ouch But as self harm it was at-least in the end constructive. Most end up with scars that hinder future employment possibility. So he got off better then a lot of people who hit that point.
You’d think as a doctor (or at least resident in training) he would KNOW that, Lidocaine is readily available over the counter and IS sufficient strength to do at least stiches with. (why YES I have used Anbesol as a topical anesthetic to do stiches on myself…
That would take a lot. Many stores don’t card cooking wine because the alcohol content is so trivial your stomach lacks the volume to hold enough to get even mildly buzzed.
That’s definitely not the cooking wine I’m using – just checked and it’s 17% (Shaoxing rice wine). A traditional dish where I’m from is rice wine chicken, prepared with all rice wine and no water – oh boy is there alcohol left in it when it’s done. ;p
cooking wine while it does have enough alcohol to get drunk on, also has salt added to it, combine this with the metabolism of a sarnothi, and you have a lot of problems.
1. Sarnothi evolved under water, other than the very small amounts of alcohol made by their body, they have never encountered large amounts of alcohol. their biology isn’t adapted to metabolizing alcohol, so it would stay in the blood for longer.
2. Sarnothi are fresh water, perhaps their distant ancestors used to be salt water, but currently they can’t handle salt in large quantities.
3. Salt and Alcohol cause dehydration, which is the main cause of a hangover.
So by being a Sarnothi that drank cooking wine, Pohl poisoned himself with Salt and alcohol, making himself drunk, and severely dehydrated himself.
Combined on top of this he was attempting to do surgery on his own hands, and was probably too drunk to by the end of it to properly bandage his hands, so you can add blood loss to his list of problems.
I’m guessing his wife found him passed out, with his hands bleeding into badly applied bandages. had he been awake he probably would have had the worst hangover imaginable. most likely he woke up in the hospital.
The doctors would have had to flush his blood of alcohol and salt. so lots of water or saline intravenously, and a catheter, till his blood came back to normal levels for salt. And another doctor probably had to properly trim the webbing from his hands, after his drunken botch job. he probably got into a lot of trouble for his attempt to fix his glove problem.
“He probably got into a lot of trouble…”
And yet, no one was proactive regarding the challenge he faced. It is frequently that way. A person learns that they aren’t worth the trouble to others to care and help with something that is crushing that individual. The message is loud and clear, in both the disregard for an OBVIOUS insurmountable challenge, and often even the lack of response of aid when help is actually requested. (No evidence Pohl requested, but it WAS pretty darn obvious). Then, if that challenge is tackled in desperation, the message of worthlessness gets delivered again in the umbrage and uproar about the less-than-ideal results. …… Sucky.
*shudder* this clearly shows just how much pressure he was under….how much the new arrivals will feel they need to do everything to integrate themselves in a to them completely foreign world…
….it also shows just how bad sarnoth under sar´teri rule has to be, that a weird foreign world were you have to mutilate yourself is the better option
You work at a place full of scalpels, bandages, and disinfectants… along with 20 other students who all know they need the practice cutting flesh. There’s even a possibility of anesthetics that will work on you being close at hand.
Not to mention, once you do one hand, you have to do the other one, by holding scissors in a hand that’s bleeding all over the place.
Xacto knives are sharp but they are NOT surgical scalpel sharp (even if they look exactly the same) also for this you should use a number 15 blade NOT a number 11. When I build plastic models I used to buy Surgical scalpels by the BOX.
LOL—for goodness sakes. I said “even an Xacto would have been *better*”—not “best.” Truthfully, he could have probably done it even better having his wife mind-laser his webbing off or having one of his fellow intern/residents help him out.
Xactos are way better than scissors, though. Sliced my left index fingertip off twice—right through the nail and several layers of skin taking me to the hospital a couple times. Damn things were so sharp and quick I didn’t feel it at all until after it happened. Most scissors—in comparison—are rough and sh*tty flesh cutting devices. They tear better than cut through skin (yes, I know this from personal experience). XD
Totally OT, I discovered the amazingness of human fingertip regeneration. I thought I was going to have an extra pointy fingertip for life, but the thing grew back both times—fingerprints and all. Found out later, that’s a secret super power humans have from childhood. Bodies are amazing!
