Bribed With a Tuber

Illinois politics have cast a big shadow this year, so I suppose it's an auspicious time to write about the Chicago politician known as “Bathhouse John.”

Properly known as John Coughlin, he started his 45-year career as a Chicago city council member in 1892. In his city district, Bathhouse John represented Chicago's most impressive array of gamblers, bar-keeps, prostitutes, pimps, and safecrackers.

John (right) was colorful in personality and raiment, commonly wearing bright green waistcoats, hand embroidered shirts with hand-embroidered zoo animals, and pants that came in colors like “gas-house blue.”

Bathtub John’s constant companion was his sidekick and crony Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna (left). The two of them were variously known as the “Lords of the Levee” and the “Gray Wolves,” and together they controlled both the police and gangsters like Al Capone. (Below, a detail from a 1908 Chicago Tribune cartoon titled “Grand March at Bathhouse John's Ball.”)
How crooked were these guys? Bathhouse John once strongly objected to a newspaper article because it incorrectly identified his birthplace. The same article described John as a thief. He did not dispute that part. Even worse, in his office, Johns kept sacks of bread and potatoes to hand out to visiting voters. (Yay! I was bribed with a tuber!)

Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink would ride to the horse-racing track in the front seat of John’s limousine because the back seat was often filled with feed for John’s horses. The steeds had names like Official, Sub-Committee, and Honored Sir.

But best of all, Bathhouse John liked to write songs, including the lovely tune, “Ode to a Bowl of Soup.” (Seriously. Oh, and about that nickname: Bathhouse John had once worked as a masseur, or a “rubber” in the parlance of the day, in a Turkish bath.)

My sources are here.

The Greatest Photograph of the 20th Century

An obituary in the New York Times for comic artist Bill Elder (1921-2008) featured this, the greatest photograph of the 20th century.
The 1939 photo shows future MAD magazine writer/artists Bill Elder (above right) and Al Jaffe. The two schlubs are seemingly just clowning around in their Brooklyn high school cafeteria. But there’s something more here than mere comic perfection. Elder and Jaffe grew up during the Depression, an era when law dictated that every American be photographed in somber mien (right).

And yet here’s these two goofballs.

Elder and Jaffe could have gone into dry cleaning or retail, but they were destined to be comic artists. In that capacity, Elder squeezed an astounding density of humorous details into his illustrations, like this one from his 1954 MAD piece, “Restaurant!” (Full page layout below.)

Elder was also the artist who began wedging funny doodles in the marginalia of each page of MAD. His sophomoric humor was so charmingly unfettered that it leads me right back to that photo at the top. Now those are two unfettered kids. God love 'em.

“Sniff sniff. I made a stinky!”

Sorry for that blog heading, but that’s a direct quote from Baby Alive Learns to Potty (picture below). Although you’re probably familiar with dolls equipped with facsimiles of working digestive systems, this one’s a wee bit different.

Unlike the posterior posers of the past, Baby Alive is more… alive. First, you can feed her realistic bananas or green beans. Second, Baby Alive will often “hold it” until an unpredictable exit time. The little scamp might make a mess anywhere! Finally, after going, Baby Alive will proudly exclaim about her bathroom accomplishments… just like a real person.

Beavers have a pretty high-fiber diet, so after they eat their food (tree bark), the beaver digests it and then poops out what looks like a gelatin/oatmeal mix. What next? The beaver then eats its poop and digests it a second time. When it comes out this time, it looks like sawdust. Sawdust!

I mention this because the first Baby Alive-ish doll I saw was some decades ago. The problem wasn’t that you fed the baby and it pooped. The problem was that you then saved the doll’s poop, because that was going to be its next meal. While I doubt this process encouraged kids to engage in coprophagy (the eating of one’s own poop), it was an unfortunate process to observe. (A debate over whether dolls like this [whose contemporaries include Potty Patty, Potty Scotty, and the Mommy Real Loving Baby Gotta Go Doll] are in any way educational can be found here.)

Pick Your Torture: Stinging Nettles or Rappers Without Rhythm

“The man who publishes a book without an index ought to be d***ed ten miles beyond hell, where the devil himself cannot get for stinging nettles.”

John Baynes (1758-87)

This salty quote came to mind when it was brought to my attention that The Big Book of Boy Stuff's index is less than useful, inasmuch as there isn't one. This is a source of sadness for me, primarily because of the stinging nettles. To help make amends, I share this video from the late 1980s put out by the Southern Food Brokerage.

The intro is hopelessly lame, but things get really interesting at :34 seconds in.

According to possibly spurious research, this promotional video was intended as a riff on the Chicago Bears “Super Bowl Shuffle.” The salespeople featured served as middlemen selling food products to retail outlets. I'm not here to give a rebuttal to that. I'm just here to do the... never mind.

Addendum: I've stumbled across this passage on the ease of making a book index from Miguel de Cervantes' classic, Don Quixote:

And for the citation of so many authors, ‘tis the easiest thing in nature. Find out one of these books with an alphabetical index, and without any farther ceremony, remove it verbatim into your own ... there are fools enough to be thus drawn into an opinion of the work; at least, such a flourishing train of attendants will give your book a fashionable air, and recommend it for sale.

