Letters to the Editor
-
yep
i get those impulses a lot. makes me wonder if i'm going to be that cooky old lady that seems to be just that little bit off, but in a good way
-
Best K Chronicles in a while.
Not to sound like a frothing fanboy, but in a line of comics that are normally above the game, this one was really good.
Rock on Keith.
-
ohhhh, yeah ...
... but the one I remember most is from my first marriage. My husband sang in the opera chorus, and they were doing Lucia di Lammermoor with Roberta Peters in the title role. During the Mad Scene, he was continually thinking, "If I reach over and goose her now, I'll go down in history ..."
-
Fear of falling
"What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
-
I was glad to see you again, Mr. Knight.
Sorry I didn't get back to buy your latest, but I'll get it at a bookstore. As you undoubtedly know, this Comic-Con was the most chaotic yet, and for Michelle and I, it will be our last. Unless they move it to someplace sane like Vegas, where they won't screw people on hotels, and where they serve food besides those damned Mrs. Fields Cookies.
But I will keep the memory of you and your lovely wife forever.
-
(almost) irresistible urges
I always have the urge to drop my car keys down grates that I walk over. I don't know why.
-
Jumping Impulse
Pretty common in my experience. I get particularly squicky at the Hoover Dam. I don't go there often.
But I found a cure for that queasy feeling in the pit of the stomach that comes with the fantasy of, y'know, actually jumping: Skydiving!! A couple/four tandem jumps and I'm cured!
Well, I still get the urge, and I still get the queasy feeling, but it sure doesn't freak me out any more! I can embrace my fears. Boy, howdy, yeah.
Remember: in skydiving, the sky's not the limit; the ground is.
Rock on, Keef!
-
I am going to reach over
And bash your stupid face. Can't help myself. Birds gotta fly.
-
Goddammit, Keef...
Don't you DARE jump!
(In a slight paraphrasing of the late, great Petey Greene...)
Later, Daddy-O!
-
Comic-Con was chaotic?
News to me. I thought it was the most orderly one I've ever attended. But San Diego does suck and now it's worse that the con is selling out.
The only logical move is to LA, because a) it's movies and tv that's causing the con to sell out, b) studios wouldn't have to spend a fortune and company hours to arrange and to get their people hundreds of miles down the coast (or extra hundreds of miles if they're coming from Vancouver) and c) the sun, surf and nightlife that people enjoy outside of the con in SD are all there in LA.
Now that the con is calling itself Comic-Con International and not San Diego Comic-Con, it seems the people behind the scenes are already contemplating a change of city. If they do move, the studios have all the money and the clout and they are not going to let them go anyplace but LA. I just hope it happens soon.
Meanwhile, great as always seeing you and Kerstin, Keith!
-
better and better
In the space of a few years your comic has gone from being my least favorite on Salon.com to becoming one of my favorites (and the one that I look forward to every week.) You have been consistently good for a while but somehow you have also been getting better and better as time passes.
Kudos Keith!
-
Poe wrote a story about this phenomenon
He called the urge to do something pointlessly, extremely imprudent (and the story) "The Imp of the Perverse." I remember reading that story in high school and thinking, "OK, I'm glad it's not just me."
-
I knew a woman
... who told me she couldn't walk past a fire alarm without having a strong impulse to pull it. And she worked in an elementary school!
-
See Poe's "The Imp of the Perverse"
"We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss – we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness, and dizziness, and horror, become merged in a cloud of unnameable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius, or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall – this rushing annihilation – for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination – for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed."
-
Beer taps
I want to pull fire alarms too.
My most consistent temptation (when at a bar, anyway) is to knock all the beer taps open, not to actually drink the beer but just to see it all cascading down in a glorious beer fountain. Like the Bellagio, only in reverse.
I also want to grab food off of people's plates when I walk past restaurants with patio dining, like grab a burger and take one big bite then put it back, and walk away (or probably run away.)
There is a fantastic Japanese film called "Tampopo" which I highly recommend everyone to anyone who likes to eat (not the dreaded "foodies" but just people who like to eat). The best vignette in the film is a scene with a little old lady running through a grocery store poking her thumbs into everything squishy: soft fruits, cheeses, pastries, everything. Glorious!