St. Tequilus

The patrόn saint of upperclassmen seminars:

Anyway I have always thought that icons were beautiful - thus I am appreciating them by drawing blasphemous-ish spoof.
I think this picture is funny all by itself -
but I wrote more because it felt lazy not to write anything - thusly I have composed the whiny rant below. Feel free to skip it.

His hat askew and his eyes looking in slightly different directions - St. Tequilus is the one who is there to help you in seminar when somebody asks about Emma, "Why are we reading this book anyway?" -to which I think I said something uncharacteristically romantic like, "Love is beautiful and worth imitating." Answers like this are only pull-off-able if you have had a little tequila and are not considered a fluffy romantic sort.
St. Tequilus is there to help us when we are reading Gulliver's Travels and we wage a two hour fight to show that the houyhnhnms are not Swift's depiction of a perfect society.

St. Tequilus give us patience to bear with the extremely philosophical people -
Who do not do well with literature- a world of simultaneous contraries.
Who do not think a story can be great unless it ballyhoos their perspective - (Cough* Flaubert).
Who believe that literature exists to serve ethics.
Who hate The Waste Land - but only read it once and skipped the notes.
Lastly St. Tequilus help us to be not overwhelmingly pompous in the face of this philosophical ineptitude. Help us to admit it when we don't understand and maybe actually learn something - amen. 

Saying amen to your own prayer is like saying "I agree with myself," at the end of every sentence.

Sauron Goes to the Beach

Here in California it has decided to be disturbingly hot and sticky in September.

Wanting to put my face straight in the air conditioner  level = 100%

As a result Californians have been flocking to the beach in droves.
I stopped to think about it and I realized that I have been to the beach the last three weekends.

Last time I was at the beach with my friends I was suddenly bored of lying around like a banana slug trying to get a tan - so I decided that I wanted to build a sand castle and proceeded to enlist various other individuals who were significantly less enthusiastic about my architectural ambitions.

We started building a castle / pile of sand.
Friend: "This is Mordor."
Me: "Oh boo. Can't it be something nice?"
Friend: "No."
Me: "This is why we can't have nice things- because we turn them into Mordor."
Friend: "Shut-up. You are building Barad dur. I will make Cirith Ungul and a moat."

Thus the image of Sauron on the beach wearing a floaty and worrying about potential sand and water damage to his armor appeared in my imagination.

 (How is Sauron's armor not deflating that floaty? The floaty's love and adoration for Sauron keeps it alive. Look at the sparkle in its eyes.)

Sauron: "Oh look at all these people having a good time. I hate it."
Sandcastles are difficult to make.

(after a good while my Barad dur was still lump-like in nature and altogether unimpressive)
Friend:
"Your Barad dur sucks.
It needs to have definitive architecture.
It needs to be taller."
Me: "WELL I KEEP DESTROYING MY DEFINITIVE ARCHITECTURE TO MAKE IT TALLER! I CANT DO BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. STOP BEING SO DEMANDING SAURON."
Friend: "Your evil kingdom architecture ability does not live up to what you said about yourself on your resume. This is the last time I let an orc do anything which requires even mediocre wit."

As it got later our sandcastle (sand-very small mountain) began to get continuously smashed by larger waves. (that is the fun part). After one of these waves hit and flooded our moat I over-dramatically yelled "Noooo!" And furiously threw buckets of sand and water out of the moat.
Two older ladies were walking by - they looked at me for a minute- saw a huge mid-twenties person building an unimpressive sand castle with comic fervor and started laughing. I laughed with them.

Lastly there was this awesome kid there- who did this:

And then another wave would crash over him and then he would spit out some salt water regain composure and yell, "BRING IT POSEIDON!!!" again.

(So Poseidon usually has feet and Triton is the one with the merman tail but I wanted to draw one for the sake of fun - stop whining mythology die-hards.)

However - we do not threaten the gods especially Poseidon because:
1. The Odyssey - do not piss Poseidon off by messing with his one eyed son. Not that he was in to big rush to get off that island - Odysseus: "Poor me. I am having such a terrible time cheating on my eternally faithful wife with this Nymph Calypso. I just can't stand it anymore." boo-hoo.
2. Hippolytus - If you send Poseidon to kill your innocent son he will freaking do it okay? Don't mess with him.

Rabid Furbys.

Back in the 90's this toy called the Furby rose to astronomically high popularity. This caused parents to fight to the death to acquire one for their kid at Christmas time.
My little brother was all about robotic toys - so he got one.
I hated it.

Reasons I abhorred Furbies
 1. They look like fluffy bird-trolls and speak in baby gibberish.

2. I hated them and was convinced that they were possessed.
I believed that taking the batteries out of them could not kill them. They would just know that you had tried to murder them them. They would hate you even more - and keep on talking.

