Welcome to the problem that the average person has when it comes to someone saying they need to get into shape, The first thought is that the person does not have an ounce of fat on them but they do not stop to consider that body tone can be a major problem and that lack of “Tone” is not necessarily fat. Monica is realizing that she needs to get her body toned up or she is gonna have parts reaching the floor. She has 2 choices, get into shape with exercise or surgery to have the loose parts tightened. Lets face it, the working out has fewer negatives that the surgery
Agreed. Just started again working out full time in February myself. The difference between then and now is noticeable. Now you can tell I actually have muscles that move my body and not air bladders… Granted I’m not in the shape I was in college but I’m getting there.
“Toning” is useless without the first word that has mysteriously dropped from the phrase: muscle.
Remember when it was called “muscle tone”? I do. Being “skinny” != “healthy”. Unfortunately Americans are preoccupied with weight, as if that’s the only indicator. When I was a trainer I can’t count the number of times soemone came in for an evaluation and when we did an actual body fat measurement, i.e. body composition %, they were clinically obese.
The average male should aim for 17% body fat or less and women should aim for 24%. That’s considered ‘fit’ not an athlete. Anything over that is likely over-weight and above 25% for men and 32% for women is obese.
I once evaluated a woman who never ate more than 1200 calories a day (bare minimum btw), did an hour of cardio a day, but was 35% BF. Why? Two things: 1) she burned too many calories compared to what she ate so her body removed all unnecesary muscle (it burns calories just sitting there) and 2) she did zero strength training to rebuild what her body was trying to get rid of.
So she was a size 4-6 and obese. She didn’t take it well..
I rented a house off-base when I was in the Navy with three other sailors. The US Navy had just started tracking body fat percentage. We were tested and the youngest, skinniest one of us was disgusted to find out that he was also the fattest. Skinny he was, but you could grab his arm and press down to the bone.
Thirty years later, my skin droops but not my arms or stomach.
And this is why BMI is useless. It only bases it on height & weight and does not include fat % which I doubt giving a pinch test is a real indicator of body fat
The BMI formula also includes a square (^2) function, even though physical objects such as human bodies increase their mass according to the cube (^3) of their size. So the BMI system calls short people ‘skinny’ and tall people ‘fat’ far more than their actual body types would suggest, due to mathematical problems.
That is the point. In society today we are so stuck on “Fat vs Skinny” that we fail to know the mechanisms that the body uses to function. We are just not informed about that in school, so the average person looks at things the way Tina is and it has a high cost to the person that thinks just because I am thin I am healthy or even the ‘Large’ framed person thinking the opposite. After all, there are plenty of “Husky” people that are in the healthy fat range but are just naturally large. (OK, my rant is finished now, Ill just slink to my cage and hide)
Reminds me of one of the stories I read in an Alfred Hitchcock anthology long ago, about a person who used “weight” instead of “fat,” and brewed up a potion to remove weight–and ended up weightless, floating to the ceiling like a helium balloon.
Umm, these is no such thing as “Healthy-fat.” If they are healthy their BF% will be below a certain percentage.
They may not show signs now of high cholesterol, plaque in arteries, hypertension, etc, but usually they will as any who fall into this range usually have a strong genetic component to why they are “healthy” when over-weight. Genetics fail eventually unless given the help they need, i.e. good diet and exercise, both of which usually lower BF% as a side-effect of keeping the body healthy and working optimally.
I do believe the last time Monica decided to walk Dietzle for a workout she cheated and whore rollers skates therefore she played dogsled and got no real workout from it.
The idea of fat and thin open to personal interpretation.
I just recently countered teased(?) someone in the barracks who was stating she was now a size 8 and fat (she use to be a size 3).
As a size 8 (who stress about body fat and falling in and out of shape due to being in the military as the military can and WILL fire you if you fail to meet their bull shit blanket standards) I shot back a “oh hell no, you did not just call size 8 fat!” 😛 (it probably helped at the time I was standing next to a pregnant female).
She realized what she said and how foolish she was being and laughed.
I get what she was saying- the weight gain due to your scheduled being messed with and eating with out the work out to balance it out (I’m going through the same issue).
