#142: Entropy and/or Drought
How do you know if you're getting fobbed off by a planet? What happens when the last black hole evaporates? How do you parent in the desert? Will there be sofas in heaven?
Oh, hello. [Turns from drawing table] I didn't see you there!
It’s me, Jason Chatfield, (@) your editor for this week’s somewhat grim edition of
This week we flip last week’s topic of Flowers and Showers on its pretty little head, and explore all there is to enjoy about the grim topics of Entropy and/or Drought! To me, there’s nothing funnier than dark, awful things that end in either death or thirst. (Seriously, how funny is thirst!?) Anyhoo. I get a little political with my cartoon, but at least we can all come away with the answer to life’s most important question: Are there going to be sofas made out of clouds in heaven?
I admit I had to google the definition for "entropy" in order to participate in this week's Toonstack. Here's what I got:Â
PHYSICS
a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into social work, often interpreted as the degree of a system's inability to find a date, time, and place for catch-up drinks that works for all parties involved. Â
"the second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases with the responsibilities of middle age"
2.
lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into planless-ness, ie a condition in which life becomes a gaping morass of blank, untamed space: no dinner plans, no coffee dates, no parties, no meetings, no deadlines, no expectations, nobody's needs but your own --yes this what you think you want, deep in the blindness of your ordered forrays, but when that swath of black blank time comes, strangling you with dark matter, you realize it's too cold! it's too empty! It's not what you want, no, no, no, bring me back to the warmth of other planets, bring me back to the liiight... but it's too late, Mars! It's too late!...
"a calendar where entropy reigns supreme"
One of my favorite short stories is Asimov’s ‘The Last Question’, which centers around a supercomputer grappling with the question of how human existence can avert the heat-death of the Universe. At the risk of dissecting the comedic frog, the structure of the story really lends itself to a comic interpretation, given that it’s essentially a long-form joke with a punchline you need to wait ten trillion years for, so it’s a lot of fun building tension on that kind of scale only to provide a punchline far less profound than Asimov’s original.
I have such affection for the gangsters at the end of the dock. I love to play with them. They’re my very favorite trope, I think.
Whenever I get old and start watching children to pay rent, I hope to embrace the chaos as much as Tatiana.
@Navied Mahdavian
I drew this early in the pandemic, a period that embodied the second law of thermodynamics. Time moved forward (supposedly) and everything was chaos. Oh, and I was a new dad. A period where time moves forward (supposedly) and everything is chaos.
@Kendra Allenby
This is from when I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2018. The first month and a half of the hike was all desert, and finding a bit of shade to nap in during the hottest part of the day is key. The shade shown here is way more than we found most days. Luckily, you're tired AF so you can make do with almost anywhere for a mid-day nap, even if it's just sticking your head under a bush for an hour so you can wake up to remember you're 13 miles from your next water source. 10/10. Would recommend.
But wait, there’s more!
Hilary releases
every Friday!Check out Navied Mahdavian’s critically acclaimed graphic memoir, This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America.
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in his cartoon Substack calledFind more of Kendra’s cartoons at her website.
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Could birds fly on the moon?