Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for June 06, 2010

And that, dear bunny, is what you get for making fine distinctions.

Life is an Illusion - Joe Walsh.

Is that what they mean by “Just desserts?”

I too eat rabbit, but usually don’t bother with the banter.

The end of Bugs Bunny and Peter Rabbit.

Don’t get too philosophical with the top of the food chain….

It’s always the same time when a bear arrives… time to run and hide.

Wow, talk about having a bad hare day…

Isn’t this what is called “being too smart for your own good”?

Right Now… It’s business as usual in the woods.

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” – Ford Prefect

It seems the bear has time to kill, so his question probably wasn’t urgent (although it was ursine).

It’s strange, though. Most white rabbits of my acquiantance have been singularly preoccupied with checking their pocket watches.

The ultimate existential question and the ultimate question of existence

Top of the food chain? Right, don’t get philosophical with mosquitoes that eat bears and us, or the dragonflies that eat them, or …

Sometimes it is hard to remember that we aren’t necessarily the top of the food chain. “We’re food for worms!” –Hamlet?

That, and evolution isn’t over, either. Watch carefully for whatever will come next, it might be surprising (and crafty!)

Ah, the circle of life…

Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like bananas.

Smartass.

Some of us know what comes next, pb. We keep TRYING to tell you , but…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

and the rabbit was invited!

It’s hausen pfeffer time, Buffalo Bob. If only there were peppers. Bear the loss, I guess.

So many good quips and puns: then the ads. Flagged!

Maybe I’ll spend part of the $1,650,000 waiting for me in Nigeria on some of the bleeep being advertised.

My father always said: Better to be a smartass than a dumb one.

Now I guess the philisophical question is whether being intelligent and educated makes you any happier in life. Ignorance sure appears to be bliss, but I’d hate to have to make a living at McDonald’s.

time and space are the same.to deny time is to deny existence.the rabbitt disapeared in a cloud of logic.

Say what you will…time’s up for the bunny

“Kill da wabbit!” E F

I wish I could just eat my irritating problems like that!

HAD to sign in Just so I could FLAG!! ERRRRRR Love the comments on the Comic though!☥

As always, the best comic around since Calvin & Hobbs.

so much for that lucky rabbit’s foot

Can we make spamming a capital offense?

…just sitting there, listening to this guy tell me how smart he was, when suddenly I had a wild hare…

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Yo, Wiley! How much Zen have you been reading lately? I think Dogen said the exact same thing as the rabbit.

The point was “Live in the moment. It’s all there is.”

And so the bear did.

pbranrob: ” ‘We’re food for worms!’ –Hamlet?”

Since you appended the question mark, I’ll take that as an invitation to answer. (It’s a great exchange, so I’ll give it at length.)

Claudius: Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius? Hamlet: At supper. Clau: At supper? Ham: Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end. Clau: Alas, alas. Ham: A man may fish with the worm that hath fed of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. Clau: What dost thou mean by this? Ham: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. Clau: Where is Polonius? Ham: In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i’th’other place yourself. But indeed if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby. Clau: [to attendants] Go seek him there. Ham: He will stay till you come.

The use of “fat king” here, coupled with Hamlet’s earlier use of “bloat king” to describe his uncle, makes me wonder whether Claudius wasn’t originally played by a fat guy (probably not John Candy fat, but maybe John Belushi fat). I’ve certainly never seen him played that way since, but I wonder… Richard Burbage played Hamlet in the original Globe productions, and by all accounts Burbage was a beefy guy himself by 1601. (Although when Gertrude says of Hamlet in V:ii “He’s fat and scant of breath”, the word almost assuredly refers to him being tired and/or sweaty, not to his girth.)

i can’t believe he just ate that rabit like that. murderer.

Fritz works WAY to hard at this. Now we have to pay him overtime. Maybe we can worm our way out.

do bears poop in the woods? Ask that rabit in a few hours.

Lucky DELICIOUS rabbit’s foot, hawks.

AHHHHHHH! The bear murdered and ate the innocent rabbit for nothing after he asked the rabbit for exact and current time! Oh my words! sighhhhhhhhh! I am going to faint!

and of course the bear has a wristwatch. if he chucked it away he wouldn’t need to know the time.

Closing down now. Lunch time for me, too.

freeholder, the “Hamlet” forum I used to frequent was shut down (actually, it was popular but it drowned in spam). So I have no other outlet for my obsession…

As I scrolled down reading it I foresaw “Time to EAT you” - I was close ;-)

Sometimes you eat the bear , sometimes the bear eats you .

The zen mystic says “Be here now”, and the rational materialist smirks “…like we have any choice in the matter.”

But sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unus’d.

Reminds me of Eddie Murphy’s joke about the bear and the rabbit in the woods. And, no, I can’t transcribe it here. You might be able to Google it, though …

Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? - Robert Lamm (Chicago)

pbarnrob- you said “Watch carefully for whatever will come next, it might be surprising (and crafty!)” Maybe it’s already here, and smaller than we all expected. I notice we haven’t found a cure for AIDS yet. How do we define “top of the food chain”?

