Was there a rule prohibiting getting it done a second time? Granted, at this point it would hurt like the dickens, and might put the breaks on things they may rather not put a hold on just yet…
Actually, when an adult man converts to Judism, he has to have a bris, even if he was already circumcised as an infant. In that case, the Mohel takes the knife and draws a
single drop of blood from the genitals. In that sense, it is possible to be circumcised a second time.
As for your second point, if he’s frum enough to let his clone being uncircumcised put the breaks on things, then she probably needs to convert, have a mikvah, and marry him first anyway.
I knew a guy who had to get properly circumsized as an adult because he got skin cancer of that particular body part. He walked around wearing loose basketball shorts and occasionally yelping for two weeks.
The audience of this comic is such that (a) we saw this joke coming a mile away and (b) the comic generates an honestly curious and relevant cross-cultural question based on said dick joke.
I am going to have an interesting trip down Wikipedia lane now because now I too want to know and I can’t think of a polite way to ask my Jewish friends in person.
Tuiteyfruity,
I’m also Jewish, and I think it depends on whether he, in this clone, was the same person/soul as he was in his last body and whether or not his participation in the covenant carried over. If so, he doesn’t need a bris, and he could have it treated like any other cosmetic surgery; and therefore wouldn’t need a Mohel.
As we have here a standard Jewish disagreement, I propose the standard Jewish solution: let’s have the rabbi’s argue about until everyone involved has been dead for 800 years.
It really does come down to whether our modern perception of the mind and soul being at least linked is correct, doesn’t it? On the surface, the answer’s simple enough: that’s Nick’s brain, he’s now in a body made from his original tissue, so he must be the same person. But that absolutely assumes that the soul is functionally equivalent to the intellect, which is where the theologians start narrowing their eyes and reviewing their notes.
It’s an interesting question, which gets more interesting the more you think about it.
Assuming the soul is distinct from the mind is imminently logical, but the soul would still require a locus to anchor to, lest our souls migrate across multiverses with each sleep cycle. So the brain hosts the mind and in turn the soul. Nick remains Nick, just as the version of Nick who never met Virginia remains another distinct – albeit related – echo.
This was resolved by the Tin Woodsman of Oz, who remained himself as each appendage in turn was replaced until finally he lost his head and awoke to discover himself made entirely of tin! Yet his world line remained unsevered and his identity unquestionably unique (at least until he encountered his own preserved head, which refused to acknowledge any fellowship!).
Assuming Nick srayed alive upon having his brain schlorpped and was alive the entire time he was a brain in a jar as well as once his brain was placed in the clone body (I’m curious as to the neural integration method), wouldn’t Nick’s soul have traveled this whole time along with his brain?
What’s weird to me is that a fair number of non-Jews get circumcised for non-religious, non-medical reasons of simple tradition.
The only “logical” argument I ever hear for it is that it ostensibly makes cleanliness easier to maintain – not for the child, but merely for the parents, who apparently feel that permanent genital modification without the child’s consent is a price worth paying to minimize having to touch baby weiner at bath time.
Which seems insane to me – you’re going to have to wipe the kid’s ass until he’s old enough to do it himself, are you also going to ask the doctor to surgically remove or reduce his butt cheeks so you can get up in there without having to spread them? If not, then why are you mutilating his dick for basically the same reason?
I can understand a devout religious belief in a divine covenant, but simple selfish desire to not have to touch something you feel is icky? Maybe you’re not the sort of person who should have kids if that’s how you feel…
D. Walker,
The cleanliness issue isn’t about the parents. It’s about teenage boys who don’t shower properly.
If you do not keep the area clean, you can develop an infection. With antibiotics, such and infection is miserably painful. However, before antibiotics (which was when it became common outside of religious traditions) it could be very serious; requiring adult circumcision, permanently damaging the genitals or worse.
See, the thing you have to understand is, you’re reasoning from first principles, and religious people don’t do that. Their first principle is “because tradition,” full stop.