Furbies are staging a comeback. I am not a fan of this.
A year or so I was standing in our library flipping through Time or something while I attempted to put off doing home work. It said "the Furby - hot 90's toy makes a comeback" - I yelled in terror.
Anyway so when a new generation furby appeared on my facebook feed I suddenly had a mental picture of me fending off slews of rabid furbies with a sword - I have cartooned this thusly:

Creepy toys/ children's tv programming pop quiz:
1. What would it be like to be one of the people in a Teletubbies costume? Do antidepressants and counseling come with the job?
2. Which toy is scariest?
      a. Troll Dolls
      b. Glow babies
      c. A tickle me Elmo that starts talking in the middle of the night.

- note about Teletubbies I just youtubed it and its creators were like, "well this is how children think."
 Sooooo basically you are saying that being a kid is like being on acid?

It Is My Birthday.

Well It is 1:00 and nothing terrible has happened to me so far so this is undoubtedly an improvement on my last birthday.

I am now 24 years of age.
I don't like cake but I do like pancakes- if I was going to have a birthday party it would look like this:

This party includes Hellboy and Nate the Great - both love pancakes.

One would think that I was an adult by this point. Nope.

1. I fear the bank. 
2. I found a baby squirrel on Friday and brought it home like a five year old asking, "Mom look what I found. Can I keep him?"
3. I cannot figure out how to tip or split bills at restaurants thus I have a fear of waitresses as well.
4. Last year on my birthday I set myself on fire so I might be doing a little better now.

The story of my last birthday is too wonderful - I cannot help but tell it again.

Last year I start my birthday off by making breakfast for the entire school (this is my workstudy job) it is a busy morning in the kitchen with James- the other breakfast cook.
 It is right at the beginning of the year and everybody shows up for breakfast and is gung-ho so we know we are going to be really busy (pretty soon breakfast attendance will drop off when everyone starts sleeping in again and people sprint across campus to their classes with bed-head and wrinkly dress pants at precisely 8:27 in the morning).
The pilot light for the huge flat-top grill is off and we aren't going to be able to make scrambled eggs which is a national emergency - so we mess around with it some and try to figure it out. This hasn't ever happened before and we aren't sure what to do. We call our boss and we are on the phone with her still trying to figure it out.
We both stick our faces down right below the grill and are looking into it.
We put the lighter in it.
FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
A huge fireball engulfed our faces.
A litany of simultaneous shouting occurs:
ME: Oh SHIT! CUSS! * HAHAHAHAHA SHIT! HAHA (Laughter - I laugh when I get hurt for some completely unknown reason. My friend Liberty once said that I was possessed.)
BOSS (on the phone): WHAT HAPPENED? ..... LIZ!?!! WHAT HAPPENED!
STASH: WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID! (who had walked into the kitchen but was standing further away)
BOSS: WHAT HAPPENED!!!

What happened was - we had left the gas on for too long before we lit it.
The gas then proceeded to blow up in our faces.
Apparently this gas also had not been given that distinct gas smell - sooooo even though we had our faces in it we did not smell anything.
Resultantly my eyebrows received a significant trim and the very front of my hair was singed off - as a result I proceeded to grow extremely funny looking bangs for the rest of the year.

I once wrote a post about my hair. http://seizetheabsurd.blogspot.com/2013/01/4-terrifying-people-with-bad-hair-cuts.html

Mags you have to be in this picture with me on the internet because it is my birthday and I say so. Ha. 

Needless to say there were all of a sudden some mandatory meetings for kitchen supervisors on how to light various pieces of equipment. Which we went to and people were like, "When are we ever going to do this?" And I was like, "You aren't. James and I lit ourselves on fire so now we have to have some safety meetings about it."

Slightly different Adele lyrics- "I set fire to my face - watched it burn..."

Well it is 1:00 and compared to my last birthday things have been completely mundane- I could go for a fireball about now.


Also since now I am thinking about goings on at breakfast - I want to tell you about James' dream.
 James had a dream about us making breakfast. We were trying to cook breakfast but there were these huge two-foot long bugs everywhere in the kitchen. James turned to me and said, " Look. I just don't think that we can start cooking breakfast until we kill all the bugs. I mean it is just too difficult." And then he looked at me and I was standing there with a massive Kitchen knife skewering all the bugs I could see and I said, "WHAT do you think I HAVE been doing?!?!"

Well it is 1:00 and compared to my last birthday things have been completely mundane- I could go for a fireball about now.

Tired and Ire.

Anger and I have a special relationship.

Things that make me mad:

• forgets lunch-
• Response: I am followed around by an Eeyore-esque rain cloud of gloom and doom. Even when not hungry - it appears that food is the light and joy of my life, but then we already knew that.
• I meet a Jr. High kid that likes twilight---
• Response:  weeping and gnashing of teeth / sackcloth and ashes

• someone wakes me up from a deep sleep -
•  Response:  MURDEROUS. FREAKING. RAMPAGE.

During college I worked the breakfast shift in the kitchen so I had to get up at 5:45 every weekday morning- thusly I was always going to be early and people were always waking me up by talking loudly in the hallway right outside my dorm room. 

check out my pink pajamas and swearing teddy bear. 