But yeah, society and its weight and body image issues head fucks us all.
And to put it perspective- I use to be a size 18. So…yeah I’m *not* fat but I could/should be in better shape/health than I am.
The Army calls me fat- the Army will also fire me because they are call me fat. That is all I know.
Well, it’s also worth noting that a size 8 body feels really different, in a distinctly negative way, to someone who’s always been a size 3. This has happened to my mother. Menopause caused her to go from a size 0 to a size 10-12. Yes, she’s slender for her age (50). No, she does NOT enjoy having “extra” weight on a frame that used to carry nothing on it at all. It’s all a matter of perspective… and as a slender type person who worked reception at a gym, I quickly learned that everyone else is allowed to complain about what’s wrong with their bodies, but if you are “skinny” you’d better just shut up because NOBODY wants to hear about it.
War, I feel your pain. I’ve been fight a losing battle with the Bulge all my life. I was a truck driver in the Army and had to do extra PT on my personal time to stay under the Army’s standards. We made a 90 day training deployment one winter to a manuver sight in Colorodo called Pinion Canyon. After a month and a half of little physical activity (we mostly drove and slept) and a steady diet of MREs, I put on 15 pounds. I’d been in trouble before with my weight and they were ready to pounce when we rolled back into Carson. I failed the weigh in and the tape test. It should be noted that for males at the time, only the neck and waist were taped. I was six feet tall and had hit 215 lbs. It didn’t matter to the Army that my chest was 56 inches around at the time, only that my waist was 38 and my neck was 16. I was out by April, 6 months ahead of my scheduled ETS date. Which screwed me out of my $30,000 colledge fund. The icing on the cake was when Saddan Hussain got frisky and I got called back to active duty for Desert Storm. Apparently, I wasn’t to fat to drive a truck for the Army if there was a war on.
That’s usually how it is. I can rant about the Army weight standards endlessly but it won’t do anything but cause me to hyper ventilate.
But yeah, everyone has the right to complain about their body issues periodically and Monica being blown off because she’s so skinny is not right.
I can/will only complain about my weight insecurities so much to a friend be cause it gets repetitive and rubs salt in the wound of her own body weight issues. And if you are any where in ear shot of someone on the over weight program in the army- keep you mouth shut about your weight issues cuz that’s like kicking a hornets nest on fire.
I admit, I did hyperventilate a bit. But it is what it is and you deal with it. The millitary as a whole is a conservitive orginization (in the literal sense, not the political) and gives up on traditions slowly and usualy adopts new policies and doctrines only under duress. (RE: WAR)
My stint in the Army taught me that I didn’t really belong there. And as you say complaining constantly usually dosen’t endear you to anybody. And being constantly negative makes you feel bad. I will say I never failed a PT test and failed my first wiegh in after running six miles with a buddy the night before.
And as has already been pointed out, Tina’s own insecurities are keeping her from hearing what Monica is actually saying. M says “I’m out of shape,” and Tina hears “I’m fat.” Partly because Monica has a body a lot of girls would kill for. Tina sees skinny with big boobs and thinks “What have you got to complain about?” especialy since she’s dealing with skinny jeans that no longer quite fit and 37 year old bod that’s apparently aging normaly. I second the notion that these two need to become workout partners.
Add that to the fact that Monica keeps saying, “I’m not FAT, I’m OUT OF SHAPE”–but Tina is not hearing it–and you can understand why her frustration is expanding faster than the speed of light.
Further evidence that Tina is becoming a unified coven rather than a covey. She’s selfconscious about her own weight… so much so that she’s projecting and isn’t listening very well. I doubt she’d be reacting that way if she still felt, inside, like a bunch of separate “rats running the ship”.
And paul has been giving Tina a muffin-top waistline every since we saw her morning ritual… which was mirrored when we saw Monica’s.
I think we are seeing the formation of a workout-buddy relationship. Considering Monica’s other choice would have been Shelly, who is more advanced, this would be the best.