So “Your house is on fire!”, or a warning of even greater danger, is hate speech? Of course, you don’t mean that… Since we have no details as to what he was specifically complaining about, what group was involved, or specifically what they said he interprets as hate, not much point in rambling any more about it…
I made up nothing about sides; sides were inherent to the topic. And nothing I said was a lie. And this thread is nearly two years old anyway; even less chance of finding out what the beef was, aside from “They’re religious!”, which is a plus for *them*.
There is pretty compelling evidence that circumcision significantly reduces susceptibility to HIV infection in heterosexual men. For more information than almost anyone really needs on this topic, see Scientific American:
Thomas Lacroix: Either way, we’ve got medicines which are very good at reducing susceptibility to HIV now, and devices which are also very good at it. These days, HIV is one of the diseases for which new infections would be eradicated if only enough people would accept the UN’s (or government’s) help.
I mean, I’m certainly glad I was circumsized as an infant. That thing looks gross and I’ve heard it smells. I didn’t even really register that such a thing existed until I was twelve or thirteen, so I’ve never felt like I lost a body part.
Obviously it’s a tricky issue with infants being obviously unable to consent, but I tend to think that for the majority of American males who received the procedure as infants, they either don’t care and never think about it, or are vaguely glad not to have to worry about… that sort of hygiene.
The “gross” thing is just smooth skin. Nothing else. It’s no more gross than your finger or your lips or the skin you otherwise have on the penis (it is the same skin). It carries no odor unless you managed to get it infected with something, in which case that area would smell anyway.
If you clean it, it doesn’t smell. Cleaning it is nothing more than peeling back and aiming the showerhead at it. Maybe gently rub with with soapy water and then rinse it again. That’s it. It only takes a mere few seconds. It’s nothing complicated or difficult. If you cannot keep that level of hygiene going, you probably have difficulty keeping yourself clean altogether.
The only real disadvantage is that you have to peel it back when you pee or risk some drops being stuck with the skin. But that’s no big deal either.
Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t notice right away… Y’know, when he was naked in front of Virginia and Tigerlily.
Well, he was a bit distracted by the whole “hey, I’m human” thing, not to mention the “hey, I’m naked in front of Virginia” thing, so I guess it’s not too surprising.
The thing is, I find it incredibly hard to believe he didn’t pop a boner, and he surely would have felt the presence of a foreskin adding an unfamiliar tension.
It’s been some time since he was in a body—unless you count his time in VR Whimsey World, which implied certain things happened—so the sensation may not be familiar.
*** Real tmi warning ***
I was in an induced coma for 58 days. I remember the catheter being installed.
When I woke up…
It took several days for body awareness to reestablish. I was most concerned about my shaky handwriting. And focussing my eyes. Quick improvement. Yay!
Then I noticed that I had no balls. Brief panic. They had retracted in protest at the weird medical shite, and took a few days to come out. Yay!
Then I noticed that, omg, I’d been circumcised, coz, no foreskin! Well wrong on that score also, but it took a bit longer than with the ball drop for the skin to resume its natural position. Yay!
And finally, to the matter of those 20,000 nerve endings. Biggest issue for the last. I imagine that I now have the sensitivity of about 2000. Mebbee 200. Who can tell. And why? Definitely induced by medical trauma. Took considerably longer to become aware of that sitch. No concrete benchmarks to compare to, coz who measures these things before? So on that score, I am, 6 years later, still open to therapeutic assistants to assist in my recovery. 😀
Of course with mad scientists running the show, the recovery time line might be different. Also Nick being considerable younger than I was, so BAM! way more resilient. Just hang in there Nick, don’t worry, do the best with what you got! And don’t be shy about getting assistance!
I really thought that it hadn’t been mentioned until now because he’d already checked and been satisfied that it had been taken care of during the clone-body generation process, like the unibrow thing. Either he would have checked while he was naked, or while he’d gotten dressed, or shortly after having gotten dressed. I mean, the first thing he shouted when he woke up as a helicopter was “Where the frug is my penis?!”; clearly it’s not the case that the matter is of no import to him.
But I guess dick jokes happen at their own pace.
