Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for July 15, 2011

If I was Petey, Ernesto would scare me.

I’m not Petey, and Ernesto STILL scares me!

Oh, great—now Petey’s imaginary friends are getting belligerent!

Well he is IN your mind… what else is he going to read?

Mitzi, I think you’ve been hitting the Mountain Dew too hard! Calm down! Before we venture into alternate solipsistic universes too far, be reminded of The Refutation of Bishop Berkeley (likely fictive, but droll: an associate delivered him a swift kick in the shins. Ow, said the bishop. And the associate rejoined, Am I not real?). I am not sure about Ernesto’s reality, but his mind-reading is scary. It’s a swift kick in Petey’s neurosis.

So Alice and everyone else in this strip is not real? Except Earnesto? Somehow that disturbs me. It changes the whole concept. Somethings are better left along and not learning about. Bubble busted here.

He scares me too.

Actually Bishop Berkeley had posited that the entire universe was simply a figment of God’s imagination and that nothing was real. Samuel Johnson said, "I refute him {ie, the argument) thus! And he kicked a stone, showing that the world was real. The “refutation” of course is no refutation at all, but successfully pokes fun at Berkeley’s idea. No one kicked the good Bishop. Google it.

there’s an article today to the effect that we are no forgetting things that can be easily Googled (or perhaps easily Snopesed). If this is true, we will soon be believing and passing around all sorts of misinformation that we can no longer take the trouble to learn and retain.

Ernesto, or Tommy Westphal?

teehee

That almost makes so much sense I believe it!

“It’s all in your mind, ya know?” Said with Liverpool accent from John on Yellow Submarine.

Imaginary enemies are more bother, especially when someone decides you’re one.

Never mention red catsup on a napkin to a picky eater. I spent years wiping crusty catsup off trays at McDonalds, and now I never eat French fries with catsup.

I remember when I realized Hobbes was a mere stuffed animal, and everything Garfield said was in Jon’s head. This stuff blows your mind.