I’m kinda curious how Tina’s corpse not only fails to decay but has shown the ability to heal and now, perhaps, strengthen. Those are things puppets and dead flesh don’t normally do.
I don’t think her body is “dead” in the conventional sense. Thanks to Nudge’s intervention, I imagine blood still pumps and wounds still heal. It’s just that her soul is gone. As long as the demon colective keeps feeding her, Tina’s body will coninue to go on living. Think of her less of a zombie and more of a catatonic person being moved by an otherworldly force.
It’s not that she doesn’t have a soul- her soul is composed of mini souls that all have their own voice.
Any one familiar with the term “Walk In”? It’s the idea that something happens to a person and their soul leaves (going into a comma or other trauma). The body is an empty shell and another soul takes up resident.
Tina is a walk in- the original soul left and the demons took over filling in the roll for the soul.
Well, as per the recent thread involving Connie, there does seem to be a significant difference between “demon” identity and “soul” identity.
Tina’s demons are individuals, working as a collective, but they’re still individual (although as a collective they definitely seem to be drawing closer to a human-like “personhood”).
There’s apparently something different about a true human soul, though… it somehow serves as a binding element which can unify a group of individual demons into a single unified entity. I used the term “glue”, somebody else called it “spackle” (great term!). Tina 1.0’s soul was what bonded Shelly’s demons together, creating Connie. My hunch is that “soul” may play a similar role in normal living humans… it’s what bonds our own numerous often-conflicting psychological drives and impulses into a single personality.
It will be very interesting to see how far Tina 2.1 can unify herself, in the absence of this “bonding” characteristic of a human soul. I’m definitely in the cheering section for her… she’s a great character!
Can a soul be “grown” where there was none before?
@ War, I agree to a point. I like the walk in thing, I hadn’t heard it before. Tina 2.1 seems a bit different though. Early on we never saw the demon collective outside of Tina’s body and she actually went through the motions of sleeping and the demons argued about getting up.
“On top of spagetti…”
“We’re up, we’re up!”
Lately, they seem to spend some down time out side of Tina’s body. Does one of them stay behind to keep it occupied while the rest are out. Does Tina’s body keep the engine running even if no one is in the drivers seat and would that absence allow a walk in to occur.
That makes me wonder about folks who are brain dead or brain damaged and kept alive by machines. Are their souls still there or have they moved on? If their souls are gone, you’re just keeping a souless hunk of meat alive. If their souls are still there, are they trsapped in a hellish existence, unable to live life any longer, but unable to move on. Tina is kind of the ultimate expression of the concept, especialy now that we know the true fate of her soul.
I think Tina is much more then a covey of demons. Tina 2.1 demons may be becoming a pseudo-soul. I say pseudo as Tina’s demon come together to form a gestalt. One many ways the human mind (soul?) is a gestalt (with space 🙂 of many voices. Unlike a true soul, Tina’s demons can leave the gestalt (when Tina let’s her hair down at home). But they demons always return to the gestalt come the next normal. It’s becoming their normal state of existence.
@nerf-dweller – I think we’re pretty much in agreement here. As I wrote this morning (start of this thread), Tina 2.1 is acting more and more like a single individual. She’s moved from the “covey” stage (just a flock of independent demons pulling the strings in a body) to acting as a “coven” (group of demons acting together towards a single goal – in this case, behaving as an individual).
She isn’t yet to the stage Connie is (Connie’s distinction was along the lines of “Tina acts as a coven, but I am a coven”) and the reason seems to be the presence or absence of a soul. Connie has a soul in her mix, Tina does not.
What may happen eventually (I suspect) is that Tina’s “coven” will themselves become, or “grow” a soul… they will combine into a single entity so completely that it will no longer be possible for them to separate during their “down time”.
If it wasn’t for Tina’s weight concerns I’d prescribe a diet of fried chicken, hushpuppies, ham hocks, and grits with gravy. As it is… collard greens and gumbo and black-eyed peas!
Recent studies have also shown that muscle tone is more important (carries more weight? 😀 ) to our overall health than weight is, within limits.
