[528]Hello Ketrak: part deux

Well, seeing as the direct approach would involve killing a sentient being (and even then she couldn't be sure it's actually Muut who comes), this is little surprising. :o)

Annie's on the slippery slope to murdering shadow people to get dates (or set up Kat) with Muut... Lookout shadow 2!

Any Native Americans around the Court might wish to watch their backs when Annie’s around.

I do wish that Annie could have found a less violent way to get the attention of the Guides, but I suppose there is none (apart from just waiting around for something to die, which could take a while).

I would like to know what Annie wants to speak to Ketrak about. To find some way of conveying her apologies to Mort, or to find out why the Guides wanted her to have a blinker stone? At least we'll (probably) learn next Monday.

Tom said something about Ketrak's appearance. In retrospect, his comment had a bit of foreshadowing.

You know, given the number of bugs that must die every second, I wonder if maybe there are a lot of identical beings called "Ketrak", all controlled by a hive mind.

Probably not (he probably just uses psychopomp magic to get around), but I thought it was a cool idea.

Haven't seen Muut in a while. Hopefully if Carver can get in touch with him he'll be willing to spill the beans (and perhaps deliver an apology to ole Mort). Maybe we can look forward to a flashback about the source of Antimony's anger toward the Guides.

you called it, Snes!

Thats the kind of thinking that will make you one of the first against the wall when the giant ant space aliens come to conquer our planet. From space.

As an argument in moral philosophy, it doesn’t hold much water. For one thing, ants killing ants doesn’t make it OK for us to kill ants. Suppose some aliens orbiting earth in their death-ray-equipped spaceship were observing things down here, and came to the conclusion that since humans were killing other humans all the time, it would probably be OK to kill some for their own purposes … Furthermore, for all we know, ants have no concept of morality, so they cannot tell (or show) us what is right and wrong in the ant universe. They just do what ants do. We, on the other hand, do have such concepts, and thus the ball stays in our court – we have to decide whether it’s right or wrong to kill an ant, rather than having the ants decide it for us.

In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ketrak got mad when summoned that way. The guy must be pretty busy as it is.

Good point.

I see this discussion turning into half of us saying it's morally wrong for Annie to kill the ant and the other half saying it's perfectly alright for her to do it. I'm with the other half personally.

Actually that ant didn't just happen to be nearby, it was in the test tube and brought out so it could be killed.

Have you guys never killed a bug before? I certainly have.

In the eyes of Ketrak, I must be a monster.

Personally I think that Ketrak should be never actually seen in the comic. Like someone mentioned earlier, our own personal image of Ketrak is something that can never be lived up to exactly, much like, say, Zimmy's science project or The Cursed Teapot incident. In my mind, Zimmy' science project is something so horrific and monstrous that it cannot, and should never, ever be committed to paper. And that's the fun of it, it's something else for every person.

I think Tom said that Ketrak has the power to reveal himself or not.