#the far side

[henrykathman]

Thanks to my brother for telling me about this story. [Alt text below]

Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows

Brown Swiss in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees

[Alt Text: Original comic created by cooltimeonline. A man laying on a therapist's couch, talking to the logo of the Guardian, "Oh the Guardian, I'm just feeling real low." The Tv shows a picture of the cow from the article and responds, "COW TOOLS CONFIRMED," gaining the man's attention, who says, "Oh shit, for real?]

[valuedeversourcecustomer]

[everydaylouie]

another far side comic recreation in blender...gary larson is my GOAT

[taken-4-granite]

[fesenmoon]

no fucking way

edit: this is not actually proven and the articles i have read that claim this cite a single study which has not been replicated. in all honesty i just wanted to draw croc tools — crocodiles have wonderful traits and this is probably not one of them. sorry for the misinformation

[moviesludge]

I came into my room and there was a web directly across the inside of my doorway even though it had only been a couple of hours since I last walked in here. Of course I immediately thought of this old Far Side which is never too far from my mind

[quasi-normalcy]

I think that what's brilliant about The Far Side is how it can imply an entire narrative with only a single panel. It's sequential art without the sequence. Like this one

There's the obvious implication of what's going to happen in the future (there's going to be a hunt), but it also stretches into the past: what circumstances in the anthropology of this group of cavemen must have happened to establish a tradition of dancing with Woolly Mammoths? Why does it, in spite of it's obvious absurdity, feel kind of right that there should be a dance before the cavemen and the mammoths engage in mortal combat? The reluctant fearful expression on the caveman at the bottom; is this his first hunt? Are those his elders trying to reassure him? Does the one mammoth actually seem to fancy him? What about the one looking fearfully back at his friends? How does he feel that the others aren't there to reassure him? One of the mammoths in the upper right looks just as fearful as the cavemen; why? etc.

And all of this is purely evoked. There's only simple line-drawing and two sentences of text, but you see it and it reminds you of other sorts of narratives you've seen or experienced, and your brain constructs a whole temporal sequence; and any possible answer you could get to above the questions would never be as satisfying as what your brain fills in.

I could write an entire essay about this.

[thefugitivesaint]

Gary Larson, ''The Far Side''. June 1987 My apologies to Mr. Larson for appropriating his image and re-purposing it as propaganda. Remember kids, the only real war is class war.