Being grossly obese is still a problem, period – the mere presence of all those fat cells can actually trigger issues like diabetes according to some of the results, no to mention a variety of muscle and bone disorders. But apparently you can be moderately (key word, there) overweight and still be fine, as long as you are active and have decent muscle tone.
So it seems the body doesn’t mind the extra luggage as long as you’ve reinforced the load-bearing equipment to handle it, in other words. So get our butts out of the chair and exercise a bit here and there, and we should be fine.
Bottom line? Those 3-minute workout commercials are still garbage, but they do have a small grain of truth buried under all the trash.
She wants to be strong. Maybe not Shelly “Strong As Ten Russian Women” Wahnee strong, but at least “Beat A Mugger Silly With A Day-Old Baguette” strong.
It’s a long-handled spoon with a flat, wide bowl… maybe 3″ across. Used with a salad fork of around the same size, to toss salads (distributing the lettuce and other ingredients and the dressing evenly) and to serve the salad into individual bowls.
By metaphor she’s saying that her tummy is loose and floppy, with the strength of a handful of torn lettuce.
There is a difference between being overweight, and being “out of shape”. This is where people mess up, because they think that the two are the same thing, when it is not true.
@ Yamara – thanks for the link. used to read that book – and share the pictures – with my son when he was young . It was – and still is – one of his favorites .
Still This would be a good excuse to get M and Tina into some Spandex, have ’em “Sweat to the Oldies” over at Punk Yoga and next time Kevin comes home from assignment, LOOK OUT! Monica will be so full of energy and all muscles ‘nicely toned’ she best be careful she doesn’t break him.
I’ve worked it out… Paul had found some people who identify with his characters and is letting them do the writing….either that or the calendar wasn’t fixed and we all died and didn’t go to the happy place… there’s always three options tho’… so, there’s another even more inexplicable answer lurking somewhere here…
Well since that hasn’t happened yet (12/21/2012) I’m going to go with he’s using other people’s “real life” experiences to write the dialog, seeing as how I have heard a conversation almost identical to that a while back in Dallas.
I know how Monica feels, “I’m out of shape, my health is deteriorating because I can’t do stuff that I should easily be able to do. I have become a victim of my own inhibitions and I want to change, my self-reproach is the catalyst to help me effect this change and keep me motivated.
Getting that worked up is good exercise (which was probably Tina’s plan from the start).
But pulling on the hair like that leads to ouchies, and patchy baldness if done to excess.
I think it’s more likely that Tina’s having some human emotions, namely their own personal insecurity.
After all, they can has badonka donk.
Yup. Tina knows she needs a shoehorn to get into those jeans, and it’s affecting her mood today.
All flab, but without the fat?
Welcome to the problem that the average person has when it comes to someone saying they need to get into shape, The first thought is that the person does not have an ounce of fat on them but they do not stop to consider that body tone can be a major problem and that lack of “Tone” is not necessarily fat. Monica is realizing that she needs to get her body toned up or she is gonna have parts reaching the floor. She has 2 choices, get into shape with exercise or surgery to have the loose parts tightened. Lets face it, the working out has fewer negatives that the surgery
And endorphins are tasty!
Agreed. Just started again working out full time in February myself. The difference between then and now is noticeable. Now you can tell I actually have muscles that move my body and not air bladders… Granted I’m not in the shape I was in college but I’m getting there.
“Toning” is useless without the first word that has mysteriously dropped from the phrase: muscle.
Remember when it was called “muscle tone”? I do. Being “skinny” != “healthy”. Unfortunately Americans are preoccupied with weight, as if that’s the only indicator. When I was a trainer I can’t count the number of times soemone came in for an evaluation and when we did an actual body fat measurement, i.e. body composition %, they were clinically obese.
The average male should aim for 17% body fat or less and women should aim for 24%. That’s considered ‘fit’ not an athlete. Anything over that is likely over-weight and above 25% for men and 32% for women is obese.
I once evaluated a woman who never ate more than 1200 calories a day (bare minimum btw), did an hour of cardio a day, but was 35% BF. Why? Two things: 1) she burned too many calories compared to what she ate so her body removed all unnecesary muscle (it burns calories just sitting there) and 2) she did zero strength training to rebuild what her body was trying to get rid of.