As for the actual ritual of the brit — given how socially averse Nick was/is, I suspect that he might well prefer to have it just taken care of, rather than going through the embarrassing course of actions of finding a rabbi and explaining what he wanted. He might well also face the problem of not being believed about his body being a clone, because reality blindness, and having the rabbi check with another rabbi and get into a huge argument, as per above, as to whether a brit was actually halakhically necessary, and so on and so forth, and thus being the center of a rabbinic firestorm that would rage over the question without actually circumcising him.
On the other hand, unless he wants to trust his penis to a Tigerlily-invented circumcision-o-mat device, the only one around who is actually qualified to remove the foreskin surgically is . . . Dr. Lee. Which brings a whole different set of anxieties into play.
And now we have an inkling of what Shaenon meant about Nick’s troubles just beginning.
I suppose it might make things easier for him if he could track down that Black Ops rabbi who installed the mezuzah on his helicopter door, but I suspect that Shaenon will not want to make things easier for him.
The joke isn’t the only thing that hasn’t been cut ^_^
BTW, I think somebody who is willingly cutting off a piece of his body belongs to a madhouse. Not washing your teeth could make them rot, hey, let’s rip our lips off so it’s easier to brush o_O
Not being a religious person, I’m confused by this “religious tradition”. Doesn’t this kind of offend the supposed “Creator” by suggesting he’s made a mistake?
It dates from an older concept of religion and godhood, where selected mutilations, scars, and/or tattoos served to authenticate someone as a tribe member. (Some of the Israelite’s neighbors/competitors apparently used tattoos…. which is why they’re forbidden for Jews).
To be honest, some of those older traditions like avoiding certain kinds of meat and certain food preservation techniques might have made sense in a desert environment with only stone-to-bronze-age technology to work with.
What’s batshit insane, though, is making up medical reasons whole-cloth, jumping through mental hoops so you can justify doing it to your children. Especially when the real reason is because it happened to you, therefore you assume it’s the right thing for everyone.
The 12 tribes might be ancient history, but tribalism is alive and well. And if you think I’m being too mean to modern Jews by saying that, believe me, the religious guys opposing the Jews are worse. Just turn on the news lately.
Especially when one considers that one of the big “medical” reasons for circumcision in Western culture is because it, supposedly, lessens the incidence of masturbation.
Also, back at the time this procedure was invented, they were living in a part of the world where dust storms were a regular thing. A few pieces of dust blown up under their robes and lodged under the foreskin could be a very annoying thing. Circumcision helped alleviate that condition. (You’ll note that it’s practiced by both Jews and Muslims.)
Fast forward to modern times and the spread of people beyond that dusty area and the development of modern clothing that makes it harder for wind-blown dust to lodge in places you don’t want it, and the procedure is no longer the necessity it once was. Continuing to do it because of “tradition” just seems extremely ridiculous. Just as some Jews (and Muslims) no longer stick to Kosher food rules, some have also dropped the practice of ritual circumcision.
He’s got to get recircumcised as soon as he can. If God gets the idea he did this deliberately, he could be struck down dead. And, God being God, it would probably mean no zombie afterlife or further resurrection.
god iiiiinnn the narboniverse is Shaenon. (“I wonder what god is doing.” *Cut to Shaenon moving*.)
And she likes the idea of a sweary helicopter too much to let Nick stay either dead or penis-having.
Okay, everyone. We’ve all had a lot of fun discussing cartoon characters’ penises, but I’m not really interested in this turning into a fight over the ethics of circumcision, and I definitely don’t want to hear body-shaming. Check yourselves.
I don’t know if Virginia has actually spent much time in Korea as an adult, but South Korea is a country where circumcision is common, and is commonly carried out on people old enough to tell you how they feel. She may be quite familiar with the practice.
With adult circumcision, though, one thing which is recommended is that the subject abstains from sex for a few weeks afterwards. This may disappoint a few people here.
It’s common in the United States, too. It’s thought of as a sanitary measure (questionable), but was also once promoted as a way to prevent masturbation (definitely wrong).