Zen: when a bear eats a rabbit in the woods and no one is there to slobber, does it make you drool anyway?

Zen neurotic riddle: What is the sound of one paw ripping the guts from a tiny helpless rabbit that never hurt anyone not even a fly but was led into a conversation with a big furry thing who has just no feelings and no thought to the devestation he might cause a child reading a comic strip?

Shook another spear at us, Fritz.

Matt, the rational materialist would still point out that is is literally impossible to “be” any place other than “here”, or any time other than “now.” People might dwell ON places and times other than the ones they are momentarily occupying, but they cannot dwell IN them. The mystic is using the words figuratively, the materialist is using them literally.

freeholder, I find Hamlet particularly suitable for F.I.A.T. links. Whatever the subject, there is ALWAYS an appropriate quote. (Shakespeare’s Complete Works would no doubt provide even better quotes somewhere, but I have Hamlet more or less at my fingertips, often literally.)

From the movie “In the Bleak Midwinter”:

Tom: Hamlet isn’t just Hamlet. Oh no, no, no. Oh, no. Hamlet is me. Hamlet is Bosnia. Hamlet is this desk. Hamlet is the air. Hamlet is my grandmother. Hamlet is everything you ever thought about sex, about geology… Joe: Geology? Tom: In a very loose sense, of course.

(To tie the two threads together here, I will add to Matt that the only alternative to “be here now” is to “not be anywhere anymore” - that is always the question.)

P.S. As I’m typing this, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” is playing on the radio. The best musical commentary on “To be or not to be” that I’m aware of, although the specific Shakespearean reference is to Romeo and Juliet rather than Hamlet.

fritzoid- and I would agree. There really is nothing else but NOW. The issue of choice is separate and distinct. But to “not be anywhere anymore”? I know from experience that there is more than what we have HERE. There is an alternative to be experienced. I would not necessarily expect a “rational materialist” to agree with me on that point. :) When I was much younger, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” was a song that gave me serious chills. Now days, I know why. It was among the early breadcrumbs left for me to follow, to discover who, and what I was (am).

The rabbit knew too much & had to be silenced.

Matt: The Zen point is to focus on the NOW. Are you fully engaged in the NOW or is your mind drifting to your shopping list for next Tuesday, your errands for tomorrow, how you stuck your foot in your mouth last Thursday etc. etc. etc.?

If you’re feeling the breeze in your hair, hearing the birds, observing your tummy rumble, and watching the clouds in the sky with no plans for the future and no regrets from the past, you are in the NOW.

It’s harder than you think.

Again, I’d ask you whether your experienced alternative would still be outside any definitions of “here” and “now”, even if it is outside what what I would call corporeal or temporal existence. Perhaps you could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up my soul, freeze my not-so-young blood, make my two eyes like stars start from their spheres, my knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine. But not having experienced it myself, it would probably be difficult to find a mutually comprehensible vocabulary. :-)

In principle, I don’t take issue with “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your/our philosophy” (either variant is supportable, but the crux can be significant to Hamlet’s frame of mind). But I also think that to describe any experience as “transcendent” is kind of an oxymoron; anything that a human can experience cannot, by definition, be outside human experience, whether it occurs during “life” or after it.

Good, one less rabbit in my back yard to eat my flowers. Only thing the bear has ever eaten was the bird food. (And now a rabbit)

Hmmm, rabbit sounds good. (looks in the refrigerator)

Catherine- No, I would not say I’m fully engaged in the NOW. Perhaps we are getting a bit deep for our present medium, but - while I have the capacity to entertain this state for a period, and am aware of the long term benefits, I have heavy conflicts with my knowledge of the destination. I am a rebellious explorer of the esoteric.

fritzoid- I’m sorry to have “teased” you a bit there, because I can’t share my experiences under these circumstances. My awareness is that our world does it’s best to support our beliefs, whatever they are. If you seek experiences beyond the norm, you have to be open to the possibility and seek them out. Those who reject the “paranormal” generally have those doors closed to them. To have arrived where I am, I had to explore and modify my beliefs (choose them) in the face of conflicting experience.

fritzoid- a “rational materialist” can’t get there from here, so to speak. Faith is involved.

Matt: I’ll be the first to admit I’m terrible at it. I try to settle down and the first thing that pops into my head is “Holy Bleep, did I pay the phone bill?”

I’ve just been reading a lot of Zen commentary lately researching a story and this strip is just so Zen. Up to and including the bear eating the rabbit.

i am here in the now remembering my yesterdays and wondering of my tomorrows.

think i’ll have another beer now.

No need to apologize, Matt. I was aware of the teasing nature of your posts, and hope I have returned it in good humor.

When I hear the word “Faith” mentioned in context of debate, though, I figure we’ve just about reached the end of meaningful discussion. By definition it introduces arguments that can’t be tested, pronouncements which the proponent won’t even consider open to question.