So she was a size 4-6 and obese. She didn’t take it well..
I rented a house off-base when I was in the Navy with three other sailors. The US Navy had just started tracking body fat percentage. We were tested and the youngest, skinniest one of us was disgusted to find out that he was also the fattest. Skinny he was, but you could grab his arm and press down to the bone.
Thirty years later, my skin droops but not my arms or stomach.
And this is why BMI is useless. It only bases it on height & weight and does not include fat % which I doubt giving a pinch test is a real indicator of body fat
The BMI formula also includes a square (^2) function, even though physical objects such as human bodies increase their mass according to the cube (^3) of their size. So the BMI system calls short people ‘skinny’ and tall people ‘fat’ far more than their actual body types would suggest, due to mathematical problems.
@Wyvern… my friend Margaret (6′ 2″) used to complain about the BMI calculations putting a square Peg into a round hole.
Yep, BMI is useless for the most part.
We used this machine in our Exercise Phys classes to test bone density and BF%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-energy_X-ray_absorptiometry
That is the point. In society today we are so stuck on “Fat vs Skinny” that we fail to know the mechanisms that the body uses to function. We are just not informed about that in school, so the average person looks at things the way Tina is and it has a high cost to the person that thinks just because I am thin I am healthy or even the ‘Large’ framed person thinking the opposite. After all, there are plenty of “Husky” people that are in the healthy fat range but are just naturally large. (OK, my rant is finished now, Ill just slink to my cage and hide)
Reminds me of one of the stories I read in an Alfred Hitchcock anthology long ago, about a person who used “weight” instead of “fat,” and brewed up a potion to remove weight–and ended up weightless, floating to the ceiling like a helium balloon.
H.G. Wells’ The Truth about Pycraft (1903).
Umm, these is no such thing as “Healthy-fat.” If they are healthy their BF% will be below a certain percentage.
They may not show signs now of high cholesterol, plaque in arteries, hypertension, etc, but usually they will as any who fall into this range usually have a strong genetic component to why they are “healthy” when over-weight. Genetics fail eventually unless given the help they need, i.e. good diet and exercise, both of which usually lower BF% as a side-effect of keeping the body healthy and working optimally.
Yosemite Monica! Har!
Consarn it!!
Unintelligible swearing? check
Short? check
A pair of big guns? check
Yup, she has the part down.
Red hair.
Not very tall.
Repeatedly burned by explosions.
Plagued by a trickster.
Have we ever seen a pic of her father?
For that matter do we really know Yosemite Sam’s last name?
Daggnab it!!!
stir my tummy with a salad spoon???? thats gotta be a first…
and she seems to be channeling Muttley!! 😀
Enough histrionics, M, you gonna have to strip down to convince Tina….:/
You know, Monica wouldn’t be so stressed if she added a little cardio to her daily routine.
Ya got it Stig, stop th’ talkin’ an’ start th’ Deitzal walkin’! Where’s that damn dog? Orderin’ ‘nother pizza?
I do believe the last time Monica decided to walk Dietzle for a workout she cheated and whore rollers skates therefore she played dogsled and got no real workout from it.
ARGGGH Damed typos. Please forget the word that should not be in there.
I get her frustration. My sister is thin but when she feels out of shape she feels out of shape. And people give her sh*t about feeling that way.
Still…as a fat chick who has to listen to skinny girls bitch about being fat I’ve been on the Tina side of this convo. lol.
Oh society and it’s expectations of humans. (If you’re skinny, why work out or worrying about yourself? If you’re fat, you should really get skinny.)
The idea of fat and thin open to personal interpretation.
I just recently countered teased(?) someone in the barracks who was stating she was now a size 8 and fat (she use to be a size 3).
As a size 8 (who stress about body fat and falling in and out of shape due to being in the military as the military can and WILL fire you if you fail to meet their bull shit blanket standards) I shot back a “oh hell no, you did not just call size 8 fat!” 😛 (it probably helped at the time I was standing next to a pregnant female).