Pretty sure he didn’t do both hands on the same day… or at least not until he’d bandaged up the first one. Be nearly impossible to do the 2nd one otherwise. 😛
But also: if Sarnothi tolerance for alchohol is so low and his wife cooked with it, how did he not discover that fact sooner?
And also: Does this mean no drunk Selkie stumbling around blasting things with her eye-beams? Or does it mean inevitably drunk Selkie stumbling around blasting things with her eye-beams, but only once?
Fish do not generally tolerate alcohol. HOWEVER a shotglas full of alcohol added to a fish tank, DOES help plant growth and doesn’t seem to harm most fish. Nor do they tolerate clove oil
Cooking burns off the alcohol (for the most part) unless you do it really wrong. That’s why you don’t get carded for ordering beer battered onion rings or fish.
Depends on the cooking method. Long stews cook off most of the alcohol, but shorter cooking methods (such as deep frying) don’t.
Intoxication isn’t a concern with beer batter simply because so little alcohol is involved. Same with adding vodka to a tomato sauce: you’re mixing one shot in with an entire pot of sauce, so the amount in each serving is negligible. I’m going to assume that Sarnothi are in a similar boat, where a very small amount isn’t going to be harmful.
It should be noted, though, that some people avoid alcohol for religious reasons. I had a friend who wouldn’t even use vinegar or soy sauce because it might still have a little bit of alcohol left in it, because he was a devout Muslim.
The USDA published a study entitled “Alcohol Retention in Food Preparation”, authored by Jorg Augustine et al.
Even after two and a half hours of simmering, 4-6% of the alcohol remained. Flaming dishes keep more alcohol than simmering dishes, despite their appearance.
I would provide a link to the study but Google refuses to let me copy the URL of a PDF in Android. It should be easy to find if you Google the title.
I was wondering the same, but then realized it burns off. Still… You’d think they’d have known since they were buying it to cook with already. I wonder if they can drink other forms of alcohol given it can be created different ways?
Stupid, just stupid. He has FOUR fingered hands, with claws. He would have had to get custom made gloves in any case. Did he not think that if he could have gotten gloves made for those alone then he could have also gotten them made to work around his webs?
Maybe he could, maybe he couldn’t but before he did anything as drastic as cutting himself he should have ASKED someone if they could think of a solution.
The problem isn’t the fingers or the claws, it’s the webs. A glove that fits over a webbed hand like that is basically a mitten and would have terrible dexterity. Fingered gloves allow for dexterity because the glove can wrap tightly to each finger and move independently of the other fingers. Even with gloves Pohl was going to have trouble using human surgical instruments which are designed to be held by non-webbed hands.
As horrible as this body-mutilation was, it was also the best overall option. He should have, of course, gotten it done by someone in the hospital, or, you know, NOT WITH SCISSORS. But the outcome is overall better.
And he could always get webbed gloves to swim with, if he needs.
I think they could make a smaller tube for the fingers/claws, like the reservoir tip of a condom. No mittens, but the claw part of the reservoir would need special reinforcement, even if the tips are blunted. Cotten balls or gauze might help for padding.
Four fingers: You tie off the one finger inside the glove. I knew a nurse who lost her little finger and did that to keep the empty from getting in the way.
Claws: Manicure or, if Sarnothi claws have a lot of blood flow, the Sarnothi equivalent of soft paws.
Hope they cook the heck out of those marinades, because you can almost never remove ALL the alcohol by cooking, and certainly not in the quick cooking techniques that marinades are kind of there for.
(BTW, on the main page, there was a popup ad — oh, hey, it just flickered here — at the bottom of the page. Working as intended? (It’s sure not working as my adblocker intends. *mutter*))
(Ha, I couldn’t Post Comment till I scrolled up — there’s an “about:blank” frame there, that’s flashing and trying to load an ad or something.)
