Don't eat spiders

"Alternate Universe" is one of my favorite xkcd.com panels:


Its composition is ideal, the punchline comes out of nowhere yet the spider-for-lobster substitution makes perfect sense, and the spiders themselves are drawn with just the right amount of understated grotesqueness.

But it also gives form to what I'd guess is a common, if not universal, experience, of seeing people around you do things every day as a matter of course that are weird, or wrong, or bad, and of being completely unable to convince them they shouldn't do those things.


There's an awful lot of spiders crawling around in our culture these days. Not only are there people invested (for reasons of money, or power, or getting back at their father) in getting others to eat those spiders, once you eat a spider yourself, you become invested in seeing spider-eating as normal, right, and good, for reasons of self-justification. (And who knows, maybe the way they tickle on the way down is sort of fun.)

I don't really have a thesis here -- you know, other than don't eat spiders. And, I suppose, if you want to get those around you to stop eating spiders, but nothing you say is getting you anywhere, you might try fasting (and prayer).

Link | 0 comments | Tweet

---