Also, too, doesn’t Dr. Lee know about circumcision being important to Jews? Couldn’t she taken care of things before Nick regained consciousness?
Hm.
Actually, I wonder now if maybe the point is that Dr. Lee knew about it, and pondered just doing it, but then decided against it on the basis of making an ethical commitment: No body modification without full prior consent.
Presumably, Tigerlily did whatever she did without Dr. Lee’s knowledge or cooperation.
Would it? Since he already had it done once officially, I would think they could have done it, as this body is supposed to be a duplicate (more or less) of his old one.
Considering Dr. Lee’s nonchalant attitude in the last panel (combined with her earlier comments) I’m inferring she fully intends to return Nick’s brain to the Osprey airframe ASAP, so what matter trifling details about the temporary cloned host?
The horror would be for Skin Horse to prevail and capture Nick’s “Forever Home”, where Nick and Virginia Zerhacker consummate their love. The next morning shows Nick dreaming of white-picket fence married life only to awaken back in his jar as a triumphant, bloodsoaked Dr. Lee exclaims “Surprise!”…
Well, that answers that question.
well that answers that question
A dead heat, but RoyD gets points for punctuation.
Was there a rule prohibiting getting it done a second time? Granted, at this point it would hurt like the dickens, and might put the breaks on things they may rather not put a hold on just yet…
Actually, when an adult man converts to Judism, he has to have a bris, even if he was already circumcised as an infant. In that case, the Mohel takes the knife and draws a
single drop of blood from the genitals. In that sense, it is possible to be circumcised a second time.
As for your second point, if he’s frum enough to let his clone being uncircumcised put the breaks on things, then she probably needs to convert, have a mikvah, and marry him first anyway.
I knew a guy who had to get properly circumsized as an adult because he got skin cancer of that particular body part. He walked around wearing loose basketball shorts and occasionally yelping for two weeks.
I always wondered what the Jewish equivalent of ‘devout’ was.
Believe me guys that could be very uncomfortable!
Nick,TMI!
Unless you’re fairly easy-going in your Judaism, don’t you need a Mohel to have it done?
The audience of this comic is such that (a) we saw this joke coming a mile away and (b) the comic generates an honestly curious and relevant cross-cultural question based on said dick joke.
I am going to have an interesting trip down Wikipedia lane now because now I too want to know and I can’t think of a polite way to ask my Jewish friends in person.
I’m jewish and yes, he would have to go through a hatafat dam brit!
Tuiteyfruity,
I’m also Jewish, and I think it depends on whether he, in this clone, was the same person/soul as he was in his last body and whether or not his participation in the covenant carried over. If so, he doesn’t need a bris, and he could have it treated like any other cosmetic surgery; and therefore wouldn’t need a Mohel.
As we have here a standard Jewish disagreement, I propose the standard Jewish solution: let’s have the rabbi’s argue about until everyone involved has been dead for 800 years.
It really does come down to whether our modern perception of the mind and soul being at least linked is correct, doesn’t it? On the surface, the answer’s simple enough: that’s Nick’s brain, he’s now in a body made from his original tissue, so he must be the same person. But that absolutely assumes that the soul is functionally equivalent to the intellect, which is where the theologians start narrowing their eyes and reviewing their notes.
It’s an interesting question, which gets more interesting the more you think about it.
Assuming the soul is distinct from the mind is imminently logical, but the soul would still require a locus to anchor to, lest our souls migrate across multiverses with each sleep cycle. So the brain hosts the mind and in turn the soul. Nick remains Nick, just as the version of Nick who never met Virginia remains another distinct – albeit related – echo.
This was resolved by the Tin Woodsman of Oz, who remained himself as each appendage in turn was replaced until finally he lost his head and awoke to discover himself made entirely of tin! Yet his world line remained unsevered and his identity unquestionably unique (at least until he encountered his own preserved head, which refused to acknowledge any fellowship!).
