This one, too, must go.
Not such a lovely image.
indeed, he appeared weilding the hammer and was distraught at the the thought of *mushing* mice, but lucklily all but one fled. left with the thought of mushing that one, he set the hammer down and got tweezers to pry up the paw of the penis so it would plummet to his doom.
so, beef equates prying the paw up of a penis holding onto a ledge so it might plummet to its doom, with lab science.
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I think those are rats. Proportionate to Roast Beef, the rodents appear to be only a little smaller than Todd, which would make them very large mice.
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Those look to be rats, yeah.
And I love the ambiguity, too -- you really can read this strip as everything from "using the tweezers to capture the rat, albeit sort of half-assedly" to "using the tweezers to try to desperately save the rat." Also, the alt text is goddamn priceless. BUT AT WHAT COST indeed, Mr. Kazenzakis!
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Dang West Coast slugabeds.
Hey!
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I am not loving the ambiguity. I desire clarification.
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.. well, now that you mention it, I'm starting to wonder myself.
It becomes eerier the longer you think about it.
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Dang West Coast slugabeds.
Hey!
Aren't you some kind of musician? You didn't get up early, you've been up all night.
The dachshund needs to jump on the bed now and wake Mr Onstad up.
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This strip's rainbow of interpretations is beautiful. I almost don't want Onstad to reveal his original intent.
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Aren't you some kind of musician? You didn't get up early, you've been up all night.
I'm a marketing director. With a toddler. I haven't been up all night since...well, since September 17, actually, but it weren't because of no music, I can tell you that.
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Did Onstad change the last panel so it looks more tweezer-y?
Some of my favourite strips are those in which Beef's inner-monologue is visualised for us.
Very nice.
I also believe that Beef is loosening the paw so that the last rat falls, but of course now that I've said this Onstad will log on to post the opposite, that he is shaking hands with the little fellow, even though that would obviate his alt-text.
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Indeed he did, jough -- they originally looked more like swiss-army knife tweezers; now they look like those one would see at such as a manicurist's station.
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It was a paperclip before I went to sleep last night. Now it looks like tweezers, or something.
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The cruelty of the experiement comes in the rat's CHOICE: get smashed by a hammer or plunge to its death.
I'm thinking the hammer would be faster, and would enable the rat to proffer a salutatory 'fuck you' to the scientist before shuffling off its mortal coiled tail.
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re: plummeting/falling/fleeing to their doom - there aint no rat that aint gonna survive a 3 foot drop - rats are hell of robust
edit: beefs table can only be 1 foot high - TOPS
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OH NO, ROAST BEEF IS REVERTING TO PRIMAL CATHOOD!
(http://www.ubikids.com/screens/tom_jerry_04.jpg)
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See now, I saw it as Beef was using the tweezers to loosen the grip of the one last hanger-on. All the other mice are off the table. This one, too, must go.
Not such a lovely image.
This is correct I think.
OK, so where's Chris when we need him to cut off our usual baseless speculations with actual information? Dang West Coast slugabeds.
Please for the love of all that is Holy, let us not turn this board into a Q and A for Chris? Can we just let him be a board member? Can we just discuss the strips in a vacuum like mortals who don't have 'access' to him?
HAVE SOME DIGNITY, PEOPLE.
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beef's killing the fucker.
the original alt-text was 'we can barely show this sort of thing, even on the internet' or some such.
that said, i still don't know what's going on here.
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Please for the love of all that is Holy, let us not turn this board into a Q and A for Chris? Can we just let him be a board member? Can we just discuss the strips in a vacuum like mortals who don't have 'access' to him?
Nope, it's been ruined for me. Now that I know there is some chance at getting The Answer, only The Answer will do. I can't help it, it is the sort of person I am.
Besides jeez isn't this one just a little too obscure?
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Obscure? Nope. To me this is clearer than figuring out what a 'stinker' is...Beef is prying up his fingers to get him to jump off the table like the rest of them.
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re: plummeting/falling/fleeing to their doom - there aint no rat that aint gonna survive a 3 foot drop - rats are hell of robust
edit: beefs table can only be 1 foot high - TOPS
They also make awesome pets. I used to have these two Norway rats, named 'This' and 'That'. They used to ride around on my head or shoulders. They are smart little buggers, too.
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i loath the idea of the author explaining it all. the best essence of achewood to me is the severe ambivalence the strips contain and project.
i look at the post specific threads to garner ya'll's interpretations, not to be told answers.
if it was Goats ("no, see, it didn't show but 30 years ago he had sex with a valkyrie...") or User Friendly ("no, the one on the left is the woman") i would expect answers.
