Tuesday, January 30, 2007
I have spent way too much time looking for this
Seriously - I have spent literally hours looking for this "episode" of Questionable Content (what does one call an individual comic in a series?) even though it's way no longer relevant. But, um, Erika, the other night when you and Aren and I were chatting until all hours and I wanted Pete to look up a comic on quantum fetish mechanics? Yeah, so here it is. For everyone who isn't Erika, if you haven't read this QC, you totally should, and not just because I reference it all the time. Huh? Oh, also because it's funny. In addition, it's totally true. And Erika (or possibly my Mom) posed an interesting question: did so many weird fetishes exist before the internet? I mean, if you really liked elbows and peanutbutter, did you have to just wait until you got a really tolerant girlfriend, or did you have to hire hookers? Was there a magazine for you, maybe just a quarterly, perhaps called "Peanutbogen?" (That's my attempt at combining "Peanutbutter" and "elbogen," which is German for "elbows," I think. Yes, all of my German is this useful.) And how would you find said periodical? I swear to God, deviancy before the internet just boggles the mind. And to think: the internet has come into existance within my lifetime. Crazypants.
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3 comments:
I saw the QC link on the side of your blog a while ago, and promptly started reading the whole thing. Mostly because I love comics (or "comix" as Art Spiegelman insists on calling them), but I was also reapplying to law school at the time and desperately needed something to amuse myself while filling out lots of beauracracy.
I loved it. Loved it. I've got to say that I'm really impressed with how much better Jacques' art has gotten since he started the strip. I also think that he balances fairly well between the requisite absurdity that webcomics generally have, and more down to earth stuff, i.e., it has both adorable talking robot guys, and storylines about depression and suicide.
But, I think that the thing that I really like about it is the sort of subtext (or metatext?) that every hipster, underneath, is really a huge geek. Jacques has great taste in music, is obviously "hip" and "with it" and such, but talks about being addicted to Final Fantasy in his newsposts, makes game and anime references, and the odd computer joke courteous the AnthroPCs. Jacques is obviously a hipster. He's also obviously a total geek.
I can't help but like QC because I can't help but identify with this. Sure, I want to be niftily-dressed, have an impressive record collection, and go to concerts. I also want to dork out on the internet and read comic books. QC demonstrates that these two cultural niches need not be mutually exculsive.
Ok, that was really pretentious, but I'm seldom otherwise.
Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about QC too. I've been listening to snippets of some of the referenced bands on iTunes, and I've decided to stick with my old method of finding new music, namely, waiting for Pete to hand me something and say, "This is awesome." I listened to bits of Arcade Fire, Islands, The Shins and a couple others. The only thing that I was interested in was the newer Kings of Leon album. And I already knew about them!
What was really interesting was looking at the celebrity playlists at iTunes. Thom Yorke's is just as esoteric and well-reasoned as you'd expect. And Harry Connick, Jr.'s is just as filled with a strange mix of classic rock, blues and other random crap as you'd expect. But the younger people's lists: oy vay! They have almost no explanation for why they've chosen this set of songs, and most if not all of the songs are from the Billboard Top 20. It's just weird! I mean, if you're a musician, you have access to all kinds of up and coming stuff that no one else knows about, you could be in on the ground floor! And this is when I learned that I too have a hidden, inner music nerd: I would love to be awesome enough to say that I heard Radditude And The Awesomeness before they sold out and went goth-country or whatever. I mean, that's not even a real band or real style of music, and I feel cooler just typing it! So, what the fuck, Beyonce? Why are you all like, "I chose this Destiny's Child remix because I like to listen to myself," when you could be talking about how you can actually hear echos of the goth-country to come in the Radditude And The Awesomeness B-Side, "I Stole Satan's Truck"??
I feel I should just point out that that's not how quantum physics works, but that is how fetishes work. I think just calling it fetish mechanics would have been more apt, no need to include the quantum. But that's just the quantum physicist in me. I MUST RUIN THE JOKE FOR ALL BY BEING TOO LITERAL!!!
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