Assuming Nick srayed alive upon having his brain schlorpped and was alive the entire time he was a brain in a jar as well as once his brain was placed in the clone body (I’m curious as to the neural integration method), wouldn’t Nick’s soul have traveled this whole time along with his brain?
His old body was converted to MREs.
What’s weird to me is that a fair number of non-Jews get circumcised for non-religious, non-medical reasons of simple tradition.
The only “logical” argument I ever hear for it is that it ostensibly makes cleanliness easier to maintain – not for the child, but merely for the parents, who apparently feel that permanent genital modification without the child’s consent is a price worth paying to minimize having to touch baby weiner at bath time.
Which seems insane to me – you’re going to have to wipe the kid’s ass until he’s old enough to do it himself, are you also going to ask the doctor to surgically remove or reduce his butt cheeks so you can get up in there without having to spread them? If not, then why are you mutilating his dick for basically the same reason?
I can understand a devout religious belief in a divine covenant, but simple selfish desire to not have to touch something you feel is icky? Maybe you’re not the sort of person who should have kids if that’s how you feel…
My family was Lutheran at the time, where getting cut was pretty traditional.
D. Walker,
The cleanliness issue isn’t about the parents. It’s about teenage boys who don’t shower properly.
If you do not keep the area clean, you can develop an infection. With antibiotics, such and infection is miserably painful. However, before antibiotics (which was when it became common outside of religious traditions) it could be very serious; requiring adult circumcision, permanently damaging the genitals or worse.
See, the thing you have to understand is, you’re reasoning from first principles, and religious people don’t do that. Their first principle is “because tradition,” full stop.
That was rude.
So is literally marching with torches through a modern American city chanting hate speech.
Religious people started it.
Look, I’m not going to fill up Shaenon’s comments section with the same theee words, because irony; so just refer to my comment above on this matter.
“Hate speech”, or speech you disagree with? Which side is really doing the hating?
In most cases, the one sticking its nose in other people’s business.
So “Your house is on fire!”, or a warning of even greater danger, is hate speech? Of course, you don’t mean that… Since we have no details as to what he was specifically complaining about, what group was involved, or specifically what they said he interprets as hate, not much point in rambling any more about it…
Well, you immediately started lying and made up something about “sides,” so you weren’t as think as you subtle you were.
I made up nothing about sides; sides were inherent to the topic. And nothing I said was a lie. And this thread is nearly two years old anyway; even less chance of finding out what the beef was, aside from “They’re religious!”, which is a plus for *them*.
There is pretty compelling evidence that circumcision significantly reduces susceptibility to HIV infection in heterosexual men. For more information than almost anyone really needs on this topic, see Scientific American:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-circumcision-helps-prevent-hiv-infection/
Or it might not https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3255200/
Thomas Lacroix: Either way, we’ve got medicines which are very good at reducing susceptibility to HIV now, and devices which are also very good at it. These days, HIV is one of the diseases for which new infections would be eradicated if only enough people would accept the UN’s (or government’s) help.
I mean, I’m certainly glad I was circumsized as an infant. That thing looks gross and I’ve heard it smells. I didn’t even really register that such a thing existed until I was twelve or thirteen, so I’ve never felt like I lost a body part.
Obviously it’s a tricky issue with infants being obviously unable to consent, but I tend to think that for the majority of American males who received the procedure as infants, they either don’t care and never think about it, or are vaguely glad not to have to worry about… that sort of hygiene.
The “gross” thing is just smooth skin. Nothing else. It’s no more gross than your finger or your lips or the skin you otherwise have on the penis (it is the same skin). It carries no odor unless you managed to get it infected with something, in which case that area would smell anyway.
If you clean it, it doesn’t smell. Cleaning it is nothing more than peeling back and aiming the showerhead at it. Maybe gently rub with with soapy water and then rinse it again. That’s it. It only takes a mere few seconds. It’s nothing complicated or difficult. If you cannot keep that level of hygiene going, you probably have difficulty keeping yourself clean altogether.
The only real disadvantage is that you have to peel it back when you pee or risk some drops being stuck with the skin. But that’s no big deal either.
