What was the nature of Monica’s “lead”? We saw her looking for something supposedly smuggled out of the Lanthian civilization when she was with Amanda, but what would have caused her to do that?
Jin hinted that Monica should check Tina’s diary, but we never saw her doing that. As far as we know, Monica never made it to the Bibliothiki, nor the annex. Katherine was going to try to dump something in Monica’s lap to trigger an adventure, but we never saw that happen, either. So what did happen?
BTW, how many people are remembering that we have not one, but two, schizophrenics running around?
I started out writing a pun, calling the sphinx too much of a blockhead to know that what’s going on, but I checked and found out that the Great Sphinx of Giza was carved in place out of solid rock. Then I tried to write a root level comment, without canceling the other, I guess.
Well, I have a theory that her lead came from Tina. It looks like it was going to be conveyed here, but Tina just didn’t get around to actually saying it then or in the strips that followed.
Of course that is what knocks a giant hole in said theory…the fact that we don’t see Tina say anything to Monica about it, and usually Paul gives us those kinds of things in print.
It sounds boring, but I think she was just talking about the white chocolate mocha. My logic is kind of weak, but my idea is that what literally fell in Tina’s lap was some anchovy pizza. See didn’t see it, but it looks like it could have happened, anyway. I think that Nudge realized that the rest of Tina’s demons were weakened by eating the anchovy pizza, just because it was a change in Tina’s normal routine. They obviously weren’t happy that Nudge ordered it and they seemed to allow Nudge to take over at that point. I think that gave Nudge the idea to weaken Monica’s demons by changing Monica’s routine with the white chocolate mocha. That would tie what was said said both panels in your strip together. It also fits the way Tina worded it: a partial solution to help Monica help someone else.
I think Monica needed that help. Up until then, she had been reacting pretty negatively to everything. Her initial reaction to Tina in your strip was very negative and just rather rude. After drinking the white chocolate mocha, Monica surprised Shelly in a positive way a couple of times while they walked together. It seemed to make Monica much more mentally ready to work on the project, so I think it did help her start working on helping Jin, anyway.
It would be fun to see even more from Tina and/or Nudge.
The Sphinx looks *scared*, not just worried. And wouldn’t you be? Jin, a being powerful enough to destroy the Earth, is talking to hallucinations, and the Sphinx was created as a warning of the danger of the Chimera…
So Bud wasn’t actually there. Leads to the question, is Jin actually there or is she home and imagining that as well? Or is it all Monica’s custard-induced dream? From the “dialog” she is pretty hard on herself. And, can you hold on to what’s real if you don’t know what is real anymore?
Uh, Oh. Jin’s is a bit eerily acting right now/again.
You need to follow good advice … when you know it is good advice … even if that good advice comes from an imaginary friend.
Oh, come on! What makes you think you are doing worse than anyone else?
I don’t think you have reread the archives quite as many times as, um, some of have, though, so I’m going to respond to your comment yesterday and point out Monica said something in the glyph language when she closed the door of Amanda’s truck on her thumb. That was in the little arc when Amanda took Monica with her to help her photograph a wedding. I’m pretty sure that was the first use of the glyph language, actually. Other than that, I think you made a good point. Also, it might have been a early hint from Paul that there really was something special and significant about the glyph language. People might have taken it as just the equivalent of using “@!%#” to replace swearing, at first.
After I posted that, I realized that it would be rather embarrassing if I was wrong, so I double-checked. Whew! Here is the strip: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/02132004/
I’m curious, though. What is your take on the missing groom and bridesmaid?
Re: missing groom and bridesmaid…Well, unless they both just happened to take a bathroom break at the same time, the general assumption in situations like those is that the groom and bridesmaid are off somewhere together, possibly in the same closet where Monica and the 19 yr old were hiding. That was my first thought at least.
Personally, I think that explanation is a little too obvious and the event seems a little out of place if that’s all that there was to it. I suspect that Paul was hinting that Monica might have accidentally done something when she swearing using the glyphs. If that was his intent, he apparently was too subtle, because most people don’t read it that way. To me it was funny wondering if Monica actually was responsible without knowing the answer, though.
I doubt that. From what I remember (and re-read to a small extent), the glyphs only seemed to affect the GGs, not the average people around her.