German Soccer Fashion, circa 1975

At 28 seconds in, you'll think you've lost your mind.

Conveying Fibs in a Volley of Oaths, Part II

In my previous post, I shared some of the impressions that Dr. Alexander Hamilton had of his fellow Americans as he traveled the Northeast in the 1740s.

One difficulty Hamilton faced was how local customs changed from one area to the next. For example, in Albany, New York, Hamilton found that when he met women, they expected to be kissed in the European style. Hamilton unkindly remarked, “This might almost pass for a penance, for the generality of the women here . . . are remarkably ugly.”

As to language, the good doctor found that he could barely understand many of his fellow colonists. In New York, Hamilton’s innkeeper had this to say about cooking:

“As to cuikry, I defaa ony French cuik to ding me, bot a haggis is a dish I wadna tak the trouble to mak. Look ye, gentlemen, there was anes a Frenchman axed his frind to denner. His frind axed him ‘What ha’ ye gotten till eat?’ ‘Four an’ twanty legs of mutton,’ quo’ he, ‘a’ sae differently cuiked that ye winna ken whilk is whilk.’”

Wait, I think I get it— No, I really don't.

Other adventures include the time Hamilton met a man with “buttons as large as a turnip,” and the time when Hamilton was napping beneath a willow tree and he had an encounter with a cow: “I was waked by a cow that was eating my handkerchief which I had put under my head. I pursued her for some time before I recovered it.”

So in reading Hamilton’s account, one finds that his fellow eighteenth-century Americans were variously funny, tough, wild, prejudiced, crude, pushy or shy, and rather greedy. For a different perspective, let’s look at what people from other countries thought of early Americans. In 1827, an Englishwoman named Frances Trollope moved to the United States. To document her culture shock, she wrote a book titled Domestic Manners of the Americans.

It was a pretty bad Manners. Trollope could forgive Americans for cursing and spitting all the time. She could have maybe gotten over how smug, preachy, and full of strong opinions they were. And while she was shocked at how avidly they grubbed for money, she could stomach it. But the Englishwoman would not stand for hypocrisy. As she put it:

“You will see them with one hand hoisting the cap of liberty, and with the other flogging their slaves. You will see them one hour lecturing [on] the rights of man, and the next driving from their homes the children of the soil [Native Americans], whom they have bound themselves to protect by the most solemn treaties.”

Ouch. Famed novelist Charles Dickens toured the states not long after Trollope published, and he was struck at how Americans seemed to always view themselves the social equals of anyone, actual merits notwithstanding. In his American Notes for General Circulation (1842), the author (who was renowned for his warm-hearted charity) really let us have it:

“Their demeanour is invariably morose, sullen, clownish, and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humour, vivacity or the capacity for enjoyment.”

When an author as renowned for his kindess as Dickens conveys insults in a volley of vituperation, there is only one possible response: Zinger!

My sources are here.

Conveying Fibs in a Volley of Oaths, Part I

“Were these colonies left to themselves tomorrow, America would be a mere shambles of blood and confusion.”
—James Otis, revolutionary from Massachusetts, 1765

Benjamin Franklin once described a group of typical Americans as “little better than Dunces and Blockheads.”

Harsh? Perhaps, but most early Americans were earthy, hardworking people; in 1830, farmers made up about 70 percent of the total United States population. (This was a time when livestock made an excellent birthday gift.) For a snapshot of these forefolks, let’s check in with Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1712-1756). He's not the Alexander Hamilton shot by Aaron Burr, but rather a physician who traveled throughout the Northeast in the 1740s.

Hamilton kept a journal of his journeys in which he carefully described the manners of the people met. This was published in 1744 as Gentleman’s Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton. In it, Hamilton relates that one landlady heated up leftover clams in a bedpan. Oh my. And in taverns and coffee shops, he found many Americans who spoke so loudly they “spit in one’s face at three or four foot’s distance.” (Star-mangled manners?)

One thing that is clear in reading Hamilton's account is the interesting demographic mix to be found in cities. In Philadelphia, he described sitting down at a tavern’s great table to dine with a motley crew of twenty-five other guests:

"There were Scots, English, Dutch, Germans, and Irish; there were Roman Catholicks, Church men, Presbyterians, Quakers, Newlightmen, Methodists, Seventh day men, Moravians, Anabaptists, and one Jew."

As for entertainment, a seventy-five-year old man performed for Hamilton by jumping on his bum “without touching the floor with any other part of his body. Then he turned and did the same upon his belly.”

As he toured about, Hamilton was amazed by the attention people paid to a simple traveler like himself. Both Greenwich Village and Providence, Rhode Island, were full of bumpkins who stared with open mouths. The people “were as simple and awkward as sheep, and so wild that they would not appear in open view but kept peeping at me from behind doors, chests, and benches.”