What you heard is just blatantly false.
You know, my rabbi is probably enough of a nerd that I could explain this story to him and he’d give me a well-considered answer.
I just knew he’d notice.
It’s not like it would be hard to miss.
Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t notice right away… Y’know, when he was naked in front of Virginia and Tigerlily.
Well, he was a bit distracted by the whole “hey, I’m human” thing, not to mention the “hey, I’m naked in front of Virginia” thing, so I guess it’s not too surprising.
The thing is, I find it incredibly hard to believe he didn’t pop a boner, and he surely would have felt the presence of a foreskin adding an unfamiliar tension.
Tension? Try like 20,000 bonus nerve endings! That’s almost two and a half times as many as she has in her clitoris!
It’s been some time since he was in a body—unless you count his time in VR Whimsey World, which implied certain things happened—so the sensation may not be familiar.
*** Real tmi warning ***
I was in an induced coma for 58 days. I remember the catheter being installed.
When I woke up…
It took several days for body awareness to reestablish. I was most concerned about my shaky handwriting. And focussing my eyes. Quick improvement. Yay!
Then I noticed that I had no balls. Brief panic. They had retracted in protest at the weird medical shite, and took a few days to come out. Yay!
Then I noticed that, omg, I’d been circumcised, coz, no foreskin! Well wrong on that score also, but it took a bit longer than with the ball drop for the skin to resume its natural position. Yay!
And finally, to the matter of those 20,000 nerve endings. Biggest issue for the last. I imagine that I now have the sensitivity of about 2000. Mebbee 200. Who can tell. And why? Definitely induced by medical trauma. Took considerably longer to become aware of that sitch. No concrete benchmarks to compare to, coz who measures these things before? So on that score, I am, 6 years later, still open to therapeutic assistants to assist in my recovery. 😀
Of course with mad scientists running the show, the recovery time line might be different. Also Nick being considerable younger than I was, so BAM! way more resilient. Just hang in there Nick, don’t worry, do the best with what you got! And don’t be shy about getting assistance!
i mean, asked and answered i guess
Huh.
I really thought that it hadn’t been mentioned until now because he’d already checked and been satisfied that it had been taken care of during the clone-body generation process, like the unibrow thing. Either he would have checked while he was naked, or while he’d gotten dressed, or shortly after having gotten dressed. I mean, the first thing he shouted when he woke up as a helicopter was “Where the
frugis my penis?!”; clearly it’s not the case that the matter is of no import to him.But I guess dick jokes happen at their own pace.
As for the actual ritual of the brit — given how socially averse Nick was/is, I suspect that he might well prefer to have it just taken care of, rather than going through the embarrassing course of actions of finding a rabbi and explaining what he wanted. He might well also face the problem of not being believed about his body being a clone, because reality blindness, and having the rabbi check with another rabbi and get into a huge argument, as per above, as to whether a brit was actually halakhically necessary, and so on and so forth, and thus being the center of a rabbinic firestorm that would rage over the question without actually circumcising him.
On the other hand, unless he wants to trust his penis to a Tigerlily-invented circumcision-o-mat device, the only one around who is actually qualified to remove the foreskin surgically is . . . Dr. Lee. Which brings a whole different set of anxieties into play.
And now we have an inkling of what Shaenon meant about Nick’s troubles just beginning.
I suppose it might make things easier for him if he could track down that Black Ops rabbi who installed the mezuzah on his helicopter door, but I suspect that Shaenon will not want to make things easier for him.
I wonder if any readers of this comic will mind when Shaenon and Jeff go with the Ex Machina ending.
THERE it is! 😀
And to think, we were all worried this joke would get cut!
The joke isn’t the only thing that hasn’t been cut ^_^
BTW, I think somebody who is willingly cutting off a piece of his body belongs to a madhouse. Not washing your teeth could make them rot, hey, let’s rip our lips off so it’s easier to brush o_O
Not being a religious person, I’m confused by this “religious tradition”. Doesn’t this kind of offend the supposed “Creator” by suggesting he’s made a mistake?