That said, I can see why you’d get that idea. The appearance of the bride on the hunt is a little random (if not uncommon for comedies with wedding scenes).
I never said that I was doing any better or worse than anyone else. 😛 I was merely being proud of myself.
You’re also right that I don’t go back and re-read archives all that much. I may got back a couple of pages if I left comments, but that’s about it. Thanks for the link to the glyph language’s first appearance!
Good catch. To me, that’s what shows that Bud wasn’t there. Paul saying that Jin’s schizophrenia is showing could cut both ways, I think. I’m no expert, though.
I’m kind of embarrassed that we were joking yesterday about how long it would take for the haunted Jin scene to pay out, though. Of course, with Paul, you never know how many times or how many different ways something will pay out.
Amazing. But my chizophrenic parent only had taunters visiting, never a caring friend. The surrealism is familiar, though. Don’t think I can live without this strip anymore.
1) You can always choose your friends.
2) EVERYONE shows up to your meetings.
3) When you hallucinate all the time, you never have to buy stuff to decorate your home! (:”How’dya like the moose head?”)
Trust me dude you don’t want to be a scizo. most the time my hallucinations are terrifying monsters and me seeing family members die. And no matter how many times to remind yourself its not real before or after the hallucination it is still as real to you as if it weren’t all in your head.
Mine just talk. Never shut up. I run a fan at night to shut them up so I can sleep. And a sleep mask so I don’t have to look at them in the dark. Most of the time I feel like a Ghost Hunter in my own brain, chasing noises while saying, ‘WTF is that?’
Lights on. Lessee. Jin’s “queen” demon got recalled into the demon world leaving What in charge of Jin’s personal Kabuki play?
Or if not ghost hunting, then like The Nighwatchman from Pratchett’s “Fifth Elephant” — to paraphrase: “You mistake my role. I’m not here to keep the evil out. I keep them in.”
4) Hallucinated girlfriends never care how many other imaginary girl friends are present, or want to talk “afterwards.”
5) You don’t have to clean up after hallucinated pets. If you do, you have one of the GFs do it (see 4, above).
Hey, the first movie was terrific. I can’t speak for the sequels, though, since I haven’t seen them (and judging by what I’ve heard, I may not want to).
It’s a series of movies whose popularity is built entirely on special effects. The plot is silly. Using humans as batteries? It would take the input of a whole lot more energy in than one could possibly get out. Sounds like a 5 year old came up with that nonsense. Not to mention the so-called hero is a mass murdering SOB.
For some reason this strip reminded me of an earlier one where Jin gave an unconscious Monica the advice not to run from the voices in her head. I know that the older strip is referring to personal demons, but I halfway wonder if she was also pulling from her own experience as a schizophrenic as well. 🙂
So this whole thing thing of the calendar machine was just to fix a case of schizophrenia? Talk about overkill. Ironically, it was probably Jin who suffered most.
I wonder, did the calendar machine reset time for just the earth or for the whole universe? That’s gotta be some power to do it for the whole thing. I doubt even the ancients had control of that much power. If only the earth, it would seem astronomers of the time would note a wild shift in stellar and planetry positions every time it reset.
Depends on how far back time got reset to. If it went back before astronomy, how would they know the difference? Which brings up the question, can you reset time for one person aka Groundhog Day, or just one planet, or does it have to be the whole universe? In other words, if you are the only person who knows time was reset, doesn’t that mean only you went back in time and everyone else just keeps chugging along without you. Or is time more like stephen kings langoleers. . . .getting too deep now, I’ll stop LOL
I agree that it would be overkill. I think that fixing Jin was merely a side-effect, intentional or otherwise. Maya isn’t acting concerned about Jin going crazy again, as far as we can tell, so I’m not sure that Maya even knows that the time machine helped in the first place.
If the time machine can control time itself, it’s going to affect everything that time affects.
But time is a localized phenomena. The local flow of time is affected by the velocity of the object in question, as well as, the gravational constant in which it exists. The fact the earth moves through space at a relative velocity of about a million miles per hour means time flows slightly slower for us compared to something at rest in relation to the earth. My point is one can affect the local flow of time without having to affect the whole universe in the process. So it could be with the calendar machine.
If Jin was just a side effect, what was the main purpose of the calendar machine?
