threemonkeys (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
threemonkeys) wrote2005-07-13 11:09 am
threemonkeys) wrote2005-07-13 11:09 am
Throw the circuit breaker
I don't have a lot of restraint. When I find something I like, I go for it. I have no comprehension of those people who can ration their enjoyment. One of my colleagues professes to love chocolate. She will buy a big block and the just eat one piece a day. I could never do that - this may not come as a surprise to those who know me.
However there has to be a point at which I stop. There is an eventual overload point which trips my brain which says "too much already!" A good thing too, otherwise I would burst. That overload point can be pretty hard to pin down sometimes, but I think I have it worked out in one particular case.
A while back, I bought a copy of The Bundled Doonesbury, a collection of G.B.Trudeau's comic strip taken from the late '90s. It has a pretty spectacular extra with it - a CD containing every Doonesbury comic strip published up until that time. This is 20 years worth of comic strips - about 9000 of them in all.
I love Doonesbury, it is one of my favourite daily comics. I expected to make short work of this CD - a few obsessive nights and it would be all done. This proved not to be the case - it has taken a long time to get through as far as I have - into the mid '80s. In fact I left it for quite a time but recently have been reading them again - probably a substitute for the small amount of book reading I have done.
What I have found is that I really do not feel happy reading more than about 3 months worth of comic strips in one go. That is about 100 comics. This is a lot less that I might have expected. And it isn't as if I am not enjoying it. Reading these old comics is fascinating - it is great to follow the characters and storylines as they develop over the years. Having said that, some of the references are dated and the user interface for accessing the material is pretty poor. There is also quite a lot of supplementary material with the comics - newspaper headlines and articles from the time when the strip was publish. It certainly helps cope with the dated material.
I guess, when all is said and done, my saturation/overload level with Doonesbury is lower than I would expect. Much lower than other web comics where the full archive is available - in particular User Friendly and Superosity. Yet I would not rate those comics above Doonesbury on a one by one basis. I suppose it is like eating a rich cake - a little goes a long way. Doonesbury is just more filling
However there has to be a point at which I stop. There is an eventual overload point which trips my brain which says "too much already!" A good thing too, otherwise I would burst. That overload point can be pretty hard to pin down sometimes, but I think I have it worked out in one particular case.
A while back, I bought a copy of The Bundled Doonesbury, a collection of G.B.Trudeau's comic strip taken from the late '90s. It has a pretty spectacular extra with it - a CD containing every Doonesbury comic strip published up until that time. This is 20 years worth of comic strips - about 9000 of them in all.
I love Doonesbury, it is one of my favourite daily comics. I expected to make short work of this CD - a few obsessive nights and it would be all done. This proved not to be the case - it has taken a long time to get through as far as I have - into the mid '80s. In fact I left it for quite a time but recently have been reading them again - probably a substitute for the small amount of book reading I have done.
What I have found is that I really do not feel happy reading more than about 3 months worth of comic strips in one go. That is about 100 comics. This is a lot less that I might have expected. And it isn't as if I am not enjoying it. Reading these old comics is fascinating - it is great to follow the characters and storylines as they develop over the years. Having said that, some of the references are dated and the user interface for accessing the material is pretty poor. There is also quite a lot of supplementary material with the comics - newspaper headlines and articles from the time when the strip was publish. It certainly helps cope with the dated material.
I guess, when all is said and done, my saturation/overload level with Doonesbury is lower than I would expect. Much lower than other web comics where the full archive is available - in particular User Friendly and Superosity. Yet I would not rate those comics above Doonesbury on a one by one basis. I suppose it is like eating a rich cake - a little goes a long way. Doonesbury is just more filling