0059 - Cinnamon Buns
Added 2024-04-05 17:00:08 +0000 UTC(As is becoming custom, watch the In-Universe and Author's Tier for the rejected panels from this strip! Posting at noon Pacific Time.)
ALT TEXT: Each of us has a public life, a private life, and a secret life. The secret life is where we wrestle with our base, unvarnished, and uncorrected animal impulses, hot from the factory. We typically do not share the secret life with anyone — not even our friends, spouses, or therapists.
There is a quote that goes something like, “Love is when someone sees the ugliest side of you, and still stays.” Here, we see Beef’s secret life. He won’t let his spouse see it, so he can’t know if she can truly love him, because he won’t give her the chance. Their relationship exists in an incomplete state. From that, they can only reap incomplete rewards.
Paradoxically, completely sharing our secret life would obliterate the trust of our partner, and that is why it is a secret. In the recovery world it is common wisdom that secrets kill, but there must be a way to manage our secrets in order to stay healthily bonded. From the discord of hosting these multiple selves we must derive whatever it is we are, although who we are may just depend on who is tasked with experiencing us.
This will be a fun topic for you and your partner to discuss over dinner in a quiet, expensive restaurant this evening.
Comments
So if who we are depends on who is perceiving us, there is a self for each perceiver, multiplied by three for the public, private, and secret selves discussed above. But is the secret life just an amalgam off all the public lives, and simulacra of our various acquaintances we create in order to understand them? Can we ever know ourselves truly without being born entirely alone, and left that way until we've tempered an attitude? Holy mcmoly these strips do make me think. I wish someone would perceive me like molly perceives beef, so I could see the futility in containing my secret self at all.
Ruxine
2024-05-01 09:09:49 +0000 UTCI have watched enough Great British Bake-Off to know that the word Roast Beef is looking for is "over-baked."
2scrogz
2024-04-11 23:01:11 +0000 UTCThis is the second time Tim Krieder has come up today, for me. The first time I saw it, this comic: http://thepaincomics.com/weekly050406.htm made me _cry_ laughing
Spyguitar
2024-04-11 18:00:56 +0000 UTCSecrecy is guilt, shame, and harsh self-judgment. Privacy is restraint, boundaries, mutual respect. But forgetting a word and going into vapor lock is part of my favorite AbFab episode: "Darling, even Amanda de Cadenet would remember the word 'accessories'."
ladiesbane
2024-04-09 12:42:31 +0000 UTCHow It’s Made: A Shoe is a delight
Nicole Lyden
2024-04-09 00:39:06 +0000 UTCAmazing mouth-art on Beef today.
Michael F
2024-04-08 16:52:21 +0000 UTCNever thought I'd say this, but Beef could learn something from Ray about silencing his inner voice when it's just some sass in the main.
John Perich
2024-04-08 14:09:19 +0000 UTCRead Leonard Cohen's Death to this Book and his "commentary" on it. Cohen's version of Achewood and the alt-text.
Alexander Rediger
2024-04-07 12:23:19 +0000 UTCI experience this regularly, post-40
Alexander Rediger
2024-04-07 00:36:31 +0000 UTCbake
E Corcoran
2024-04-06 14:55:37 +0000 UTC"I work all day, and get half-drunk at night"
E Corcoran
2024-04-06 14:54:34 +0000 UTCHis last piece for the NYT was in 2023, so he's still churning em out it seems
E Corcoran
2024-04-06 14:53:42 +0000 UTCNot all secrets are bad
souvlaki Alabama
2024-04-06 04:09:12 +0000 UTCOkay but what is the word he was forgetting though
Douglas Wykstra
2024-04-06 01:58:42 +0000 UTCWell this got existential. My partner's away and it's 1am but almost called her on the basis of some alt text.
James
2024-04-06 00:14:13 +0000 UTCMy sister has to listen to me have this conversation about myself at least once a week
Jenn
2024-04-05 23:29:26 +0000 UTC1600s reenactor group
s b
2024-04-05 23:22:53 +0000 UTCOr, as Mr. Billy Joel says: Well, we all have a face That we hide away forever And we take them out and show ourselves When everyone has gone Some are satin, some are steel Some are silk and some are leather They're the faces of the stranger But we love to try them on Well, we all fall in love But we disregard the danger Though we share so many secrets There are some we never tell Why were you so surprised That you never saw the stranger? Did you ever let your lover see The stranger in yourself?
Benzy
2024-04-05 22:28:45 +0000 UTCAnybody know where he got off to? I quite miss The Pain.
John Robinson
2024-04-05 21:57:59 +0000 UTCI feel the same. The final panel in particular was a bit “off” to me. But on the plus side, I’m glad to hear that other functioning humans also believe that we have sides no one else can ever know. Secrets are human nature, and not inherently poisonous in the least.
Kate S.
2024-04-05 21:29:05 +0000 UTCThe roasted flour of our inevitable demise rarely slides down the esophagus of life easily, and without some manner of liquid assistance.