OK, good point. I wasn’t even thinking of relativistic effects.
I think the purpose of the calendar machine is simply a mystery. I have a pet theory that Brandi managed to use it in a previous time loop to at least observe the final one, though.
A bad thing about today’s strip is that it means that Jin’s ghost-breath scene probably didn’t happen. So much for my golem-strength cool-mint flavored mouthwash idea!
I hate it when I come up with an idea for a joke when it’s already too late to tell it.
I agree. After all it looks like Paul validated a comment that the cold was a “potentially ominous sign”…though he could have been validating other portions of that comment…
OK, I would read that as validating the “potentially ominous sign” part of what SoWhyMe said. Still, notice the waffle word “potentially” and even without that word, Paul could be talking in the abstract, so that’s not all that convincing to me.
I’ve seen the police haul away a schizophrenic person because they were fully acting out their part in their hallucinations and had become dangerous, so I assume Jin is probably acting out her part, not merely imagining it. But the question is, where did the cold air come from? If it came from Jin herself and Jin is capable of doing that, then she probably did it, just as she probably was actually talking out loud. But if the cold air was the sign of a separate ghost reacting from inside of Jin , then Jin probably imagined it, because Bud wasn’t there to cause the ghost to react. I guess it comes down to the question of whether or not there really is a ghost and to what extent it can percieve things separately from Jin.
Or maybe it really was very strong cool-mint flavored mouthwash. After all, to handle golem morning breath (bottom panel), it needs to be strong.
I don’t know exactly how possessions work, but I’d say that the ghost’s perceptions are probably limited to what Jin sees and hears. It certainly makes my brain stop over-heating if I think of it that way. 🙂
I was about to doubt that any anti-psychotic drugs might not have much effect on Jin, considering she isn’t fully human; but then I recalled that she does get intoxicated by alcohol like anyone else. So who knows? Maybe a daily dose of Lorazapam is just what the doctor ordered.
And now something to think about: what if brandi, bud and jins mother haven’t been “there” all the time and just have been projections of jins head? I mean somebody so powerful might even be able to make the people in her head real.
Even more meta-existential … what if Jin is real, and Pablo is imaginary? What if all those people (Monica, Shelley, et cetera) living around the Wapsipinicon River enjoy reading a webcomic called Pablo’s World, and I am just a wierd toon with a crush on a real-world latina whose feet go deedle-deedle-deedle whenever she…
Okay … it’s way past lights-out, and Nurse Ratched is giving me the old stink-eye…
Jin has a right to be bi-polar or multiple-personality or just plain nucking futz if she wants – she’s been through enough to send an entire continent’s population to the padded cell. On the other hand, she has good friends who want to help her now, and she would do well to listen.
“Hold on to what’s real,” says the magic golem girl as she evaporates away… 😀
As I understand it, at least part of the reason for the calendar machine was to cure/fix Jin, therefore she must have been schiziod prior to it’s construction and activation. However, it does appear the machine, in some capacity, had been keeping her problem(s) in check (though not curing them as such). Now that it’s gone, they have resurfaced. Only this time it’s much worse for humanity since she now has all this power.
That’s Jin’s story, anyway. The trouble is that if Jin is schizophrenic, can we trust her when she says things like that? The other thing is that the other characters were talking about Jin appearing schizophrenic during the previous arc (remember her shouting a hole in the bathroom wall when she was drunk), so the machine didn’t make her completely symptom free when it was still around.
I occurs to me that the obvious person to ask would have been Maya. Did Monica do that and is that what started Monica looking for an artifact that imaginary Bud was talking about?
Bud doesn’t. Jin does. Since this Bud is just a figment of Jin’s mind, the imaginary Bud is merely parroting back to her what she already knows. It’s all in her mind.
Was Jin imagining the whole dialog? Oh, and is it me, or does the Sphinx have a worried expression?
Schizophrenia. 🙂
Aw Hell…
I don’t think that’s a worried expression; I think it just looks stoned.
<rimshot>
In that case, I’d have expected a more stony expression.
Gotta agree. The Sphinx there is rockin’ that look.
The Sphinx has got no nose. How does it smell?
