Spyong: Jack Kirby on Jack Kirby

While obsessing about the work of Will Elder and Wally Wood, specifically their Mad parodies of the 1950's, it was a pleasure to be reminded here of Jack Kirby's ability to parody himself. I still remember a short he drew somewhere (an early FF annual?) where he drew himself squinting out from under an assortment of ever more bizarre Kirbyesque helmets. The man had an unappreciated sense of humor about his own quirks: distorted anatomy, apocalyptic force lines, grimacing minions, and all.

The Literary Review, from Harry's Library of Distinction

John Candy as Harry from Harry's Sex Shop in downtown Mellonville: "Just look for me, the guy with a snake on his face." You can admit it now, SCTV was almost always funnier than the self-mythologizing Saturday Night Live.

Bend Your Knees and Relax, Democracy

Wonkette is funny again, which might make its "liveblogging" the only sane choice for Primary updates tonight. CNN becomes more and more unwatchable as the "host" format wears on, and even their last shining glimmer of intelligence, Anderson Cooper, has been buried somewhere beneath panels of second rate pundits and canned segments, when he should be out in the hinterlands doing his investigative thing on these mother@#@Qcock$#@$###sonofa *&%##$#$ voting machines. Apparently his second hour is stunningly coming in behind the O'Reilly hate broadcast, and Fox I mean CNN is cutting back on Cooper's chance to become the peripatetic Murrow of our day. Because you know, our mission statement at CNN has nothing to do with a well-informed democracy, not since we started dressing like the cool kids at Fox. And remember what Paley told Bill Moyers back when he left for PBS? "I'm sorry, Bill. but the minute's just worth too much money now."

I've nothing to say about Fat Tuesday and "Super Tuesday" falling on the same day, other than to complain that wretched excess makes my gorge rise, and I'm not talking about the Mardi Gras. The drunken half of America will be showing their tits, and the sober half showing their asses like parading baboons, and who can say which spectacle will bring happiness to the greater number of people?

10:30 PM EST: The History Channel is showing a Megadisasters episode about the possibility of an alien virus causing a pandemic after riding in on a comet or returning spacecraft. This is way more entertaining than Mitt Romney's pep rally chants on the networks. PBS is an island of sanity with Jim Lehrer the Betazoid anchor (really have you ever seen his pupils?) NBC has reached the absolute low in expert opinion by hiring reknowned Arabist Karen Hughes. You don't just reach for the remote and change the channel when that happens, you scream "Dive! Dive!" and start punching buttons like a submarine crew. Back to the space bug pandemic, where there is at least some hope for a cure.

11:00 PM: Obama has nine states so far, even snatching Connecticut and Delaware out from under Clinton's nose. Clinton has Massacusetts, the only state that went for McGovern over Nixon in 1972, proving once again that they're Democrats that don't mind losing.

Happy Marmot Appreciation Day; I Mean Imbolc, I Mean Saint Brigid's Day

Ah, syncreticism, without which we might as well all be Protestants. Julius Caesar conflated the triple goddess of the Celts as related to Minerva, which was dandy for religious tolerance but a pain in the butt for for historians because, following the custom of interpretatio romana, he described the Celtic pantheon to the folks back home using their Roman names. The original names are lost to the vagaries of oral tradition. Roman Catholics followed his cue and turned the Irish goddess Bride into the "Mary of the Celts" Saint Bride or Brigit or Bridget, midwife to Mary the Mother of Jesus.
The ewes start lactating, almost ready for the lambs, not that I'm one to be so up close and personal with sheep. Bridget features a cow, "our second mother" in her iconography, and some traditions hold that Brigid herself was wet nurse to the infant god. There's a lot of milk and fecundity and swollen bellies running around this holiday-- the name Ibolc itself means "In the Belly". Psychologically I suppose this is the part of the winter when we're waiting for something to happen, pregnant with change maybe, and waiting for the weather to break.

This plump little figure is from one of Saint Bridget's wells in Ireland. And the plump little fellow peeking out of his burrow represents my favorite part of the holiday, because what other day do we honor my favorite Mammalian order, the Rodentia?



The Celts had a rhyme they recited about a serpent coming out of his hole this day as a predictor of the coming Spring. That custom must have been brought over to America on the same boat as the carved turnip Jack O'Lantern, and mixed in with the animal the Algonquins called weeauchok. There's a paradox involved in the Chuck's prediction that I've never understood-- if the sun shines, and he sees his shadow today, that means more winter, not less?-- but it is the nature of the mystic quest and the way of the groundhog shaman to learn to live with paradox.

The prize for guttsiest groundhogs I know goes to a band of chucks who moved into a Michigan peace officer's back yard. Being a bear of very little brain, he decided to get rid of the woodchucks by setting charges of dynamite in and around their holes, inserting blasting caps and standing back to blast the critters out like Yosemite Sam.

Sad to say, it was an amateur installation-- by the trooper's brother-in-law-- and the dynamite failed to go off when they turned the crank. Didn't go off when they shot at it with pistols, either. Now instead of one groundhog family, there's a colony of woodchucks living in an overgrown mound more than 10 feet across, lined with explosive. The cop is afraid to go anywhere near the dynamite, which only becomes more volatile as its components separate, and he carefully mows around it. The chucks now live in a bramble and grass covered fortress, protected by the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction.

Michael Vick's Dogs and Mass Murder in Baghdad

The New York Times has a story about the rehabilitation of Michael Vick's fighting dogs. Casual readers are strongly cautioned that the story includes explicit descriptions of Vick's cruelty to animals. Television coverage was uncharacteristically discreet about what, exactly, was done to these dogs. Let's just say that Vick and his accomplices deserve to be in prison, though whether prisons cure or incubate savagery is a topic for another day.

My tougher but tender-hearted friends will want to read he story for the patience and kindness shown by the people who are caring for the dogs and trying to rehabilitate them. The dogs, as always, inspire me because of their ability to learn tenderness once their torment is removed. As Whitman observed, "they do not sweat and whine about their condition"; a dog or a cat missing an eye or a leg can become as cheerful and un-self conscious as the most complacent show dog.

I have known a rescue animal who became, with care, as bold and cheerful as any fictional Tiny Tim or Smike, who did her best-- with crippled feet that must have hurt-- to leap with joy in her own modest way, to walk tall with giants as if nothing could ever hurt her again. I knew a cat who had been used as a football by cruel boys who was a trusting and affectionate pet, though never quite secure enough to be picked up without coaxing. These small souls teach me stoicism in a way that Marcus Aurelius never could.

Friday, two women wearing explosive vests were used to murder at least 100 people in two Baghdad pet markets, places dedicated to the gentler side of humanity. It is not enough, apparently, that the killer apes go off in the bushes and kill each other; they feel justified in forcing their sorrow on others. Places like the pet market are called "soft targets", because those are the places where you can inflict the most damage on undefended, happy people.

To the happy warrior, this seems counter-intuitive-- the cause would be better served by targeting the people directly responsible for our suffering, though they tend to be surrounded by bodyguards, barbed wire and presidential palaces. These are called "hard targets", and sadly, they tend to die in bed.

The terrorist's dream is that suffering and chaos in undefended places will result in more government control, which will inspire the people to rebel against their repressive governments. In this, al-Qaeda played Bush and the US Congress like a cheap ukelele. We have a panicked government that embraces torture, air strikes and the invasion of privacy and kisses the hand that takes its freedom.

For antidote, the same issue contains an article on Animal Planet's Super Bowl Puppy Bowl (with the traditional kitten half-time show).