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i loath the idea of the author explaining it all. the best essence of achewood to me is the severe ambivalence the strips contain and project.
i look at the post specific threads to garner ya'll's interpretations, not to be told answers.
if it was Goats ("no, see, it didn't show but 30 years ago he had sex with a valkyrie...") or User Friendly ("no, the one on the left is the woman") i would expect answers.
We never did get an explanation for Illegal Ghost Bikes so hearing the truth on this one is unlikely.
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We never did get an explanation for Illegal Ghost Bikes so hearing the truth on this one is unlikely.
that didn't need an explanation, because the joke was basically how random it was.
as opposed to this, which is funny, but in a confusing, what-the-shit-is-happening way.
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You still don't need an explanation.
Seriously.
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I've come around to thinking ADawg is right about what Beef is doing with the tweezers. But now I'm wondering why on earth Beef thinks that science experiments with rats would involve chasing them off a table with hammers. I guess I'm just never satisfied.
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While I do find the tweezers discussion quite fascinating...
Beef is a programmer. Why in the bejesus can't he get a code monkey job?
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But now I'm wondering why on earth Beef thinks that science experiments with rats would involve chasing them off a table with hammers.
For the same reason he thought he had to bury his new shirt.
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so i'm stuck doing stuff for awhile tonight, so i'm staring at today's strip hoping it will give me some deeper insight into why people seem preoccupied with the notion of me not sleeping (i need you to do "X". -i'm not entirely sure that's even possible.- oh, i have faith in you. -!!!-)....
1. what is with the shadows from the chairs from panel 1.
2. there is a "motion line" from the hammer in panel 3, but not in panel 4. i surmise and speculate that beef is waving the hammer menacingly in frame 3 (menacingly for beef, not the public at large) and in panel 4 he's "calmed" since all the rats have fled but one.
3. the "motion lines" in panel 6 confuse me. is the rat trembling in fear? the rat emenated head lines in the previous panels, but they seemed exclamatory. are those eyebrows or motion lines? or is he simply "fuzzy", a phantom penis crawling up onto the table as the "Real" rats flee the table. Beef's subconscious desire to fight against the flow of the popular reaction to a cartoon cat with a hammer? is he greeting him?
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...why on earth Beef thinks that science experiments with rats would involve chasing them off a table with hammers...
Now I think we're getting somewhere people.
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See Wombat? It's like Deus ex Machina up in this Bi-atch.
I was thinking about Beef's ideation of the impossible tetris shapes during this as well; his dang ol' mind just works differn than our'n. He should be picturing people chasing HIM off a table with hammers; we all know that when they advertise for experiments in the want ads, they usually aren't looking for the scientist...
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Looking back on this thread, anyone who thinks that someone would use tweezers to shake hands with a penis that is about to fall off a table lacks the certain brain chemical (C)(H)(O)(C)(H)(A)(C)(H)(O)
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I'm even more tired than the night/morning before, but honestly! shaking hands?!
[edit: I should note that I still considered this silly before Onstad said anything about it..... I just didn't have time to post earlier when I checked this thread]
For some reason, I'm thinking my speculation isn't as silly as I thought after that one... my thought (though I didn't entirely finish it since I was about ready to fall out of my chair) was that he was picking the penis / rat up with the tweezers cause he needed one to run the experiment and all the rest ran off the table. don't his thoughts usually involve disaster? so the idea that they were supposed to all fall off seems ridiculous, too.
Now, I'm not sayin' the idea of him picking up the penis to bring him back on the table to do something to it with the hammer is the absolute correct answer speculation, but since I'm obviously procrastinating going to bed, I thought I'd elaborate on my theory... if one is even needed.
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But now I'm wondering why on earth Beef thinks that science experiments with rats would involve chasing them off a table with hammers.
Actually, I know a chick who works in a lab with mice and it's really like that. It's all about fuck*ng with them.
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But now I'm wondering why on earth Beef thinks that science experiments with rats would involve chasing them off a table with hammers.
Actually, I know a chick who works in a lab with mice and it's really like that. It's all about fuck*ng with them.
I once did an experiment in my introductory neuroscience course that involved isolating baby rats from their mothers and then testing just how long and loudly they cried under varying circumstances (alone, with some morphine, with a group of unconscious littermates, etc.). It may very well have been the saddest thing.
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It's certainly the saddest thing I've heard today.