Does not work on my eye-pad, (sic). Just a white bar flashing in the bottom, super annoying. Love the comic, Dave, and dang– but doesn’t this comic have some of the most civilized and intelligent discussions? I mean compared to “Almost” every other webcomic. I see a lot of happy buddy icons from “Dumbing” and “Kahmith”. (Big smile) xD
Most of the alcohol burns off in most dishes, but there are exceptions. I got drunk from a piece of Italian homemade rum cake when I was 9. I wobbled over to the couch and crashed. My parents couldn’t wake me for school the next day.
Deflect with humor, Pohl. Every time. 🙁
Also: Wonderful commission art! 🙂
Omg that is the most adorable art that I’ve ever seen! Any chance of sharing the artists name and or website?
Yep, it’s linked under the image. They go by Ippers. https://twitter.com/t_ippers
ouch But as self harm it was at-least in the end constructive. Most end up with scars that hinder future employment possibility. So he got off better then a lot of people who hit that point.
You’d think as a doctor (or at least resident in training) he would KNOW that, Lidocaine is readily available over the counter and IS sufficient strength to do at least stiches with. (why YES I have used Anbesol as a topical anesthetic to do stiches on myself…
Oh My God. I cannot imagine doing that to myself, especially while drunk on COOKING WINE.
Sai Fen must have screamed bloody murder.
That would take a lot. Many stores don’t card cooking wine because the alcohol content is so trivial your stomach lacks the volume to hold enough to get even mildly buzzed.
Well, if you’ve cooked and used the wine properly there won’t be any alcohol left in the food. “Flambe forever!”
I believe he was referring to drinking it directly.
I stand corrected. I somehow managed to find a no alcohol variant and just checked the market. 17% is average.
That’s definitely not the cooking wine I’m using – just checked and it’s 17% (Shaoxing rice wine). A traditional dish where I’m from is rice wine chicken, prepared with all rice wine and no water – oh boy is there alcohol left in it when it’s done. ;p
My mirin (Japanese sweet rice cooking wine) is 8% ABV, which is stronger than most beers. If I remember correctly, I didn’t have to show ID to buy it.
cooking wine while it does have enough alcohol to get drunk on, also has salt added to it, combine this with the metabolism of a sarnothi, and you have a lot of problems.
1. Sarnothi evolved under water, other than the very small amounts of alcohol made by their body, they have never encountered large amounts of alcohol. their biology isn’t adapted to metabolizing alcohol, so it would stay in the blood for longer.
2. Sarnothi are fresh water, perhaps their distant ancestors used to be salt water, but currently they can’t handle salt in large quantities.
3. Salt and Alcohol cause dehydration, which is the main cause of a hangover.
So by being a Sarnothi that drank cooking wine, Pohl poisoned himself with Salt and alcohol, making himself drunk, and severely dehydrated himself.
Combined on top of this he was attempting to do surgery on his own hands, and was probably too drunk to by the end of it to properly bandage his hands, so you can add blood loss to his list of problems.
I’m guessing his wife found him passed out, with his hands bleeding into badly applied bandages. had he been awake he probably would have had the worst hangover imaginable. most likely he woke up in the hospital.
The doctors would have had to flush his blood of alcohol and salt. so lots of water or saline intravenously, and a catheter, till his blood came back to normal levels for salt. And another doctor probably had to properly trim the webbing from his hands, after his drunken botch job. he probably got into a lot of trouble for his attempt to fix his glove problem.
“He probably got into a lot of trouble…”
And yet, no one was proactive regarding the challenge he faced. It is frequently that way. A person learns that they aren’t worth the trouble to others to care and help with something that is crushing that individual. The message is loud and clear, in both the disregard for an OBVIOUS insurmountable challenge, and often even the lack of response of aid when help is actually requested. (No evidence Pohl requested, but it WAS pretty darn obvious). Then, if that challenge is tackled in desperation, the message of worthlessness gets delivered again in the umbrage and uproar about the less-than-ideal results. …… Sucky.