She realized what she said and how foolish she was being and laughed.
I get what she was saying- the weight gain due to your scheduled being messed with and eating with out the work out to balance it out (I’m going through the same issue).
But yeah, society and its weight and body image issues head fucks us all.
And to put it perspective- I use to be a size 18. So…yeah I’m *not* fat but I could/should be in better shape/health than I am.
The Army calls me fat- the Army will also fire me because they are call me fat. That is all I know.
Well, it’s also worth noting that a size 8 body feels really different, in a distinctly negative way, to someone who’s always been a size 3. This has happened to my mother. Menopause caused her to go from a size 0 to a size 10-12. Yes, she’s slender for her age (50). No, she does NOT enjoy having “extra” weight on a frame that used to carry nothing on it at all. It’s all a matter of perspective… and as a slender type person who worked reception at a gym, I quickly learned that everyone else is allowed to complain about what’s wrong with their bodies, but if you are “skinny” you’d better just shut up because NOBODY wants to hear about it.
War, I feel your pain. I’ve been fight a losing battle with the Bulge all my life. I was a truck driver in the Army and had to do extra PT on my personal time to stay under the Army’s standards. We made a 90 day training deployment one winter to a manuver sight in Colorodo called Pinion Canyon. After a month and a half of little physical activity (we mostly drove and slept) and a steady diet of MREs, I put on 15 pounds. I’d been in trouble before with my weight and they were ready to pounce when we rolled back into Carson. I failed the weigh in and the tape test. It should be noted that for males at the time, only the neck and waist were taped. I was six feet tall and had hit 215 lbs. It didn’t matter to the Army that my chest was 56 inches around at the time, only that my waist was 38 and my neck was 16. I was out by April, 6 months ahead of my scheduled ETS date. Which screwed me out of my $30,000 colledge fund. The icing on the cake was when Saddan Hussain got frisky and I got called back to active duty for Desert Storm. Apparently, I wasn’t to fat to drive a truck for the Army if there was a war on.
That’s usually how it is. I can rant about the Army weight standards endlessly but it won’t do anything but cause me to hyper ventilate.
But yeah, everyone has the right to complain about their body issues periodically and Monica being blown off because she’s so skinny is not right.
I can/will only complain about my weight insecurities so much to a friend be cause it gets repetitive and rubs salt in the wound of her own body weight issues. And if you are any where in ear shot of someone on the over weight program in the army- keep you mouth shut about your weight issues cuz that’s like kicking a hornets nest on fire.
I admit, I did hyperventilate a bit. But it is what it is and you deal with it. The millitary as a whole is a conservitive orginization (in the literal sense, not the political) and gives up on traditions slowly and usualy adopts new policies and doctrines only under duress. (RE: WAR)
My stint in the Army taught me that I didn’t really belong there. And as you say complaining constantly usually dosen’t endear you to anybody. And being constantly negative makes you feel bad. I will say I never failed a PT test and failed my first wiegh in after running six miles with a buddy the night before.
And as has already been pointed out, Tina’s own insecurities are keeping her from hearing what Monica is actually saying. M says “I’m out of shape,” and Tina hears “I’m fat.” Partly because Monica has a body a lot of girls would kill for. Tina sees skinny with big boobs and thinks “What have you got to complain about?” especialy since she’s dealing with skinny jeans that no longer quite fit and 37 year old bod that’s apparently aging normaly. I second the notion that these two need to become workout partners.
Add that to the fact that Monica keeps saying, “I’m not FAT, I’m OUT OF SHAPE”–but Tina is not hearing it–and you can understand why her frustration is expanding faster than the speed of light.
Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Monica, Tina just had her own body image issue recently so she’s probably still a little sensitive.
Further evidence that Tina is becoming a unified coven rather than a covey. She’s selfconscious about her own weight… so much so that she’s projecting and isn’t listening very well. I doubt she’d be reacting that way if she still felt, inside, like a bunch of separate “rats running the ship”.
And paul has been giving Tina a muffin-top waistline every since we saw her morning ritual… which was mirrored when we saw Monica’s.
