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I initially had deep misgivings about concluding this week's strip where I did, but you've probably heard writers saw on and on about their commitment to honesty and the human experience, so here I give you what I believe to be the deepest truth and clearest conviction regarding the process of philosophical inquiry. Can the Martinizers remove hubris?

Many juicy outtakes and failed dialectics posting in two hours in Tier 2!

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Comments

Bruce Wright

Grew up in a creepy polluted refinery town. My entire personality IS just a shitty response to trauma. GET OUT OF MY BRAIN, Onstad

Achewood

I'd ask which one, but then realized this describes...one million towns? Two million?

Tom P

the intoxicated cats inadvertently reach the core doctrine of "no-self" yet cannot recognize that karmas are only one impinging factor upon the progress of this precious human (or feline) life

Anthony Thompson

Thought that said “We do have free WiFi” and so I came here in a hurry and now you look click-baity

Mike Duquette

As a self-professed non-imbiber—not teetotal, simply less of a taste for it all—my thought was always that such discussions were weed ideas, not borne of fermented grain. I come to Achewood for knowledge!

Achewood

Horror and taxes, man. Horror and taxes. Plus food ain't good any more

Achewood

They're almost begging Cartilage Head to show up and teach them something inscrutable.

Achewood

I had the same glimpse of a thought while scanning over this before posting. Hello, welcome to my Best Western, password HappyStay

Achewood

You can certainly get there on the brown stuff — briefly, and angrily, before the tears and/or brutish furniture-tossing. Usually occurs between minutes 15-60.

Tom P

cartilage head - the new host of infowars

Achewood

I should have called The Onion to lobby for him to have an infowars column. The column would just be old scans of the harness section of the 1902 Sears Roebuck catalog, with certain ones circled.

Achewood

So many people want that kiss, but I have explained how bad Lyle smells right? You ever been near someone who lives and smokes in their van?

Jay Y

It can be considered a feather in your cap if you didn't go all Murderland by Caroline Fraser as a result.

Jay Y

The things Pat needs to purge from inside him, the liquor cannot reach.

Achewood

the circle of life, unbroken, etc etc

Bungus Bronbo

I do a thing with Achewood comics where I make a mini-comic in my head out of the first and last panels and this one's pretty good. As with all things, whether or not we have free will depends on your definition of free will. If it's "the ability to act without being influenced by factors outside of your control," then of course we don't have free will, because everyone is subject to factors outside of your control. If you want a slice of pizza and go to get one, that's a response to stimuli outside your control, like hunger, cravings (which can be your body's response to nutrient deficiencies, associations you develop with stimuli and feelings like eating ice cream when feeling crummy) and the availability of pizza and lack of availability to things you might prefer. But it's not like it's a problem, y'know? It feels like free will and you can still act in ways that you want to and are fulfilled by. It's less prison cell and more free-range.

Achewood

He cannot purge the trauma from his ancestors' ovaries ...unless perhaps Cartilage Head has a Specific Way

rickward

Determinism has so far always found a way to stop free will from being invented and, according to the theory of determinism, always will

Noah Malmstadt

Perhaps the greatest artistic depiction of upchucking ever created?

Achewood

Making a mini-strip out of first and last panels is deeply intriguing as an exercise. I wonder if there is a way to automate the production of these, using such as "scripts" and the "JSON" thing I always see when I ask google about how to improve in life. Imagine if we only had free will and no instincts/outside factors. There would be so many red Lamborghinis getting repossessed

Jay Y

It is fucked up that I have to know about how trauma changes our DNA. "Good luck untangling those double helices, asshole!"

blair

Good volume, not much impulse. Pat's never gonna move a football with that one.

Achewood

Thank you Noah. I am working with the ghost of Heinz Edelmann to animate it now.

Brian Sutton

Chris I see you mentioning Cartilage Head more than once are we getting a hint of a comeback?

Achewood

It's nice to live so close to so many superfund sites here in the PNW. You can really feel the lumberjack murder zombie thing. Maybe I need to develop a western cousin for Nice Pete.

Achewood

The good news is you can change it back! Just buy this Liposomal Glutathione as endorsed by Gary Brecka, only $30 a month or just $1 a day, but you have to drink it with these Hydrogen+ tablets, only $30 a month or just $1 a day

Achewood

It's his rookie season. Given Pat's stubbornness and volume of bile, he'll get there.

