Garfield is Dead
It looks like that whole 'sleeping soundly' thing is over and done with.
It's 4:00AM and I haven't slept a bit.
Tonight my thoughts are occupied by a few different things - problems I'm trying to solve at work, things to do this weekend, ideas that I could/should patent, and the troublesome notion that Garfield is dead.
Perhaps I should explain. I don't actually find Garfield to be funny - or for that matter, even slightly good. I used to like Garfield a lot when I was a kid, but looking back, it was never really an entertaining comic. I don't know why it was a popular thing, but it was, and it was a big part of my childhood.
So imagine my surprise when I visited Digg one morning and found a link to the most disturbing series of Garfield comics I have ever seen. 'Disturbing' doesn't really even begin to describe it. What I saw really bothered me - it's like it challenged a foundational belief. It's like getting ready to shoot yourself in the head, and being hit by a car being driven by a bullet before you can pull the trigger. I'm not sure why it's like that, but I really liked that simile.
A flash animation of the comic is here.
The basic premise is that Garfield wakes up one morning to find his home abandoned. He is alone in his house, with no sign of Jon or Odie, and every indication that the house was deserted years ago. He has nobody to take care of him, and after realizing that he is totally alone, turns to his imagination to ease the pain of loneliness. The strip ends there, and then goes on about it's regular business of not being thought provoking or funny, but some people apparently think that it really *doesn't* end there.
They think that every Garfield comic from then on has been a delusion - a figment of Garfield's imagination to distract him from the fact that he is slowly starving to death in an abandoned house.
That just really bugs me.