Ouch, having it done clinically would have been bad enough. Poor guy. 🙁
*shudder* this clearly shows just how much pressure he was under….how much the new arrivals will feel they need to do everything to integrate themselves in a to them completely foreign world…
….it also shows just how bad sarnoth under sar´teri rule has to be, that a weird foreign world were you have to mutilate yourself is the better option
You work at a place full of scalpels, bandages, and disinfectants… along with 20 other students who all know they need the practice cutting flesh. There’s even a possibility of anesthetics that will work on you being close at hand.
Not to mention, once you do one hand, you have to do the other one, by holding scissors in a hand that’s bleeding all over the place.
Goddammit Pohl…
I was thinking the same thing. Even an Xacto knife would have been a better choice. He obviously was not in a very rational state of mind.
Xacto knives are sharp but they are NOT surgical scalpel sharp (even if they look exactly the same) also for this you should use a number 15 blade NOT a number 11. When I build plastic models I used to buy Surgical scalpels by the BOX.
I always prefer a number 10 for smooth linear cuts in skin. Number 15s work great for stab incisions you want to extend.
I can kind of understand using scissors though. Trying to hold a scalpel correctly in you off hand, much less do surgery with it is a nightmare.
LOL—for goodness sakes. I said “even an Xacto would have been *better*”—not “best.” Truthfully, he could have probably done it even better having his wife mind-laser his webbing off or having one of his fellow intern/residents help him out.
Xactos are way better than scissors, though. Sliced my left index fingertip off twice—right through the nail and several layers of skin taking me to the hospital a couple times. Damn things were so sharp and quick I didn’t feel it at all until after it happened. Most scissors—in comparison—are rough and sh*tty flesh cutting devices. They tear better than cut through skin (yes, I know this from personal experience). XD
Totally OT, I discovered the amazingness of human fingertip regeneration. I thought I was going to have an extra pointy fingertip for life, but the thing grew back both times—fingerprints and all. Found out later, that’s a secret super power humans have from childhood. Bodies are amazing!
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/06/10/190385484/chopped-how-amputated-fingertips-sometimes-grow-back
Well, he WAS a student at the time. You learn to think about these things by experience. The next self-amputation should go smoother.
The next???? Foreshadowing, Dave? D8
Pretty sure he didn’t do both hands on the same day… or at least not until he’d bandaged up the first one. Be nearly impossible to do the 2nd one otherwise. 😛
So there’s two, right there.
It’s much like self-crucifixion: I’ve tried it hundreds of times. There’s no way you can hammer in the last nail.
Pohl had hit a mental low and depression can make people do weird things in a momentary really low point.
I know. Scissors? SCISSORS?! JEEZE man.
OUCH.
But also: if Sarnothi tolerance for alchohol is so low and his wife cooked with it, how did he not discover that fact sooner?
And also: Does this mean no drunk Selkie stumbling around blasting things with her eye-beams? Or does it mean inevitably drunk Selkie stumbling around blasting things with her eye-beams, but only once?
Fish do not generally tolerate alcohol. HOWEVER a shotglas full of alcohol added to a fish tank, DOES help plant growth and doesn’t seem to harm most fish. Nor do they tolerate clove oil
Cooking burns off the alcohol (for the most part) unless you do it really wrong. That’s why you don’t get carded for ordering beer battered onion rings or fish.
Depends on the cooking method. Long stews cook off most of the alcohol, but shorter cooking methods (such as deep frying) don’t.
Intoxication isn’t a concern with beer batter simply because so little alcohol is involved. Same with adding vodka to a tomato sauce: you’re mixing one shot in with an entire pot of sauce, so the amount in each serving is negligible. I’m going to assume that Sarnothi are in a similar boat, where a very small amount isn’t going to be harmful.
It should be noted, though, that some people avoid alcohol for religious reasons. I had a friend who wouldn’t even use vinegar or soy sauce because it might still have a little bit of alcohol left in it, because he was a devout Muslim.
The USDA published a study entitled “Alcohol Retention in Food Preparation”, authored by Jorg Augustine et al.
Even after two and a half hours of simmering, 4-6% of the alcohol remained. Flaming dishes keep more alcohol than simmering dishes, despite their appearance.
