The Joke’s On You!

From hookknife’s Flickr photostream comes the following photo:

Tintin in Shambhala

A comic, anonymously inserted into the meme-stream, has been making the rounds recently:

Click the image above to get the full-sized version on the web page where it originally appeared.

This cartoon was first brought to the world’s (well, the Shambhala world’s) attention in a sangha-announce message posted December 6, 2009 by “gremi” at mail.com, titled Need help with this puzzles!:

Dear Friends,

My wife and myself are back home, and are so much appreciative of the North American Sangha contributes to Europe, where we study and do Shambhala dharma practices. 

We hope you will tell us what is the meaning of this cartoon that we also got from the internet and want to know if we did not receive something written down explaining. What is the message please?

Here is the cartoon: http://lambda.lunariffic.com/~jandd0/

What does this mean?

Yours, Gordi and Lyske Remi

This was followed by several more messages by “George Remi” (as the Shambhala member site identifies “gremi”), including a compilation of various responses to and speculations on the cartoon .

A Tintin aficionado would know that “George Remi” is the name of the Belgian individual who used the nom-de-plume of Hergé to author the world-famous Tintin comics. Many of us grew up with those, and Chögyam Trungpa himself was a big fan of the young bodhisattva.

The comic is ambiguous enough to elicit reactions true to a person’s proclivities. The final, mostly blank conversation balloon invites readers to put their own response in Tintin’s mouth.

Please go ahead! Rules of the game:

• first, post a short phrase or sentence to go in the final conversation balloon. Let’s say the same length as for Twitter: 140 characters max!
• then, if you wish, comment on your contribution and/or the comic
• we will insert a copy of the final panel, customized with your wording, into your comment

Shambhala Training Working with Father Sarducci

Experts fear illumination of dark matter

from http://voanews.com/english/2008-09-10-voa6.cfm

Project leaders say the machine will also let them probe so-called Dark Matter – the invisible matter that makes up 80 percent of the universe and that has been one of science’s great mysteries.

Some European and American scientists have filed a lawsuit to stop the experiment, saying it may create microscopic black holes that could swallow the Earth.

Project leaders call these fears “ridiculous.”

King of Swaziland Comics

Life of the rulers and the ruled in a place unencumbered by time, space or cashflow:

King of Swaziland Comics (PDF) (right-click to save)