(Answers on a postcard, please…)
What was the nature of Monica’s “lead”? We saw her looking for something supposedly smuggled out of the Lanthian civilization when she was with Amanda, but what would have caused her to do that?
Jin hinted that Monica should check Tina’s diary, but we never saw her doing that. As far as we know, Monica never made it to the Bibliothiki, nor the annex. Katherine was going to try to dump something in Monica’s lap to trigger an adventure, but we never saw that happen, either. So what did happen?
BTW, how many people are remembering that we have not one, but two, schizophrenics running around?
Dammit! That wasn’t supposed to go here!
I started out writing a pun, calling the sphinx too much of a blockhead to know that what’s going on, but I checked and found out that the Great Sphinx of Giza was carved in place out of solid rock. Then I tried to write a root level comment, without canceling the other, I guess.
Well, I have a theory that her lead came from Tina. It looks like it was going to be conveyed here, but Tina just didn’t get around to actually saying it then or in the strips that followed.
Of course that is what knocks a giant hole in said theory…the fact that we don’t see Tina say anything to Monica about it, and usually Paul gives us those kinds of things in print.
It sounds boring, but I think she was just talking about the white chocolate mocha. My logic is kind of weak, but my idea is that what literally fell in Tina’s lap was some anchovy pizza. See didn’t see it, but it looks like it could have happened, anyway. I think that Nudge realized that the rest of Tina’s demons were weakened by eating the anchovy pizza, just because it was a change in Tina’s normal routine. They obviously weren’t happy that Nudge ordered it and they seemed to allow Nudge to take over at that point. I think that gave Nudge the idea to weaken Monica’s demons by changing Monica’s routine with the white chocolate mocha. That would tie what was said said both panels in your strip together. It also fits the way Tina worded it: a partial solution to help Monica help someone else.
I think Monica needed that help. Up until then, she had been reacting pretty negatively to everything. Her initial reaction to Tina in your strip was very negative and just rather rude. After drinking the white chocolate mocha, Monica surprised Shelly in a positive way a couple of times while they walked together. It seemed to make Monica much more mentally ready to work on the project, so I think it did help her start working on helping Jin, anyway.
It would be fun to see even more from Tina and/or Nudge.
Hmm…that does make sense…even if it is more boring as you say. 🙂
Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and Paul will let us know where Mon got her brilliant idea.
The Sphinx looks *scared*, not just worried. And wouldn’t you be? Jin, a being powerful enough to destroy the Earth, is talking to hallucinations, and the Sphinx was created as a warning of the danger of the Chimera…
So Bud wasn’t actually there. Leads to the question, is Jin actually there or is she home and imagining that as well? Or is it all Monica’s custard-induced dream? From the “dialog” she is pretty hard on herself. And, can you hold on to what’s real if you don’t know what is real anymore?
Bud was imagined by Jin, who was hallucinated by Monica, who in turn is only a figment of the custard’s imagination.
It was all a dream within a dream within a dream within a….
eXistenZ is PAUUUUSSSSSEEED!
that was a great movie
You forgot the butterfly.
Uh, Oh. Jin’s is a bit eerily acting right now/again.
You need to follow good advice … when you know it is good advice … even if that good advice comes from an imaginary friend.
It’s funny how she’s come round from giving good advice herself. Of course, it’s been a while since she gave out some herself.
The little circles between Bud and Jin…are they meant to be bits of Bud as she dissolves, or indications of a thought bubble?
Pretty sure it’s Jin imagining that Bud is imaginary, even though Bud poited there to talk to her. A schizophrenic solipsism, imho.
Nope. Given Pablo’s response above, Bud was never there; Jin imagined her.
Ah Hah! Now we know why we couldn’t see Bud Bud in the ast panel.
Bud wasn’t there.
Arrgh. “last panel”.
I knew that was significant! 🙂 I can’t believe I actually caught something that ended up panning out into an “Ah-ha!” moment.
Oh, come on! What makes you think you are doing worse than anyone else?
I don’t think you have reread the archives quite as many times as, um, some of have, though, so I’m going to respond to your comment yesterday and point out Monica said something in the glyph language when she closed the door of Amanda’s truck on her thumb. That was in the little arc when Amanda took Monica with her to help her photograph a wedding. I’m pretty sure that was the first use of the glyph language, actually. Other than that, I think you made a good point. Also, it might have been a early hint from Paul that there really was something special and significant about the glyph language. People might have taken it as just the equivalent of using “@!%#” to replace swearing, at first.