I’m an atheist materialist existentialist of sorts (which is not to say a nihilist), but most of my family are Christians and I have close friends who are Buddhists, Unitarian/Universalists, and/or New Age “mystics”. With many in any of these groups I can have lively and enlightening (so to speak) discussions with no hard feelings, but there are areas on which we will never see eye-to-eye. I’ve never been a “believer” (as most would use the term) in my living memory (I’m told that I once believed in God, and that’s possibly true, but I can no more remember that than I can remember believing in Santa Claus, which I also apparently at one time did), but I can remember being more “open minded” to such possibilities. What I remember very clearly, however, was a matter of the heart which I firmly believed with every cell in my body was going to end with a particular result. I believed that as firmly as I’ve ever believed anything in my life, and would brook no argument to the contrary. I took it on faith. I was mistaken. But life goes on: “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” (Not Hamlet this time; As You Like It.)

I guess you could say that I’m a “irrationalist materialist” – some things just don’t make sense, but I wouldn’t necessarily argue that everything should. Over on another thread, I (mis)quoted Arthur C. Clarke: “The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine.”

By the way, on the chance that your screen name was a coded message of some sort, I looked into the Gospel According to St. Matthew, but Chapter 10 never reaches Verse 75; it cuts off at 42 (“And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward”), and I have no idea what Douglas Adams would make of that. :-)

I will NEVER - repeat - NEVER understand how you can call it a LUCKY rabbit’s foot. He had FOUR of ‘em, and NONE of them worked for him! lol

fritzoid- I don’t mind discussing my beliefs, but I am no Evangelist. I don’t like others firmly pressing their views on me, and I have little interest in influencing those with opposing views. I am solid enough not to need anyone else to validate my beliefs. I believe in freedom, and feel we all should explore and experience our reality here on our own terms. I certainly wish you well in your travels. :)

The rabbit did better in the old joke… A bear and a rabbit are sh@#ing in the woods. The bear asks the rabbit if he has trouble with sh@t sticking to his fur… The rabbit says, “No”. So the bear wipes his a$$ with the rabbit… Apologies to all who require…

Impermanence takes on nihilism

j money- That’s hilarious! Thanks for sharing.

This reminds me of what happens every time you tell someone their concept of reality is horribly flawed.

And they usually reward your truthfulness by killing you on the spot.

I am reminded of Psalm 44 (it’s not really relevant, but I’m reminded of it nonetheless).

If you count 44 words into the King James translation of Psalm 44, you reach the word “shake”. If you count 44 words from the back of Psalm 44 (discounting the final, untranslateable “Selah”), you reach the word “spear.” The KJV Bible was issued in 1609, and when it was being finalized for publication in 1608, William Shakespeare was 44 years old.

It would have been cooler if the number being repeated was 42, but it’s still pretty cool…

It’s certainly possible that it’s a meaningless coincidence, and as a Jesusite Atheist Irrational Materialist Existentialist I have no trouble accepting meaningless coincidences. In fact, the theory of the Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things (FIAT) pretty much insists that nearly all coincidences are meaningless, and Jesusite Atheist Irrational Materialist Existentialism (J’AIME) holds that the search for Meaning is meaningless, except to the extent that the search itself is the Meaning.

fritzoid- I see you are really into this Shakespear stuff. Are you into the performing arts? And how on Earth would you think to count words in a Psalm like that? Boggles my mind.

fritzoid- OK, yes I see you ARE into the performing arts. LOL. Are you, by any chance, a fan of “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”? (If you aren’t, you should be.)

I didn’t discover the Shakespeare Psalm, but I’ve read about it in a couple of places, so SOMEBODY must have noticed it first. Neil Gaiman makes reference to it obliquely in the final issue of “Sandman.”

I’ve been known to trod the boards. I enjoy it thoroughly.

Hamlet: Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me, with Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players? Horatio: Half a share. Ham: A whole one, I. For thou dost know, O Damon dear, This realm dismantled was Of Jove himself, and now reigns here A very, very – pajock. Hor: You might have rhymed. (The missing rhyme would be “ass”. - FZ)

I’m too old and fat to play Hamlet, but my dream is to someday direct a production of that play, with myself as Claudius. I’m exactly who I see in the part, and “He that plays the King shall be welcome.”

The Shakespearean lines equating the world to the stage - this distracted Globe, Hercules and his load too – provide an embarrassment of riches. The Merchant of Venice:

Let me play the fool: With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, And let my liver rather heat with wine Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

Or, if you prefer the Scottish Play:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

The play’s the thing, but comic strips are a close second.

Wonderful chatter for a Sunday, thanks once again to Wiley for a fabulous cartoon.

More puns please…….

Grazer - very nice Haiku.

Spam! Time to hit the flag button!

Time for me to quit- good evening all!

*Good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

(And yeah, I verified Psalm 44. It only works with the King James, though. Gaiman wasn’t the first place I read about it, and like I said his reference is oblique. He has Will, speaking to Morpheus, say “Vanity, vanity. I hid my name in a Psalm.” I had already heard of the Shakespeare Psalm, but that would have sent me looking for it.)

The rest is silence.

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” Saint Augustine

I like this one … great way to handle a know it all smart ass.

Saw that one coming.