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My first impression was that Beef was just shaking hands with him. I didnt even ponder anything else until I visited here. It still looks to me as though he has this hammer, the mice run, his eyes get bigger with surprise, then hes even sort of playing with his hands a bit, nervous even, having put the hammer down while he looks at this poor face still clinging on. So he either shakes hands or pulls him up. He wouldnt necessarily see the risk of shaking hands.
And the shadows in panel one I just suppose are washing.
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But now I'm wondering why on earth Beef thinks that science experiments with rats would involve chasing them off a table with hammers.
Actually, I know a chick who works in a lab with mice and it's really like that. It's all about fuck*ng with them.
I once did an experiment in my introductory neuroscience course that involved isolating baby rats from their mothers and then testing just how long and loudly they cried under varying circumstances (alone, with some morphine, with a group of unconscious littermates, etc.). It may very well have been the saddest thing.
I thought the saddest thing involved retarded baby rats and broken eggs.
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Beef´s job is to whack the rats with the hammer, obviously he´s a bit hesitant about it, and all, but one, of the rats get away. Well, he knows he´s supposed to hurt the rat, but thinking that whacking the poor rat with a hammer is to harsh, he chooses to pinch it with tweezers.
AlohaDawg:
"They also make awesome pets. I used to have these two Norway rats, named 'This' and 'That'. They used to ride around on my head or shoulders. They are smart little buggers, too."
- I hear you, in Denmark we used to have Norwegians as pets too, but then the sweets...hmmm sweeds? ehhh... the people from Sweden took ém away from us.
ohh, and thankyou.
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Looking back on this thread, anyone who thinks that someone would use tweezers to shake hands with a penis that is about to fall off a table lacks the certain brain chemical (C)(H)(O)(C)(H)(A)(C)(H)(O)
I don't know. I DON'T KNOW what I was thinking. But still - even after all the nay-saying and the stark realisation that I may have been misinterpreting SO MANY OTHER strips - I STILL see Beef shaking hands with the rat. Hell - just because this rat is one of the very few animals that doesn't talk in Achewood, doesn't necessarily mean Beef sees him as a verminous lab experiment. Jesus, Beef and that Rat could be best friends for chrissake. HE PROBABLY HAS A NAME.
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But now I'm wondering why on earth Beef thinks that science experiments with rats would involve chasing them off a table with hammers.
Actually, I know a chick who works in a lab with mice and it's really like that. It's all about fuck*ng with them.
Yeah, but after you fuck with them, you have to know what happened to them. Like you have to cut them up and stuff. If they all jump off the table and run away, how do you know the results? There is a real problem with the design of the experiment. Like everything else in Beef's dream life I guess.
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I suppose you're okay with his old teachers getting together to discuss his eventual diabetes then?
Does that make more sense to you?
This strip is right in line with Beef getting hell of anxiety over that impossible tetris piece.
Also, this is a cat who plays Tetris in his HEAD while DRIVING.
I really don't see this experiment idea as being out of character.
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But now I'm wondering why on earth Beef thinks that science experiments with rats would involve chasing them off a table with hammers.
Actually, I know a chick who works in a lab with mice and it's really like that. It's all about fuck*ng with them.
Yeah, but after you fuck with them, you have to know what happened to them. Like you have to cut them up and stuff. If they all jump off the table and run away, how do you know the results? There is a real problem with the design of the experiment. Like everything else in Beef's dream life I guess.
What if you just want to find out how long it takes them to jump off the table? Or if they'll band together and swarm all over you in a horrible nibbling death mass? Huh? What about that?
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Maybe the floor is covered with owls and tabby cats.
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I was thinking about Beef's ideation of the impossible tetris shapes during this as well;
Also, this is a cat who plays Tetris in his HEAD while DRIVING.
Synergy, people. It's Groovy.
Also, I think someone needs to find a good use for the phrase 'nibbling death mass'. It's Gold.
Nibbling Death Mass: 7th Level. A number of rodents 2 d 20 x level of caster are summoned to attack. The horde has agility 19; Save against the target's agility; each round the saving throw is made the mass does 1/10 point of damage per rodent. Missed saving throw makes 1/2 times # rodents damage. The target attacks as normal; for each attack the number of rodents is reduced by the points of damage against the horde. The attack continues until either the target or the horde is out of HP. Ranged weapons can be used by other than the target but will kill only 1d3 of rodents per successful attack and have a 1/20 chance of hitting the targeted player.
Rangers or Clerics can attempt to turn the Nibbling Death Mass against the summoner one time at the beginning of the attack in lieu of attacking with weapons; Rangers use animal empathy skill and clerics use divine intervention.