Some time ago I wrote a brief post on McKenzie Funk’s awesome bit of writing on territory wars ensuing from the melting ice in the Arctic. I wanted to redraw the cartoon as the original was pretty rough. Here is the more evolved S&F for this week. 🙂
This cartoon wasn’t meant to be particularly funny per se, but is more a comment on a conversation (aka minor skirmish) I had earlier this week. We were talking about risk-taking vs. non-risk taking behaviour, at which point my colleague quipped: “It’s easier to tame a tiger than to paint stripes on a kitty cat.”
The conversation went on for a while until I burst in with a series of complaints of how actually it would not be easier to tame a tiger, it would be in fact much easier to paint stripes on a cat (and safer).
They both looked at me with some amusement as I had missed the whole point, that being it’s easier to make behavioural changes (taming a tiger), than it is to make fundamental shifts in being (changing a kitty cat into a tiger).
All this said, my logic brain would still would favour painting stripes than taming a tiger, but the following quote sort of sums it up:
“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Last week I posted about the Japanese master artist Hokusai. I thought I’d post another sketch of his work as I found the original quite eye-catching. At first I thought it was an interpretation of opium dreams, but apparently it is actually a kind of Japanese spirit called Rokurokubi.
There are some bizarre tales of what these creatures get up to, including that of the soul detaching from the body during sleep and various sorts of tomfoolery.
It’s also cool to see how he echoed the curve of her neck with the smoke from the pipe. I didn’t see any reference to pipe-smoking rokurokubi, so I’m a bit suspicious of the inclusion of that in his drawing although apparently there wouldn’t have been much opium in Japan during his time.
The following cartoon accompanied the print version of Philosophy in the Popular Imagination, a piece about modern perceptions regarding the value of philosophy, i.e. critical to self examination or time well wasted?
The article was written by Andrew Taggart, and repurposed by Finn. 🙂
I attended an environmental conference a few weeks back and this continued to be the issue of the day… no wonder environmentalists drink a lot. On another note I can’t figure out why the resolution seems off the last few cartoons. Hopefully it isn’t too hard to read.
Recently I got the idea to learn something new, and thought the Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz would be just the ticket. What an exquisite author. The bulk of his ideas are beyond my ken but I found the following passages of interest, which jumbled up somehow into the cartoon that follows.
“The modern worker lacks individuality… Capitalism deprives him of his human nature by reducing him to an element in the work process. And like any object in the business world, he can be bought and sold. Because of his social condition he quickly loses any concrete and human relationship to the world…
A government of technicians, the ideal of contemporary society – would thus be a government of instruments. Functions would be substituted for ends, and means for creators.
Society would progress with great efficiency but without aim, and the repetition of the same gesture, a distinction of the machine, would bring about an unknown form of immobility, that of a mechanism advancing from nowhere to nowhere.” – Octavio Paz, 1985
P.S. Ok, ok.. so I realize daylight savings was last week, but maybe this is still in keeping with the theme of it throwing off all life as one knows it. Also, I left the sketch on lined paper, thinking that if Savage Chickens can publish on post-it notes, why not… That said, I won’t be doing that again anytime soon, as the resolution didn’t work out so well. Whoops.
P.S. I had a lot of trouble with the punchline of this one. All I knew is I wanted to do something around the phrase ‘horns of dilemma’. I toyed with the the following phrasing as well…
In retrospect I’m not sure if the triceratops angle was a bit too out there. Oh well. I suppose there is irony in my little dilemma of punchlines.
P.S. Some of you might think this one seems familiar.. and you would be right! I have repurposed an old joke. I should be ashamed.. but, I wanted to use this for something else and improve the punchline and drawing. Hopefully I succeeded. The original one can be seen here in case you’d like to disagree and/or play spot the differences! And, an old oil sands rant that – alas – still holds true can be read here.
P.S. This week’s cartoon was inspired by a visit to the art treasures at the Royal Ontario Museum. A simultaneously inspiring and humbling experience. 🙂
simonandfinn 