myrmepropagandist
It's always bothered me that when people adapt Kafka's Metamorphosis they depict Gregor Samsa as a roach. Cockroaches do not undergo metamorphosis. They are born as nymphs which are just smaller wingless versions of the adult form.
Kafka writes that Gregor can only enjoy rotten food. Which also makes him not at all roach-like. Roaches strongly prefer fresh vegetables to rotten ones.
I always imagined him as a beetle. Which implies that the man Gregor was a larvae for all his pre-bug life.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@futurebird Someone once told me "It's not Kafkaesque to wake up an insect. If you wake up an insect and your first thought is that this might make you late for work...*that* is Kafkaesque." That completely changed my perspective on a lot of things.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@adhdeanasl @futurebird NGL, I felt just like that.
ADHDean
Sin Vega
@roadriverrail @futurebird I think about "what have they done to us" often
Kit Rhett Aultman
@sinvega @futurebird Wow, I haven't seen this and it's great. I absolutely love comedy that juxtaposes the banal with the existential like that.
It's also why this commercial from Welcome To Nightvale lives in my head...not rent free, but certainly as a shabby deadbeat roommate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxaNCyWsWrc
Kit Rhett Aultman
@player_03 @sinvega @futurebird Wow, that was...intense. Really.
player_03
@roadriverrail @sinvega @futurebird Night Vale has some great commercials in that vein. I'd forgotten about that one, but I'm glad to have been reminded.
As far as mixing the existential and the banal, check out Luke Humphris's recent work. Here's the one that I think spells it out the most directly: https://youtu.be/Yohfoz_50J4
Kit Rhett Aultman
@Illuminatus @player_03 @sinvega @futurebird I've heard a hypothesis that laughter started as a way to signal "What I thought was a danger was in fact not." So, for example...unk bunk the early human hears a rustling in the bushes and goes into alert thinking it's a predator, but then only a tiny bird comes out of the bushes...hahahha! That's hilarious! I thought we'd die but it was harmless!
From that point of view, transforming dread into humor is a way to save us from our own thoughts.
Seiðr
@player_03 @roadriverrail @sinvega @futurebird I have three Night Vale t-shirts because it helped me go through one of the worst periods of my life. If anything it captures perfectly how sometimes "humour" is just another name for acceptance of cosmic, existential dread.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@j3j5 @futurebird Maybe I should have pushed through the first couple episodes of that show...
Julio J. 🀲
Clifford Adams
@roadriverrail @futurebird
<wakes up as an insect> "Is this covered under my employer's health insurance?"
Tony Wells
@wikicliff @roadriverrail @futurebird
It's not on the approved list of valid reasons to work from home, Gregor. Be in by 9am.
Kit Rhett Aultman
@tko @wikicliff @futurebird Full marks.
Tommi Komulainen
@wikicliff @roadriverrail @futurebird the horror stories I know about US health insurance practices I believe <waking up as an insect> sounds like a precondition
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