Herp durp sheeple.
Oh shit, he’s going to retire tomorrow and get killed today!
Is there a good pension plan for an organization like the Cook Family?
There is if they’re actually a government/corporate/religiously backed conspiracy to suppress dissidents! 0.o
Uh HUH. Ask yourself if the government/corporate/religiously-backed conspiracies IRL are fond of pensions. I think their current term for those is “entitlements”…
Hahaha, “Herd”? Glad to know Cooks think they’re just like reg’lar folks.
Herd…damn, Hypatia, I was just starting to like you and then
you use a word like that. A word like that is born of contempt.
Man Cook Family you used to be cool now you sound like the kids smoking behind the gym
I don’t think it’s “herd” in the “look at us we’re so individualistic!” sense.
I think it’s “herd” as in the thing that wolves hunt.
That’s just as bad, if not worse.
Sounds like Old Dude there is getting tired of trolling, while Thesis Girl is still enjoying the sensation of being in on a joke only clever people understand.
BTW, Old Dude’s shirt is interesting. The short, puffy sleeves and the ornamental buttons on the V-neckline are generally considered feminine in the real world. I really like how this strip plays with fashion!
Well, Papa Cook didn’t use the word, it was Baby Cook; she may not have meant it completely sincerely, and even if she did, we’d expect a young Cook teasing an older Cook to be a less reliable portrayal of mature Cook attitudes than anything Papa Cook says. So I maintain hope in the Cooks as a whole. Still, augh.
IDK, the casual way she tossed it out there implied it’s a common and accepted phrase in their group. It makes a lot of sense, actually, based on what little we’ve seen/heard of the Cook Family so far.
I like how relaxed Patti is here. Her calm affection comes across clearly, implying that this is somebody she’s known for a long time, and that she trusts and cares about him. I wonder if/how much of her earlier behavior at the copy shop was some level of acting…
I agree, look how open her face is in panel four.
That’s a little difficuly, considering there’s only three panels in this page. o.O
Only three panels, what do…. OH, you mean you don’t have a Templar Arizona GOLD account?
How do you get by without the bonus panel?
Hush I say! Hush! The child is obviously touched!
He’s a brooding ,depressive, paranoid, socially and/or psychologically abnormal weirdo; I’m guessing NONE.
Yeah, I can’t say that I’m surprised at least one of the Cooks turned out to be the sort of douche that would use a term like that.
The use of the term didn’t seem derogatory to me. and she certainly seems to like ‘mlk’ well enough. hard to say how much of the beginning for this bit in the copy shop was her being in character.
I love conversations between two people who are dysfunctional in different ways.
Well, he may not have called the police, but he came THIS close of publishing a whole article about it… http://templaraz.com/?p=453
OK, correct me if I get anything wrong because I don’t have time to look through the archives now, but..
didn’t Papa Cook say something about how his kids love the cereal Ben had at his place?
Maybe ‘Baby Cook’ and ‘Papa Cook’ shouldn’t be considered just nicknames ;)
I find the intensity of the reactions against “herd” interesting. What associations does it bring up with you guys? To me, it sounds a bit like the term “sheeple,” referring to people who don’t pay attention to politics, just keep their heads down and allow themselves to be herded by their masters. It’s prejorative, in a sense, but the term also implies an Evil Other who is the Real Problem.
There is another metaphor making the rounds in the circles I run where the State is looked upon as a farmer or rancher and all the private people working in all their private-sector jobs and paying taxes are the “livestock.” In this sense, “livestock” is not at all prejorative, and usually is meant to include the speaker.
the intense reaction is because there is a stereotype of the kind of person who says things like “sheeple”. the stereotype is that they are arrogant about their new found knowledge of politics, which is actually probably meager at best and revolves around having read one Ayn Rand book in college.
Man Cook Family you used to be cool now you sound like the kids smoking behind the gym”
With Scott on this one.. is the best argument against using a term like “herd” or “sheeple” really that it reminds us of high school? Ayn Rand, ok, but what about Hannah Arendt? I’ve heard a ton of arguments against the concept of the banality of evil, but I have yet to hear one go beyond a poor excuse for weak behavior. The Cooks are more willing to be abrasive and offensive than Rec, but Rec could just as easily refer to people as such, and they’d be justified in doing so.
I found these reactions interesting too. The ‘herd mentality’ can be applied to anyone who doesn’t question convention and blindly accepts the explanations of the social majority (or a dominant minority), regardless of one’s political/religious/economic ideology.
Oh BOO HOO it wasn’t enough to theatrically disrupt that smug little rally (Rec is indeed righteous in principle but Barney’s ambitiously overcompetent functionaries are already in the process of turning it reptilian), now those nasty Cooks had the *insensitivity* to speak dismissively of the arguably-complacent masses with which they _obviously_ don’t identify, in the extreme privacy of their own little vent-session. Isn’t it possible that, given the obvious long-term familiarity demonstrated here, they established a much more nuanced, politically-neutral, rigorously-qualified regard for the populace YEARS ago but leave such unwieldy terminology implicitly understood between themselves now?
One huge difference between Cooks and those “kids smoking behind the gym” is that Cooks *aren’t* just smoking behind the gym, so how they sound is trivial relative to what they do, and what we’re seeing here is not some Prayer Meeting rehash of doctrine vetted to academic standards, but a “do-we-or-don’t-we-have-a-situation-here” kinda huddle. Immediate. Practical. Private. Where content is more important than style.
bravo tEd:P. I like your use of the term ‘reptilian’ and I think you clarify well the dynamics of the conversation at hand.
“The herd” ? Hm. I used to know people who played the 1990s “Call of Cthulhu” role playing game. They used to call the (fictional), innocent bystanders, the name: “the sheep”.
NAME — Get an avatar
EMAIL — Required / not published