Ted

....I found this strangely (again) heartwarming

Achewood

I'd need to emotionally gear up to do that much original artwork again. I have been wondering if he'll show up in Microsoft 1953 (tier 2 comic series)...maybe there is enough goodwill built up here where people will endure him again.

Achewood

Men bein' friends. At least they aren't fighting. Or doomscrolling clips of rally cars creaming through livestock.

Nicholas Williams

I’m free-willin’ up some mad ha-ha at barfin’ Pat! Man there’s NOTHING better than barfin’ Pat. Can we have a strip this size, except every panel is a variation on Pat and Lyle violently puke-screaming in different rooms/areas?

Tom P

They probably would be willing to run you next to Kelly, if "the price is right"

Achewood

I take commissions. Something maybe 3' x 4', for over the mantle?

Achewood

Now I'm just sad that none of this could possibly happen

Morgan

Inserting my own head canon that Pat threw up more and for longer than makes any biological sense. Just a steady brown-orange flow for five straight minutes, some honest-to-god Resident Evil shit. They broke the three dollar barrier for whiskey, but at a terrible price if you can't hold it.

Achewood

You're picking up what I'm putting down. Reminds me of how sometimes at 3am I will wake up and pee more than I have cumulatively drunk in the prior two days.

Jay Y

I'd buy a special toothpaste if it promised to make me smarter with no further lifestyle changes, but savvy consumer that I am, I'll wait for the inevitable sale on this one (or promise of diminishing stocks due to tariffs).

Zen Window

Quieting those misgivings was the right call. Pat and Lyle drunk philosophizing was worth smiles, Pat going full Brundlefly got the laugh.

Linus Lee

This is gonna change lives.

Tom P

I think Mr. Onion is on bluesky. You can just DM him. I'll take 2% and a free subscription as a finder's fee.

Zen Window

A Spike to Pete's Snoopy (a Snoopy to Pete's Spike?) is an idea with legs.

Achewood

Reminder to self to rewatch that scene. Plus Mr. Creosote.

Achewood

Pat and Lyle, rightful heirs to the legacy of Schopenhauer

Achewood

Pass the empty glass of wine and let's toast

Distant Egg Song

I was typing up a long treatise on how the metaphysics of Achewood implies that it seems like a universe where free will can exist but only on accident, but my doctor says that too much vicarious worldbuilding is bad for my heart health, so I'm just gonna guess that Lonis Edison has come up with a fix for this and it's lost between the cushions of an avaricious Chesterfield.

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

If I had any, it would be Sauternes. Or possibly gewords tra minner.

Bruce Wright

Superfund sites? Ha! My high school was directly adjacent to one! That stuff blowing in that looks like snow? IT'S NOT SNOW

Jay Y

Schopenhauer's mom hated him, pass it on.

Jasen Johns

Wasn't Pat in recovery? Like, did Lyle just punt Pat off o' a wagon called sobriety?

GruntyGinMan

Life is never neat. Life is always bad.

DocHaus

Damn we gotta invent free will? Off the clock? Sounds like a lotta work.

Achewood

Bluesky...The Angry Place™

Achewood

I always wondered how mesothelioma lawyers could afford prime time ads

Derek Adams

With enough volume it could conceivably float on the surface

Achewood

I wonder if there's a way to modify our genome so our gums weep their own toothpaste

Achewood

Young Schopenhauer - we should all write this in order to show the world what Young Sheldon *could* have been

Achewood

Was he? I don't remember that reference. Which is not to say it isn't out there in the 1M words of strip and blog transcripts...I am fond of saying that I would lose any achewood trivia contest.

Achewood

Especially since we don't even know where to start. DMT? College? Calling a number off a telephone pole?

Achewood

I like the idea that free will can happen if you walk beneath a special horseshoe-shaped glass tube (12" diameter) in Lonis Edison's workshop. When you walk back under it going the other way, though, you become a guy who keeps a personal scorebook sheet at baseball games.

Tom P

roast beef's summary of twitter to Phillipe in twenty dickety thirteen remains completely and increasingly accurate for all social media sites and yes, I do hate waffles

Tom P

(this is levity, I love waffles as do all right-thinking people allowed to eat carbs by science or religion)

Jasen Johns

Maybe I just misread Pat’s various transformations as including body checking a drinking problem? All of these cats are drinking and smoking a lot less, these days, tho’.