After I posted that, I realized that it would be rather embarrassing if I was wrong, so I double-checked. Whew! Here is the strip: http://wapsisquare.com/comic/02132004/
I’m curious, though. What is your take on the missing groom and bridesmaid?
Well, looky here.
Where we begin finding out about the glyph language…
Re: missing groom and bridesmaid…Well, unless they both just happened to take a bathroom break at the same time, the general assumption in situations like those is that the groom and bridesmaid are off somewhere together, possibly in the same closet where Monica and the 19 yr old were hiding. That was my first thought at least.
Same as everyone else. Oh, well.
Personally, I think that explanation is a little too obvious and the event seems a little out of place if that’s all that there was to it. I suspect that Paul was hinting that Monica might have accidentally done something when she swearing using the glyphs. If that was his intent, he apparently was too subtle, because most people don’t read it that way. To me it was funny wondering if Monica actually was responsible without knowing the answer, though.
I doubt that. From what I remember (and re-read to a small extent), the glyphs only seemed to affect the GGs, not the average people around her.
That said, I can see why you’d get that idea. The appearance of the bride on the hunt is a little random (if not uncommon for comedies with wedding scenes).
I never said that I was doing any better or worse than anyone else. 😛 I was merely being proud of myself.
You’re also right that I don’t go back and re-read archives all that much. I may got back a couple of pages if I left comments, but that’s about it. Thanks for the link to the glyph language’s first appearance!
Good catch. To me, that’s what shows that Bud wasn’t there. Paul saying that Jin’s schizophrenia is showing could cut both ways, I think. I’m no expert, though.
I’m kind of embarrassed that we were joking yesterday about how long it would take for the haunted Jin scene to pay out, though. Of course, with Paul, you never know how many times or how many different ways something will pay out.
So current hallucination, or memory of previous reset event, maybe a lil of both??
This scares me. A lot.
I have conversations with friends who aren’t there. Sometimes. Never sitting on the head of the sphinx, though.
Hey, if you can imagine conversations with absent friends, it’s only a short step to also imagining yourself sitting on the Sphinx while conversing.
Amazing. But my chizophrenic parent only had taunters visiting, never a caring friend. The surrealism is familiar, though. Don’t think I can live without this strip anymore.
hmmmm… so ‘too much custard’ made her sleep, and have strange dreams???
No, that would REALLY be way out there.
there are advantages to schizophrenia/MPD:
1) You can always choose your friends.
2) EVERYONE shows up to your meetings.
3) When you hallucinate all the time, you never have to buy stuff to decorate your home! (:”How’dya like the moose head?”)
Now I want to be scizophrenic. Anything can sound desirable when pitched right! 🙂
Trust me dude you don’t want to be a scizo. most the time my hallucinations are terrifying monsters and me seeing family members die. And no matter how many times to remind yourself its not real before or after the hallucination it is still as real to you as if it weren’t all in your head.
Mine just talk. Never shut up. I run a fan at night to shut them up so I can sleep. And a sleep mask so I don’t have to look at them in the dark. Most of the time I feel like a Ghost Hunter in my own brain, chasing noises while saying, ‘WTF is that?’
Lights on. Lessee. Jin’s “queen” demon got recalled into the demon world leaving What in charge of Jin’s personal Kabuki play?
Or if not ghost hunting, then like The Nighwatchman from Pratchett’s “Fifth Elephant” — to paraphrase: “You mistake my role. I’m not here to keep the evil out. I keep them in.”
4) Hallucinated girlfriends never care how many other imaginary girl friends are present, or want to talk “afterwards.”
5) You don’t have to clean up after hallucinated pets. If you do, you have one of the GFs do it (see 4, above).
Schizophrenia != MPD. Typical schizophrenia does not involve multiple personalities; the closest it gets to that is indecipherable mood swings.
I have a roommate with MPD, and her mother is schizo (the later caused the former).
Oh boy…great power and a limited grasp of reality do not go well together.
At least her hallucination gave her good advice.
Unless her hallucination becomes the arbiter of “what’s real.”
Great art, fantastic plot!
