{"id":127,"date":"2009-05-27T11:21:12","date_gmt":"2009-05-27T10:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/?p=127"},"modified":"2010-09-24T09:06:21","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T08:06:21","slug":"metaphysical-speculation-into-the-nature-of-this-comic-or-lovelace-and-babbage-vs-the-salamander-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/metaphysical-speculation-into-the-nature-of-this-comic-or-lovelace-and-babbage-vs-the-salamander-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Metaphysical Speculation Into The Nature of This Comic, or: Lovelace and Babbage vs The Salamander People"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case any neurologists out there are studying the creative process, I thought it might be interesting to post the following enlightening non-episode.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned earlier my Accomplice and I went to this steampunk shindig<\/a> the other day. The theme for this shindig was “Journey To the Center of the Earth”, so of course I had to point out to Mr V, “Did you know that Charles Babbage once went into Mount Vesuvius, where he set his walking stick on fire, and almost lost his barometer?”\u00a0 (True!\u00a0 and an AWESOME story<\/a> –Babbage get out of the Volcano!! Babbage?\u00a0 Babbage??!).<\/p>\n

Of course then I do a doodle:<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nThis is just the sort of contextless tableau I like to draw, so I worked it up when I got home:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then I think of the caption– “Charles Babbage once went into Mount Vesuvius, where he battled the salamander people<\/span> offered some guy a drink.”<\/p>\n

But surely the amiable Charles Babbage, that most affable of men, wouldn’t battle<\/em> the Salamander People, unless they were playing street music or refusing to fund the Difference Engine?\u00a0 For although fearless in defense of their subterranean flame-caverns, they have never been know to instigate hostilities against the human race (fact!).\u00a0 What he WOULD do of course is offer them a drink, which would make a great (if ancient) gag:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Which would fit really well into an actual plot-line… quick glance at wikipedia turns up a plethora of potential — salamanders are the only vertebrates that can re-grow limbs! they lay their eggs in hidden caches suspended by mucus tendrils!\u00a0 Many are poisonous or capture prey with sticky tongues!\u00a0 They can see ultraviolet light!\u00a0 Also… volcanoes.. sacrifices.. barometer.. Hattifatteners… and this where I’ve stopped myself because I already have enough episodes at this stage of “wouldn’t it be cool if…”\u00a0 Diagram:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And anyways, are there even salamander-people in this universe?!\u00a0 That’s not very Educational!!\u00a0 There’s vampires possibly at some point.. if a universe contains vampires does it follow it also contains salamander-people?\u00a0 Are there any statistics on this?\u00a0 Should I take a poll?\u00a0 That’s all ‘social media’ or something.<\/p>\n

Final note:\u00a0 in doing the original drawing I had to ask myself if Babbage would be wearing a hat.\u00a0 For most of western history a man would sooner go outside without his trousers as without a hat, so this is pretty important.\u00a0 This raises the question:\u00a0 is an underground cavern ‘inside’ or ‘outside’?\u00a0 You wouldn’t think this would be an easy question to answer except that if you go to the Brunel museum, conveniently located where he built the world’s first underwater tunnel, you see this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

See, opinion is clearly divided even then.\u00a0 (Note to the 19th century–\u00a0 That’s TOTALLY ‘inside’, because it’s a man-made structure.\u00a0 That’s just plain logic.)\u00a0 Anyways it messes up my composition, plus Babbage goes really off-model with the hat.\u00a0 Possible solution: sequence where hat catches fire?\u00a0 Not sure why I put in this digression except I love those guys in the tunnel with their hats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case any neurologists out there are studying the creative process, I thought it might be interesting to post the following enlightening non-episode. As I mentioned earlier my Accomplice and I went to this steampunk shindig the other day. The theme for this shindig was “Journey To the Center of the Earth”, so of course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meanwhile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sydneypadua.com\/2dgoggles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}