Thunk

The subset who want them to kiss is now a smaller subset

Thunk

But it is ... forbidden

Oppido

I appreciate that the whiskey is still in the paper bag despite there being no cops around. And speaking of lawbreaking, I'm hoping next week's strip picks up exactly one second after this one, and involves Nice Pete (manifesto-maker since Old Times) wandering into the room.

2scrogz

"I'M BORN WRONG AND COMPOUNDIN'!!!" = instant classic. For what it's worth, the ending was always inevitable once Lyle announced a bottle of whiskey had broken the $3 barrier. Like that was a fully loaded Chekov's Gun situation that could only result in this final panel of Pat horking his guts out.

Josh Egbert

The concept of free will also makes me vomit

Sedric and Charlie

This is going to make for an interesting session with Arthur

b.zap

Pat's hair is like his scalp is throwing up

Nate

Realistically, this was the only way this was ever going to go, so... Huh

Zach M

Maybe next week the throw up cat can shit his pants 💩👖

Asherdan

what the fuck, 'stad.

severecorvid

Ah yes, as expected, the man who aspires to an incorruptible body is most vulnerable to filth and poison. Are we ever more present than during that all-consuming moment where you feel your guts come up and you’re trying not to die? Peter Watts (iirc) wrote that consciousness has its purest expression in the intersection of conflicting imperatives, like when you’re trapped underwater and want to take a breath, but know you'll drown if you do. Not sure why I felt the need to mention that but here we are

kdusjjdhxksj

Nah you can drink yourself philosophical real easily. You can tell you're getting there when the wimps start leaving

kdusjjdhxksj

A one-man performance of Stand By Me

kdusjjdhxksj

Sometimes some light gets in, even if it's not supposed to

kdusjjdhxksj

Maybe vertically, if he keeps at it for a while

Nick Culp

So many people could imagine a cat they draw throwing up a stream of throwup, but you imagined Pat, the person we know, instinctively suppressing his reaction and you drew two streams of throwup split by his arm. I really had a look at it. That’s why I subscribe. I have really had to have had a look at the things you make.

kdusjjdhxksj

Lyle smells so bad that now Pat smells bad

kdusjjdhxksj

Smaller and more enthusiastic. Efficient.

Achewood

Now it's just sadists who want Pat to taste a Marlboro Red butt stubbed out on an onion that was shitting

Achewood

Thank you for referencing Chekhov anywhere within ten miles of this comic strip

Achewood

I like how you didn't say "want" to vomit. Because you have no choice!

Achewood

True story. I don't really want to push smoking, so I turned that dial way back. And maybe, you know, twenty-five years in, their old guts just can't Fun it Up that way the way they used to.

Achewood

I think if Pat had fully gone sober he'd rubbed it in everybody's faces a thousand times, insisted no alcohol ever be visible at their homes, etc.

Achewood

Don't give me too many entirely useful ideas. paper bag: The whiskey might just be in a bag-bladder with a glass neck dispenser glued to the top.

Achewood

I considered having them see Mr. Gary directly, but then I realized that's probably not allowed.

Achewood

Everything is trying to get away from the $3 whiskey

Achewood

Well, yeah. Nondrinker glugging $3 whiskey? Let's hope Lyle finds a twenty in Pat's passed-out pocket.

Achewood

Hey man I'm above that Oh wait, Ray did pickles in the motel bed once

Achewood

It's what people want. I have a spreadsheet. I just deliver according to the data.

Thunk

Lucifer's Cocktail

Thunk

The penultimate panel, the indicators of what is coming. One can sense the sudden saliva of the system activating. If you know you know. Masterpiece.

Sedric and Charlie

There was the thing with Colonel Ephraim and the matchstick too. I was about to suggest such matters only seem to happen to Ray, but in searching for the exact strip I was reminded of the time Teodor was made to defecate on a stranger's lawn by Nice Pete This is NOT my application to become Achewood's copro-chronicler, just so that we are all clear

Sedric and Charlie

...oh for god's sake there's the strip where Ray photographs his stepped-in dogshit and the one where Beef is incapacitated by dog mess on the way to the junkyard. Fine gimme the desk plate

Achewood

This just gave me the following thought: What if Pat becomes the Lyle of the strip? Alternately, to Watts' statement: Lyle is a known barber. Pat hates barbers. Perhaps Pat reconciling his hatred of barbers with his appreciation of Lyle will break his consciousness out to newer levels?

