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Ad Absurdum (and some cartoons)- Dali Abel

[Other titles in English] [All other titles]

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Look at the cartoons of Dali Abel

AD ABSURDUM

In the Kingdom of Tolema lives the happy citizen Wilan. He owns a bar
beside a beautiful old temple where countless tourists come daily. In
most cases, he can guess their countries of origin just by looking at
them or noticing any slight accent.

Wilan has impressions about many countries and can say something about
each one of them. Those who listen to his chatter long enough can find
a curious world map in his mind. Instead of country names, it consists
of a mishmash of words he mechanically glues to them.

Some indigenous tribes used to shrink human heads into a fairly small
size, but Wilan do actually more. They shrink an entire country into
one or a few words. Like jelly, his preset notions are easy to pick up
and swallow. Not all of them taste sweet, though. Some are rather sour
and bloat the mind. Other people found them hard to digest
intellectually.
 
In the age of spaceships and microchips, Wilan still keeps feeding his
mind with irrelevant stereotypes. His cliches produce a curious way of
thinking. If, for instance, a client comes happens to be a rich
Colombian, Wilan would look at him suspiciously. If someone comes from
a Third World country, Wilan will be surprised to find him intelligent.
If he is a Westerner, then he considers him rich by definition and
expects a good tip. 

Having poorly digested even his native culture, Wilan looks from a
narrow angle at the culture of other nations but he is not the only one
to blame. Apart from the cliches carried more or less by his culture,
the reality of foreign nations is offset by the repetition of the same
type of pre-cast information. Each country has to fit into its
ready-made information costume. When Wilan sits with his family in
front of the television to listen to the news, he hears about:
USA only for its political problems, street violence, crime, religious
sects, drug problems, and Hollywood. The average normal American is
totally absent.

England for another maddening story of cows.
Bangladesh for floods and capsized ferryboats. 
Egypt for archeology.
Japan for technology.
Italy for another Mafia-suspected murder.
France for fashion and food.
Brazil for the Carnival.
Colombia for drugs and massacres.
Greece or Turkey for earthquakes.
South Korea for riots.
Vietnam for floods.
Spain for bullfighting.
Russia for poverty stricken old communists.
Ireland for religious violence. 
The Arab world for religious fanaticism.
Cuba for people fleeing overseas.
India for deadly catastrophes.
Mexico for penitentiaries.
Pakistan for its neighbor.
Canada for its cold weather.
Asia as a whole, is for natural cataclysms and mysterious customs.
Africa for starvation and epidemics.
South America for the military, drugs, and football. 
Eastern Europe for economic strife.
The Western World for political scandals and immigration.
The Australian continent for white sharks and Aborigines.
The rest of the planet doesn't exist.

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Some cartoons by Dali Abel:

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