The Intelligent Design of Whales

135 Minutes of Commute: Testify -- Common

Comic: Non-Sequitor; Thank you Yahoo.com

Secretly I have been obsessed with whales since reading Herman Melville's Moby Dick last year. I know he uses the whale solely as a symbol for a myriad of ideas and points, but I still cannot help my resulting predilection for all whales. To me, the title of this comic is ironic when taken in conjunction with my experience with whales (a.k.a., the reading of Moby Dick, which is, you see, my only acquaintance with whales -- aside from the life-sized paper-mache humpback that hangs seemingly unsupported (Douglas Adams style, donchano) just below the ceiling of the American Museum of Natural History). I wrote a paper on Melville and Toni Morrison (for a class, mind you; I certainly did not come up with this juxtapostion of authors on my own) which discussed their individual and endless quests to challenge all methods of thinking, learning, and understanding. Melville's part in this paper was heavily contingent upon Ishmael's intense desire to know the whale in it's entirety and his pursuit of said desire via every method of learning possible: literature, language, science, observation, hunting, consumption, etc. This is, of course, a snippet of my paper, which was, in turn, a small shaving of the ideas presented. In any case, if this comic has any validity, Ishmael was wasting his fucking time: the evolution of whales was a mishap. On the other hand, this comic also portrays the method that MIT uses to mold and grow the brilliant minds it ushers forth into the world each year. (Come dear freshman and we will slake thy thirst; try and drink from this fire-hose we call education.)

Is it a coincidence that this my favorite quote

                                             My style is kinda phat
                                             Reminiscent of a whale
  - A Tribe Called Quest