I would provide a link to the study but Google refuses to let me copy the URL of a PDF in Android. It should be easy to find if you Google the title.
I was wondering the same, but then realized it burns off. Still… You’d think they’d have known since they were buying it to cook with already. I wonder if they can drink other forms of alcohol given it can be created different ways?
Beautiful commission art.
Bad way to learn about that. great art
Stupid, just stupid. He has FOUR fingered hands, with claws. He would have had to get custom made gloves in any case. Did he not think that if he could have gotten gloves made for those alone then he could have also gotten them made to work around his webs?
Maybe he could, maybe he couldn’t but before he did anything as drastic as cutting himself he should have ASKED someone if they could think of a solution.
Doctoring 101: It’s always a good idea to talk to more than one doctor. This is called getting a second opinion.
The problem isn’t the fingers or the claws, it’s the webs. A glove that fits over a webbed hand like that is basically a mitten and would have terrible dexterity. Fingered gloves allow for dexterity because the glove can wrap tightly to each finger and move independently of the other fingers. Even with gloves Pohl was going to have trouble using human surgical instruments which are designed to be held by non-webbed hands.
Howabout negative pressure gloves? Gloves to which a vacuum is applied after they are put on so they fit tightly around both fingers and webs?
There is also remote or robot-assisted surgery as an option;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_surgery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot-assisted_surgery
Possible, but a little too fancy for regular use.
As horrible as this body-mutilation was, it was also the best overall option. He should have, of course, gotten it done by someone in the hospital, or, you know, NOT WITH SCISSORS. But the outcome is overall better.
And he could always get webbed gloves to swim with, if he needs.
I think they could make a smaller tube for the fingers/claws, like the reservoir tip of a condom. No mittens, but the claw part of the reservoir would need special reinforcement, even if the tips are blunted. Cotten balls or gauze might help for padding.
Four fingers: You tie off the one finger inside the glove. I knew a nurse who lost her little finger and did that to keep the empty from getting in the way.
Claws: Manicure or, if Sarnothi claws have a lot of blood flow, the Sarnothi equivalent of soft paws.
Grapes = Bad
Wine = Really old grapes
Ergo, Wine = Really bad.
All together, now.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA–
Oooohhh *turds* Pohl >.<
That picture is AMAZING!
And peas and rice Pohl!! You’re in Med School! Surely SOMEBODY could have helped you. And given you some sort of anesthetic.
Hope they cook the heck out of those marinades, because you can almost never remove ALL the alcohol by cooking, and certainly not in the quick cooking techniques that marinades are kind of there for.
Peeps, he can’t use school equipment to self-amputate. The school would expel him.
Eeeeek!
(BTW, on the main page, there was a popup ad — oh, hey, it just flickered here — at the bottom of the page. Working as intended? (It’s sure not working as my adblocker intends. *mutter*))
(Ha, I couldn’t Post Comment till I scrolled up — there’s an “about:blank” frame there, that’s flashing and trying to load an ad or something.)
Yeah, the ads that overlap parts of the page are really distracting and irritating.
On a more amusing note, though, this page had a sidebar ad with blood dripping down….
Yeah that floater bottom-page ad is a new one, recommended by one of my providers, I’m seeing how well it works out.
It’s a new ad-type one of my providers suggested. Trying it out and seeing how it works.
Does not work on my eye-pad, (sic). Just a white bar flashing in the bottom, super annoying. Love the comic, Dave, and dang– but doesn’t this comic have some of the most civilized and intelligent discussions? I mean compared to “Almost” every other webcomic. I see a lot of happy buddy icons from “Dumbing” and “Kahmith”. (Big smile) xD
In hindsight he could have tied grocery bags around his hands, but that probably wouldn’t work too well, and custom gloves would be too expensive.
Yeah, they should’ve tried one of the milk based ferments. Like Kumis.
Most of the alcohol burns off in most dishes, but there are exceptions. I got drunk from a piece of Italian homemade rum cake when I was 9. I wobbled over to the couch and crashed. My parents couldn’t wake me for school the next day.