Marbles and an Octopus costume.

I stumbled upon our old marble-works play set.
This was the result:

apt.

Also here is this doodle of an Octopus Costume:

Great Books and the Discussion Method

This is a comedy blog where I post cartoons.
But sometimes my other great love wanders in here and I have a hard time pushing it out- the classics and great books. This post is about them - I am totally breaking my "not just talking about school" rule.

Background: I attended an entirely discussion based - (NONE of our classes are lectures) classics college program and graduated. I am feeling a little "school-sick" here in August. (For more information google Thomas Aquinas Collge or St. John's College to learn more about great books).

Thinking about the fact that I am not going back to school in the fall makes me aware of a sort of empty void. When I graduated so many people asked me (most of them not very familiar with my educational background or the kind of school that I attended) “ Aren’t you glad to be done?” or “You are finally finished whoo- woo!”… To which I responded courteously,  “grumble…mumble… no idea….what they are talking about,”.  In some ways yes I am happy to be done, but in most ways, I am not happy. It is not like I will ever be done wanting to read great books and discuss them – and Thomas Aquinas (and St. John’s) were places in which these books were the focal point of my life, they took precedence over everything else I did. In many ways I have lost the love of my life, reading the Phaedrus cemented that for me – “be a lover of wisdom” shouts Socrates as I walk back into the hustle and bustle of the city, not knowing when I will see him again. Knowing that this all consuming education might never be the case again cast a kind of funereal pall over graduation.

 Anyway

As a result I wanted to write some things that I have learned – or tips:

Fall In Love –

a.       Fall in love with the books.

b.      Fall in love with the discussion method.

Discussion is an art form.

-          Ask yourself, “What continues a conversation and what shuts it down?”

In improvisational comedy actors are on a stage for hours at a time, without any previous script making people in an audience laugh. How does this happen? How does the story line continue for half an hour or longer? There is a secret something called a “yes rule” the actors say “yes” to what the other person proposes this allows the story to continue as opposed to shutting it down. [1] Think about what brings a conversation to life. Sometimes opposition enlivens a conversation sometimes opposition is killing it – pay attention. Know the difference.  In class you should be asking yourself, “Is what I am doing fueling the conversation or beating it to death?” Sometimes you are killing a conversation by doing nothing – you are letting it get beat to death right in front of your face. Don’t stand idly by – jump in.

-          We are on a team. You are here with other people who will allow you to see aspects of the text you could not see by yourself. As a class your goal is to seek the author, to come out of a class with a better understanding of the text than you could have had by yourself.  

-          Bringing in the original text empowers the conversation. You are talking to the author, to the book itself, let it speak. It is your job to bring the voice of Tacitus, Homer, and Conrad into the classroom. This is also a great litmus test, “Is this discussion going well?” – When was the last time somebody quoted something from the text itself? An hour – you guys are tanking. It doesn't matter if you feel like you made five intelligent points, you are collectively sucking. Dive into the text itself, we are not here to learn about your opinions.

-          Ask as questions things that you think you know the answer to – be ready to hear some stuff you didn't expect. A question gets other people in the game. A statement puts you on the center stage saying, “I think this and I am right.” You might be right. Whatever. Sacrifice your “being right” to bring others in.

-          Ask yourself “What is my motivation for saying this?” Is it to look smart? Then shut up. This is a hard one for me – Aristotle says if you see that you lean towards a vice, swing hard in the other direction. Say something wrong on purpose – hit your own ego in the face. If you are not talking to learn, stop talking. Am I willing to be wrong? You should be.

The search for truth –

At Thomas Aquinas I feel like the search for truth means, “Look around until you find things that confirm your faith. If anything endangers it, fear not!  For we don’t have to take these ideas or authors seriously, we don’t read from these authors to learn from them anyway, we read them to demolish them.” That is not the search for the truth; it is the search for confirmation.  It is petty, and shallow, it is undeserving of the great books. Work to understand the authors first that is what class is for.

Be a Liam Collins – make a scene. Don’t buy it unless you believe it. Popular opinion at Thomas Aquinas could use some enemies.

Be a Bridget Coughlin – if you believe it know why. "Because my dad said so" is not good enough for Bridget it is not good enough for you either (awesomeness of Mr. Coughlin not being denied).  “Because everybody said so,” is not good enough – of course everybody said so, the student body is made up of people who think the exact same thing. Challenge yourself.

Anyway there are some things that I wanted to say – For all of you that read this and remember all of the times that I did not follow my own advice in class. I am sorry and maybe saying this stuff concretely will help others not make my mistakes.

---

[1] Examples:

Me: “You are Queen Frostine the candy princess.”

You: “No I am not.”

Let’s try again with the yes rule:

Me: “ You are Queen Frostine the candy princess.”

You: “Yes I am, my full name is Martin McCann the candy princess.”