I think we are seeing the formation of a workout-buddy relationship. Considering Monica’s other choice would have been Shelly, who is more advanced, this would be the best.
I’m kinda curious how Tina’s corpse not only fails to decay but has shown the ability to heal and now, perhaps, strengthen. Those are things puppets and dead flesh don’t normally do.
I don’t think her body is “dead” in the conventional sense. Thanks to Nudge’s intervention, I imagine blood still pumps and wounds still heal. It’s just that her soul is gone. As long as the demon colective keeps feeding her, Tina’s body will coninue to go on living. Think of her less of a zombie and more of a catatonic person being moved by an otherworldly force.
(unless i’m wrong and she is just a zombie.)
It’s not that she doesn’t have a soul- her soul is composed of mini souls that all have their own voice.
Any one familiar with the term “Walk In”? It’s the idea that something happens to a person and their soul leaves (going into a comma or other trauma). The body is an empty shell and another soul takes up resident.
Tina is a walk in- the original soul left and the demons took over filling in the roll for the soul.
Well, as per the recent thread involving Connie, there does seem to be a significant difference between “demon” identity and “soul” identity.
Tina’s demons are individuals, working as a collective, but they’re still individual (although as a collective they definitely seem to be drawing closer to a human-like “personhood”).
There’s apparently something different about a true human soul, though… it somehow serves as a binding element which can unify a group of individual demons into a single unified entity. I used the term “glue”, somebody else called it “spackle” (great term!). Tina 1.0’s soul was what bonded Shelly’s demons together, creating Connie. My hunch is that “soul” may play a similar role in normal living humans… it’s what bonds our own numerous often-conflicting psychological drives and impulses into a single personality.
It will be very interesting to see how far Tina 2.1 can unify herself, in the absence of this “bonding” characteristic of a human soul. I’m definitely in the cheering section for her… she’s a great character!
Can a soul be “grown” where there was none before?
@ War, I agree to a point. I like the walk in thing, I hadn’t heard it before. Tina 2.1 seems a bit different though. Early on we never saw the demon collective outside of Tina’s body and she actually went through the motions of sleeping and the demons argued about getting up.
“On top of spagetti…”
“We’re up, we’re up!”
Lately, they seem to spend some down time out side of Tina’s body. Does one of them stay behind to keep it occupied while the rest are out. Does Tina’s body keep the engine running even if no one is in the drivers seat and would that absence allow a walk in to occur.
That makes me wonder about folks who are brain dead or brain damaged and kept alive by machines. Are their souls still there or have they moved on? If their souls are gone, you’re just keeping a souless hunk of meat alive. If their souls are still there, are they trsapped in a hellish existence, unable to live life any longer, but unable to move on. Tina is kind of the ultimate expression of the concept, especialy now that we know the true fate of her soul.
I’m replying to @Dave
I think Tina is much more then a covey of demons. Tina 2.1 demons may be becoming a pseudo-soul. I say pseudo as Tina’s demon come together to form a gestalt. One many ways the human mind (soul?) is a gestalt (with space 🙂 of many voices. Unlike a true soul, Tina’s demons can leave the gestalt (when Tina let’s her hair down at home). But they demons always return to the gestalt come the next normal. It’s becoming their normal state of existence.
@nerf-dweller – I think we’re pretty much in agreement here. As I wrote this morning (start of this thread), Tina 2.1 is acting more and more like a single individual. She’s moved from the “covey” stage (just a flock of independent demons pulling the strings in a body) to acting as a “coven” (group of demons acting together towards a single goal – in this case, behaving as an individual).
She isn’t yet to the stage Connie is (Connie’s distinction was along the lines of “Tina acts as a coven, but I am a coven”) and the reason seems to be the presence or absence of a soul. Connie has a soul in her mix, Tina does not.
What may happen eventually (I suspect) is that Tina’s “coven” will themselves become, or “grow” a soul… they will combine into a single entity so completely that it will no longer be possible for them to separate during their “down time”.
If it wasn’t for Tina’s weight concerns I’d prescribe a diet of fried chicken, hushpuppies, ham hocks, and grits with gravy. As it is… collard greens and gumbo and black-eyed peas!