Reality is overrated 🙂
Probably, but to compare you first have to establish that what we view as reality is, indeed, “real.” (Please, no Matrix references … stupid movie).
Hey, the first movie was terrific. I can’t speak for the sequels, though, since I haven’t seen them (and judging by what I’ve heard, I may not want to).
It’s a series of movies whose popularity is built entirely on special effects. The plot is silly. Using humans as batteries? It would take the input of a whole lot more energy in than one could possibly get out. Sounds like a 5 year old came up with that nonsense. Not to mention the so-called hero is a mass murdering SOB.
The Thirteenth Floor.
Superior film, based on Simulacron 3 by Daniel F Galouye.
Similar premise, better used. Came out eh same year. Wasn’t as flashy.
I am officially weirded out.
.
I’ll second that emotion. Yikes.
For some reason this strip reminded me of an earlier one where Jin gave an unconscious Monica the advice not to run from the voices in her head. I know that the older strip is referring to personal demons, but I halfway wonder if she was also pulling from her own experience as a schizophrenic as well. 🙂
So this whole thing thing of the calendar machine was just to fix a case of schizophrenia? Talk about overkill. Ironically, it was probably Jin who suffered most.
I wonder, did the calendar machine reset time for just the earth or for the whole universe? That’s gotta be some power to do it for the whole thing. I doubt even the ancients had control of that much power. If only the earth, it would seem astronomers of the time would note a wild shift in stellar and planetry positions every time it reset.
Depends on how far back time got reset to. If it went back before astronomy, how would they know the difference? Which brings up the question, can you reset time for one person aka Groundhog Day, or just one planet, or does it have to be the whole universe? In other words, if you are the only person who knows time was reset, doesn’t that mean only you went back in time and everyone else just keeps chugging along without you. Or is time more like stephen kings langoleers. . . .getting too deep now, I’ll stop LOL
It’s 1450 years back each reset. Astronomical records were kept back then.
I agree that it would be overkill. I think that fixing Jin was merely a side-effect, intentional or otherwise. Maya isn’t acting concerned about Jin going crazy again, as far as we can tell, so I’m not sure that Maya even knows that the time machine helped in the first place.
If the time machine can control time itself, it’s going to affect everything that time affects.
But time is a localized phenomena. The local flow of time is affected by the velocity of the object in question, as well as, the gravational constant in which it exists. The fact the earth moves through space at a relative velocity of about a million miles per hour means time flows slightly slower for us compared to something at rest in relation to the earth. My point is one can affect the local flow of time without having to affect the whole universe in the process. So it could be with the calendar machine.
If Jin was just a side effect, what was the main purpose of the calendar machine?
OK, good point. I wasn’t even thinking of relativistic effects.
I think the purpose of the calendar machine is simply a mystery. I have a pet theory that Brandi managed to use it in a previous time loop to at least observe the final one, though.
Paul, You rock at getting our attention! I love that this comic makes us all think!
For Jin: Hold on!
Ditto.
I don’t know about that Fairportfan…This might be better advice. 🙂
I think we should all induce a custard coma and sleep all weekend, so we can be fresh and rested for more confusion on Monday.
Right, “hold on to what is real”, says the slowly dissolving woman.
OH MY GOD! BUD IS CASPER!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
This would have made an interesting October strip.
At least she’s friendly…
A bad thing about today’s strip is that it means that Jin’s ghost-breath scene probably didn’t happen. So much for my golem-strength cool-mint flavored mouthwash idea!
I hate it when I come up with an idea for a joke when it’s already too late to tell it.
Oh, i think Jin’s ghost-breath was real. And Jin’s really sitting on the Sphinx.
Bud was imaginary. But Imaginary Bud said the same sorts of things Real Bud would say if just talking to Jin didn’t make her cranky.
I agree. After all it looks like Paul validated a comment that the cold was a “potentially ominous sign”…though he could have been validating other portions of that comment…
OK, I would read that as validating the “potentially ominous sign” part of what SoWhyMe said. Still, notice the waffle word “potentially” and even without that word, Paul could be talking in the abstract, so that’s not all that convincing to me.