Crumbles
2024-04-05 21:15:24 +0000 UTCBeef Takes A Road Trip to Utah But Ruins It For Himself By Staying In An Airbnb (Coming 2026)
Oppido
2024-04-05 20:20:41 +0000 UTCIt's interesting how Beef frames his neuroses and fatalism as being destructive to Molly while still making it all about him. He frames her as a victim of his circumstance but acts as if he's putting himself second instead of front and center.
Kol
2024-04-05 20:00:07 +0000 UTC"I spit on metaphysics!" -Gaff, Blade Runner
Walter Cooke
2024-04-05 19:49:14 +0000 UTC"if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known" - tim kreider
Guilherme Töws
2024-04-05 19:40:42 +0000 UTCI really hope Molly has like a book club or something she attends. Maybe a casual neighborhood pickleball league. Just, some opportunity to interact with other kinds of brain chemistry.
Oppido
2024-04-05 19:13:12 +0000 UTCI prefer the Kelly Bundy theory, that the mind is a teacup, and once it is full, more cannot be added without some splashing out. I may have lost basic words to Achewood quotes (case in point: “Just Some Knuckleheads From The Day!”)
A. Hamster
2024-04-05 19:09:54 +0000 UTCthe dude has got no mercy
Nathan
2024-04-05 19:05:25 +0000 UTCI will confess that I wasn't really feeling the comic itself, but the "alt text" made me laugh out loud when I got to the end of it.
Kevin Worrell
2024-04-05 19:04:51 +0000 UTCI love How It's Made, is there something my doctor isn't telling me?
Shawn Warren
2024-04-05 18:43:30 +0000 UTCJesus Vlad uh I ain't even sat down yet
blair
2024-04-05 18:40:42 +0000 UTCThe man runs on a hybrid of Nihil Novi and thermodynamics
Don Rowe
2024-04-05 18:37:03 +0000 UTCMan, when are we gonna get those men being punched on the erection?
tossrock
2024-04-05 18:23:50 +0000 UTCQuiet and expensive????! Pal, have you ever even been to Texas Roadhouse?
Ian Stewart
2024-04-05 18:02:15 +0000 UTCYou reach a certain age where everything reminds you of your imminent death, but then you grow out of it. I'd recommend that Beef spend a couple days hanging out with Cornelius, who is so old he only needs to drink hot water because the heat and moisture is enough to get him going.
J Hardy Carroll
2024-04-05 17:55:48 +0000 UTCI mean, yeah. Yeah.
Julie (HiDeeHoGal)
2024-04-05 17:51:59 +0000 UTCYou even think for a minute there's some better way to play it?
David Kettler
2024-04-05 17:34:08 +0000 UTCI am fond of remembering these words three days later and yelling them out loud suddenly while giving absolutely no context to anyone around me at the time. It does little to disabuse the notion that I am going senile.
John Ashton
2024-04-05 17:30:06 +0000 UTCWhat will they say of the alt-text of our brief time together?
J.
2024-04-05 17:29:27 +0000 UTCI get about 6 panels into this comic about once a day, these days.
“Cool Mayonnaise” Hank Spurlock
2024-04-05 17:28:42 +0000 UTCHis tolerance is just through the roof I think
Ben Wissett
2024-04-05 17:24:14 +0000 UTCBurnt
GruntyGinMan
2024-04-05 17:23:26 +0000 UTCA Problem?
GruntyGinMan
2024-04-05 17:22:01 +0000 UTCHahahaha I am 42
GruntyGinMan
2024-04-05 17:21:51 +0000 UTCBaking?
Jakub
2024-04-05 17:16:58 +0000 UTCBeef's not hitting the Golden Tabloid so much these days, I guess.
Oppido
2024-04-05 17:15:20 +0000 UTC[X] Is it a shame
b.zap
2024-04-05 17:09:46 +0000 UTCBut… what IS that word???
Mark Flider
2024-04-05 17:09:29 +0000 UTC... baking?
Emerson
2024-04-05 17:08:46 +0000 UTCThe grey cat has Problems with Mortality.
Hunter
2024-04-05 17:07:58 +0000 UTCThe ending of How It’s Made: A Shoe was a real surprise! (Spoilers - a shoe is made).
Shawn Clark
2024-04-05 17:06:02 +0000 UTCAw Beef. Haven’t you learned by now?
Matt Mitchell
2024-04-05 17:04:41 +0000 UTCThe Pilsbury Doughboy all standing on Beef's shoulder, whispering "memento mori" into his ear like a sweet nothing
Distant Egg Song
2024-04-05 17:04:36 +0000 UTCThat is an incredibly long alt text
Matthew Harris
2024-04-05 17:04:06 +0000 UTCSometimes love is wondering if you trapped an innocent person, indeed.
Josh Egbert
2024-04-05 17:03:01 +0000 UTC