Uh oh, sounds likethis about to get personal (well, more so) and catty.
And me without my popcorn….
Recent studies have also shown that muscle tone is more important (carries more weight? 😀 ) to our overall health than weight is, within limits.
Being grossly obese is still a problem, period – the mere presence of all those fat cells can actually trigger issues like diabetes according to some of the results, no to mention a variety of muscle and bone disorders. But apparently you can be moderately (key word, there) overweight and still be fine, as long as you are active and have decent muscle tone.
So it seems the body doesn’t mind the extra luggage as long as you’ve reinforced the load-bearing equipment to handle it, in other words. So get our butts out of the chair and exercise a bit here and there, and we should be fine.
Bottom line? Those 3-minute workout commercials are still garbage, but they do have a small grain of truth buried under all the trash.
My penance was omitted from that last post because I forgot to avoid HTML-ish emote markers. So, for the pun vault:
::tosses in a pair of ankle weights::
She wants to be strong. Maybe not Shelly “Strong As Ten Russian Women” Wahnee strong, but at least “Beat A Mugger Silly With A Day-Old Baguette” strong.
Why?
Why would you ever get into an argument with Tina, Monica. You know she’s just going to win by default. Even if she has to break your brain to do it.
Question- Does my bum look big in this?
Answer- there is no correct answer, run for your life
Or in monicas case, do my boobs look big in this?
Her boobs look big in anything 🙂
They would not look big in an aircraft carrier. ;-p
“Does this dress make my butt look big?”
Um…no, the dress is fine…
That question is useful in testing survival instincts.
What’s a salad spoon and why would you want to stir your tummy with it?
It’s a long-handled spoon with a flat, wide bowl… maybe 3″ across. Used with a salad fork of around the same size, to toss salads (distributing the lettuce and other ingredients and the dressing evenly) and to serve the salad into individual bowls.
By metaphor she’s saying that her tummy is loose and floppy, with the strength of a handful of torn lettuce.
My, my… aren’t we cranky this morning…
“What we have heah…. is a Failyuh. To. Cumoonikate…”
Like! 😀
Strother Martin. Gotta ♥ it.
“Some people you just….can’t…..reach”
Gotta love when you can put a Cool Hand Luke quote in. 🙂
There is a difference between being overweight, and being “out of shape”. This is where people mess up, because they think that the two are the same thing, when it is not true.
welcome to society at large. Look at the obvious and ignore the details.
🙁
http://www.theawl.com/2012/05/maurice-sendak-1928-2012
Yeah, read about it and posted article @ “Comfy couch…”
@ Yamara – thanks for the link. used to read that book – and share the pictures – with my son when he was young . It was – and still is – one of his favorites .
Wow, I did not know that he passed. His book was one of my favorites from my elementary school library in the 70’s
Still This would be a good excuse to get M and Tina into some Spandex, have ’em “Sweat to the Oldies” over at Punk Yoga and next time Kevin comes home from assignment, LOOK OUT! Monica will be so full of energy and all muscles ‘nicely toned’ she best be careful she doesn’t break him.
Kevins last spoken words before the fun begins “Challenge accepted!!!!”
I’ve worked it out… Paul had found some people who identify with his characters and is letting them do the writing….either that or the calendar wasn’t fixed and we all died and didn’t go to the happy place… there’s always three options tho’… so, there’s another even more inexplicable answer lurking somewhere here…
Well since that hasn’t happened yet (12/21/2012) I’m going to go with he’s using other people’s “real life” experiences to write the dialog, seeing as how I have heard a conversation almost identical to that a while back in Dallas.
Let me see….hm. Last panel is a cue for….Shelly? Yes. Shelly and Connie. That is my prediction.
i think that phix is going to come in and entirely dominate the whole moral like she usually does.
I know how Monica feels, “I’m out of shape, my health is deteriorating because I can’t do stuff that I should easily be able to do. I have become a victim of my own inhibitions and I want to change, my self-reproach is the catalyst to help me effect this change and keep me motivated.
Ah, that sounds familiar.