It dates from an older concept of religion and godhood, where selected mutilations, scars, and/or tattoos served to authenticate someone as a tribe member. (Some of the Israelite’s neighbors/competitors apparently used tattoos…. which is why they’re forbidden for Jews).
To be honest, some of those older traditions like avoiding certain kinds of meat and certain food preservation techniques might have made sense in a desert environment with only stone-to-bronze-age technology to work with.
What’s batshit insane, though, is making up medical reasons whole-cloth, jumping through mental hoops so you can justify doing it to your children. Especially when the real reason is because it happened to you, therefore you assume it’s the right thing for everyone.
The 12 tribes might be ancient history, but tribalism is alive and well. And if you think I’m being too mean to modern Jews by saying that, believe me, the religious guys opposing the Jews are worse. Just turn on the news lately.
Especially when one considers that one of the big “medical” reasons for circumcision in Western culture is because it, supposedly, lessens the incidence of masturbation.
Also, back at the time this procedure was invented, they were living in a part of the world where dust storms were a regular thing. A few pieces of dust blown up under their robes and lodged under the foreskin could be a very annoying thing. Circumcision helped alleviate that condition. (You’ll note that it’s practiced by both Jews and Muslims.)
Fast forward to modern times and the spread of people beyond that dusty area and the development of modern clothing that makes it harder for wind-blown dust to lodge in places you don’t want it, and the procedure is no longer the necessity it once was. Continuing to do it because of “tradition” just seems extremely ridiculous. Just as some Jews (and Muslims) no longer stick to Kosher food rules, some have also dropped the practice of ritual circumcision.
So is Tip covering a laugh or a gasp?
… Yes
Ooooh, yeah. That’d be strange.
Shouldn’t “Aieee!!!” been Nick’s line *during* circumcision?
That’s right Nick, you weren’t born circumcised
He’s got to get recircumcised as soon as he can. If God gets the idea he did this deliberately, he could be struck down dead. And, God being God, it would probably mean no zombie afterlife or further resurrection.
god iiiiinnn the narboniverse is Shaenon. (“I wonder what god is doing.” *Cut to Shaenon moving*.)
And she likes the idea of a sweary helicopter too much to let Nick stay either dead or penis-having.
Okay, everyone. We’ve all had a lot of fun discussing cartoon characters’ penises, but I’m not really interested in this turning into a fight over the ethics of circumcision, and I definitely don’t want to hear body-shaming. Check yourselves.
I don’t know if Virginia has actually spent much time in Korea as an adult, but South Korea is a country where circumcision is common, and is commonly carried out on people old enough to tell you how they feel. She may be quite familiar with the practice.
With adult circumcision, though, one thing which is recommended is that the subject abstains from sex for a few weeks afterwards. This may disappoint a few people here.
It’s common in the United States, too. It’s thought of as a sanitary measure (questionable), but was also once promoted as a way to prevent masturbation (definitely wrong).
Also, too, doesn’t Dr. Lee know about circumcision being important to Jews? Couldn’t she taken care of things before Nick regained consciousness?
Hm.
Actually, I wonder now if maybe the point is that Dr. Lee knew about it, and pondered just doing it, but then decided against it on the basis of making an ethical commitment: No body modification without full prior consent.
Presumably, Tigerlily did whatever she did without Dr. Lee’s knowledge or cooperation.
No, it would still have to be done by a mohel.
Would it? Since he already had it done once officially, I would think they could have done it, as this body is supposed to be a duplicate (more or less) of his old one.
Considering Dr. Lee’s nonchalant attitude in the last panel (combined with her earlier comments) I’m inferring she fully intends to return Nick’s brain to the Osprey airframe ASAP, so what matter trifling details about the temporary cloned host?
The horror would be for Skin Horse to prevail and capture Nick’s “Forever Home”, where Nick and Virginia Zerhacker consummate their love. The next morning shows Nick dreaming of white-picket fence married life only to awaken back in his jar as a triumphant, bloodsoaked Dr. Lee exclaims “Surprise!”…