Achewood

I knew he had to be vomiting onto his forearm. It makes no good sense, and he is not in a sense-making condition, but in this gesture we can see that some kind of poor choice was made, and the nature of this poor choice is its own kind of comment on the man. You can interpret it to various degrees depending on how well you know Pat. Sure, it's fun that a cat threw up on his arm, thinks the layperson. But to the regular reader of this universe, that he threw up on his arm and it went in two directions is the reward of your devotion.

Achewood

And just for fun, I translated all those verbs in your last sentence into German: Ich musste mir wirklich einmal die Dinge ansehen, die du machst.

Bill

I'm having fun imagining the wearied disgust that Cornelius would be evincing after hearing mere seconds of Pat and Lyle's conversation.

Shawn Warren

I was gonna be like “Lyle isn’t a cat, he’s a tiger” but then I thought about that for one second, carry on

Achewood

The roil of the boil in the coil

Achewood

I toyed with having him come in at the end and do his usual terse, succinct demolishing. But then I thought of something BETTER

severecorvid

That got me thinking, what if Pat’s hate for barbers is not a trauma response, but the actual core of his very being? Everything sloughs off with his newfound enlightenment, except his truest hate. Bet theres a fucking german word for "the hate that makes you you"

rickward

big Scott McCloud energy with that mini-comic idea

Datura

that do be how it ends

Achewood

Whenever I see a Scott McCloud reference I go back to his wikipedia page to refresh myself, but then I read the words "comics theorist" and immediately the Indiana jones Thought-Wall of "those who can't do, teach" slams shut on the exercise. This is a remnant instinct of my earlier, more arrogant days.

Achewood

How about "Selbstformungswut" - "self-forming anger." Can I get a WUT WUT

Achewood

Waffles are the greatest combination of texture and air yet invented.

Achewood

But what's with the creepy human arms? Who the hell is supposed to explain THAT weird shit!?

FactWino

Mr. Creosote! My childhood RB (can you have two RB’s, or does one have to be the Ray?) and I laughed so hard at that. Specifically when he spews onto the cleaning woman’s back.

A. C.

A lovely depiction of intoxicant-philosophy making. Interesting area of discussion more generally, for which my professional contribution will be: we are a complex system of innate factors, acquired factors, and self-referential programming that are interlinked (interlinked?) and probably interdependent

Achewood

Are you a professional philosophy professor? Because that is a rich take, and one to which I am inclined to agree. I appreciate the use of complex rather than complicated, as we seem stochastic to ourselves, at least to the degree we are intellectually capable of predicting the sources of personal behavior, or even be honest about what we’re doing for like one dang second.

A. C.

Sorry, shouldn't make myself out to the wrong kind of professional-- merely a clinician! Happy to hear about your agreement-- people are strange indeed.

Achewood

A catbird seat to the human struggle! As you are a professional people-understander, I ask on behalf of us all: what should we do? Generally. But specifics appreciated.

A. C.

Any universal advice is worthless, but I can boil it down to this: "Seek and stay in treatment (ideally professional type). Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back." The latter is, of course, not my saying, but from The Dhammapada...

Gozan

I once had to throw up and tried to stop it by clamping my hand over my mouth, resulting in the vomit fanning out from my palm, painting a thin line along the floor, walls and roof looping back on itself. May this anecdote inspire you artistically!

Achewood

I like to think that Robert Sapolsky's office at Stanford still has the key in the outside lock, from the time he almost went in but was then like "what's the point"

Achewood

This is where I usually expect a Buddhist maxim to conclude with the line, "And what leads you forward is what also holds you back," so you have to do a bunch of hard thinky stuff that you can't be sure about.

Achewood

I both do and don't want a photograph (or better yet / worse yet, a video) of this phenomenon. In lieu of that, please tell the class for which neat reason did you have to barf.

A. C.

Ha, they do like their didactic confusion...

A. Hamster

Last week, I doomscrolled monkeys being unsafe around power lines.

A. Hamster

As a condo owner, I can confirm that everything I think is just reactions to someone else’s noise. Free will is consciously choosing not to drown someone else’s children, unless that’s just conditioning to keep me out of jail (which is just condo living with rape).

Achewood

This presents no challenge as a believable scenario in Today's Information Landscape

Achewood

Man, they shouda added another sheetrock layer to that party wall