I’ve seen the police haul away a schizophrenic person because they were fully acting out their part in their hallucinations and had become dangerous, so I assume Jin is probably acting out her part, not merely imagining it. But the question is, where did the cold air come from? If it came from Jin herself and Jin is capable of doing that, then she probably did it, just as she probably was actually talking out loud. But if the cold air was the sign of a separate ghost reacting from inside of Jin , then Jin probably imagined it, because Bud wasn’t there to cause the ghost to react. I guess it comes down to the question of whether or not there really is a ghost and to what extent it can percieve things separately from Jin.
Or maybe it really was very strong cool-mint flavored mouthwash. After all, to handle golem morning breath (bottom panel), it needs to be strong.
I don’t know exactly how possessions work, but I’d say that the ghost’s perceptions are probably limited to what Jin sees and hears. It certainly makes my brain stop over-heating if I think of it that way. 🙂
I was going to ask if Bud was live or Memorex , then seen Mr . Taylor’s answer .
All I can say now , is , they have drugs for that .
I was about to doubt that any anti-psychotic drugs might not have much effect on Jin, considering she isn’t fully human; but then I recalled that she does get intoxicated by alcohol like anyone else. So who knows? Maybe a daily dose of Lorazapam is just what the doctor ordered.
Aah but there’s the beauty in that she can take a 3 ton dose and not die so it would probably work great.
I’m not sure how well clozapine would work on a clay golem.
More Custard! Stat! Reality is coming back to me! Must fight it off. It’s the weekend after all.
Online jigsaw puzzle.
I’m sorry, Dietzel – i couldn’t resist.
Other puzzles, including some more Wapsi stuff, at http://electronictiger.net/avail/puzzles.htm
Oooh! I love puzzles! *disappears for a while*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Dk3hyRFYE
And now something to think about: what if brandi, bud and jins mother haven’t been “there” all the time and just have been projections of jins head? I mean somebody so powerful might even be able to make the people in her head real.
That would also have to include Tepoz and Kukulan…
Even more meta-existential … what if Jin is real, and Pablo is imaginary? What if all those people (Monica, Shelley, et cetera) living around the Wapsipinicon River enjoy reading a webcomic called Pablo’s World, and I am just a wierd toon with a crush on a real-world latina whose feet go deedle-deedle-deedle whenever she…
Okay … it’s way past lights-out, and Nurse Ratched is giving me the old stink-eye…
😉
If Jin were real, I’d be worried for her safety and sanity … and very, very sad for her condition.
“Roses are red,
Violets are Blue.
I’m Schizophrenic,
And so am I”
(Not the author)
That was quoted by Bill Murray in What About Bob?.
Jin has a right to be bi-polar or multiple-personality or just plain nucking futz if she wants – she’s been through enough to send an entire continent’s population to the padded cell. On the other hand, she has good friends who want to help her now, and she would do well to listen.
“Hold on to what’s real,” says the magic golem girl as she evaporates away… 😀
The ultimate question is, did the Calendar Machine cure Jin’s schizophrenia (or temporal aphasia or whatever), or did it actually cause it?
As I understand it, at least part of the reason for the calendar machine was to cure/fix Jin, therefore she must have been schiziod prior to it’s construction and activation. However, it does appear the machine, in some capacity, had been keeping her problem(s) in check (though not curing them as such). Now that it’s gone, they have resurfaced. Only this time it’s much worse for humanity since she now has all this power.
That’s Jin’s story, anyway. The trouble is that if Jin is schizophrenic, can we trust her when she says things like that? The other thing is that the other characters were talking about Jin appearing schizophrenic during the previous arc (remember her shouting a hole in the bathroom wall when she was drunk), so the machine didn’t make her completely symptom free when it was still around.
I occurs to me that the obvious person to ask would have been Maya. Did Monica do that and is that what started Monica looking for an artifact that imaginary Bud was talking about?
I wonder how Paul feels knowing so many of his fans have serious mental problems? I trust he has never given out his address.
Holy shit that’s a lot of comments.
One question. How does bud know what’s being planned to help, if Bud is a schizophrenic delusion?
Bud doesn’t. Jin does. Since this Bud is just a figment of Jin’s mind, the imaginary Bud is merely parroting back to her what she already knows. It’s all in her mind.
Well, I guess we can be thankful that Jin didn’t imagine Bud as saying…”Burn them…BURN THEM ALL!!!!”