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There is Balm in Gilead Wednesday, December 17, 2003 • read strip Viewing 46 comments:

I'm patiently waiting for a chance to use that line.

Gonna be a while, but it'll be well worth it.

someone please explain it to me.

The skinny cat is providing a hangover cure for the fat the fat, drunk, and maybe legally dead cat.

Also, balm in Gilead is a line used in several famous places I can't think of at the moment. Balm is basically just a cure or a curative, Gilead I believe was a territory during the crusades. Maybe the Bible. It's healing in a bad place, basically.

%u201CGo up to Gilead and take balm.%u201D Jeremiah 46:11

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.



I always imagined that Roast Beef was answering the question posed by the protagonist to the bird in the poem The Raven.
"Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'"

I have no idea why my brain made that connection.

You made the connection correctly, the guy in the Raven is quoting the bible, as is Beef... or Beef is quoting the Raven. Either way how can you but not focus on anything beside the ghastly, white phantasma of the teeth !

Woah, no need to call him fat twice!

they're both in hell, aren't they both legally dead?

Shit, here I was thinking, Gunslinger reference.

hints of Ray's buttcrack

Wait - Why is there buttcrack above his tail?

he is wearing a thong, after all.

no he is not, he is wearing more of a speedo type device, were it a thong we would get hella visage of Ray Ass

no dude i'm pretty sure a multitude of alt texts etc. use the word 'thong' as opposed to 'speedo type device'

man you know what? i'm sorry i lamed you. you made a simple mistake and that just does not merit a lame. it just does not.

Well I know they use the word thong and it is called a thong, but if it looks like a pear and a man calls it and apple, does that make it an apple? Basically what I am saying is they call it a thong and yet while it resembles one it is not really such a thing. Were it a real thong this although a little less fat and with a tail is what we would be getting.

I've noticed that, too. I guess "thong" is just a funnier-sounding word.
Also, ew.

So Ray seems like a drunk guy in the gutter, which he is pretty much kinda

Did beef have that in advance, or did he go back and get it, secure in the knowledge that Ray wasn't going anywhere?

Beef and Ray have known each other since childhood. I'm sure it was the first thing he picked up when he started looking.

"There is balm in Gilead" is more epic than any coax-someone-out-of-drunken-vomit line should be.

Quite a bit kinder than
"Come on now
Who's the idiot
Who is daddy's idiot"

"RAY! YOU WERE A FAT CHILD! YOU...WERE...A...FAT...CHILD!!!"

the black and white characters against the color backdrop was a great stylistic choice. the subtle impact wouldn't have been the same had the cats been colored. they are strangers in this place.

My thongs also have tail holes

FURRY

You're wearing them the wrong way around then.

Yea, verily.

Beef is probably referring to the church hymn when he offers Ray the balm for his hangover. The song "There Is Balm In Gilead" is a traditional African-American spiritual.
There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.
(this is just the refrain for the song, there's more to it than this).

"Is There Balm in Gilead?" is also a question asked of The Raven in Poe's famous poem of the same name. For the speaker in that poem who'd lost the love of his life, there was none. But for Ray, even in Hell's darkest economy motels, there is some because his oldest friend is watching out for him.

Not enough chubbies to give you, I have, not enough chubbies to give.

Man I was going to make the same comment, but you beat me too it by 3 months.

Quoth the Raven- Chubbies, more!

The return of the buttcrack which rises even above Ray's tail.

7-11's coffee is hell on earth. For infinite reals.

It comes from vending machine.

Also, why is 7-11 an iconic american brand I see in all films? I have only ever seen one in the US, in Boston.

every fifty feet in los angeles. i have mentioned this before. srsly every fifty feet. i love 7-eleven. <3

TEAM GULPS OF SLURPEES

Has anyone tried this cure? I would like to know how efficacious it is.

I just realized. Ray and Beef are not white cats, so their whiteness is painfully out of place. Is it that Hell reduces its inhabitants to gray scale?

Not really, because Robert Johnson was shown in full color.

I always thought it was raw egg and Worcestershire sauce?

surreal as the cartoon heli-walker going through all the fields and such.

Dude...
Makes me wish I had a friend like Beef... all ready to kill himself to go to hell and find me drunk and collapsed all ready with a hangover cure.
That is dedication right there.
Shame not all folks from circumstances turn out that decent. I'd be the classic example myself of how they don't.