But not everyone was shy. Hamilton was most offended by the bigmouths he met on his journey. At every turn, the doctor ran into brash know-it-alls, ignorant clods, and, most annoying, liars and cheats. In Pennsylvania, he wrote, a person “will tell a lie with a sanctified, solemn face; a Marylander, perhaps, will convey his fib in a volley of oaths.” Just like today!
(My sources are here.)

A Pleasant Day for a Ride

Did I mention it's been a bit snowy in Portland? Behold the Bakfiets (bahk-feets), a Dutch cargo-bike with a marine-grade plywood box. The name literally means “box bike.” (One Bakfiets, two Bakfietsen.)

So anyway, it's a wheelbarrow with pedals.

While Ruby the Pound Hound will ride inside it, she prefers running alongside to bark warnings at the pedestrians, sledders, and cars that I pass.

Top photo by Robert Rowzee.

The Kallikantzaroi: Underground Carbo-Loaders

While Christmas elves seem to have the potential for mischievousness, they’re not even in the same league as the Greek holiday goblins known as the Kallikantzaroi.

John Tomkinson (author of Haunted Greece) writes that the Kallikantzaroi live underground most of the year, carbo-loading on worms, snakes, and frogs. The legendary Greek goblins then hold their annual above-ground rampage between December 25th and January 6th. Tomkinson writes:

“The Kallikantzaroi cause mischief, they intimidate people, urinate in flowerbeds, spoil food, tip things over and break furniture.”

Heck, forget the elves, even the Green Goblin looks like a wuss when matched up against those kind of Yule-tide shenanigans. In this Der Spiegel article, the director of the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre says that the Kallikantzaroi are still popular throughout Greece today, but people are not as frightened of them as they once were.

This is partially because there are ways to keep the Kallikantzaroi at bay— burning an old shoe is one technique. (Actually, they might work on more groups than the Kallikantzaroi.) In fact, Greek police might want to try that shoe trick out; tear gas and riot sticks certainly haven’t quelled the mayhem that’s been taking place in Greece over the last two weeks.

Who Wants a Screaming Monkey Wreath?

The comment on the previous posting got me thinking about whoopee cushions. You see, the New York Times website ran a little something a few months ago that included The Pocket Guide to Mischief. (My work is not generally mentioned in the same breath as J. M. Coetzee’s.)

The image was part of a slideshow dedicated to— well, here, I’ll just let Rachel Harris explain:

"[O]nce in a while, when we’re pulling the endless books and press releases from publishers out of envelopes, out plops a little item of some sort. In fact, of every sort. From tennis balls to whoopee cushions, we’ve seen it all. Collectors call this kind of stuff 'literary ephemera,' and some of it is quite collectible. But not much of it."

Hey, do I detect a dismissive tone there? Watch it Harris, I'm an expert prankster (left). Anyway, back to whoopee cushions. The commenter (Tom Booth of Oregon State University Press) wondered what I could offer someone who purchased a book (yes, one of mine!) from an independent bookseller this season. (They need our support!) So howzabout a personalized Mischief whoopee cushion? Just scan a receipt and e-mail it (or snail-mail one; just drop a line and I’ll shoot you the address). I’ll drop a cushion in the mail, post-haste.

Hey, while I’m at the New York Times on-line edition, I see there’s a piece today on other “gifts” that could be misconstrued as unwelcome. Jeff Snoonian (pictured, with his unnamed brother, right) bought himself and his sibling matching blue velour jumpsuits. This ensemble is accented with pinkie rings. Total cost: $90. Other memorable (and cheap!) gift ideas include:

• a screaming-monkey wreath
• a needlepoint outhouse
• a toilet-plunger lamp
• an annual Chia Pet (every year, a new one!)

(Hey, want to know what I really want? An Annoy-a-tron!)

Burritos for Books

It’s been snowy and icy in the Pacific Northwest this week, making this the least auspicious time of the year to go jump in a lake.

So that’s what 12 Seattle-are poets did. (Above, one poet lost her glasses.) But before leaping into the frosty arms of Green Lake each plunging poet did a recital of his or her own work. One was a certain Dr. Clinton Bliss, who rhapsodized, “The coronary arteries tighten up and cut the blood flow. If there already has been a narrowing of the arteries, it could precipitate heart attack or arrhythmia."

Oh, my bad, that’s the doctor describing vasoplasm, a potentially fatal reaction of the body after it's subjected to extreme cold. Bliss's actual poem was about a polar bear “swimming, skimming bottom, bubbles beating time.”
This surreality (above, VW's riff on Magritte) was especially welcome after receiving two sobering messages yesterday. The first was a forward from this blog regarding Portland independent bookseller Broadway Books. Below, the owner's son writes:

"This store is my mother's passion and she's been an outstanding success in her endeavors [for nearly 20 years].... my father told me that business this winter season at my mom's store had been incredibly bleak. So much so that the future of the store could possibly be in jeopardy....

To help publicize the store's plight, this devoted son will buy a burrito for anyone who can show a receipt from the store for over $50. (Man, I dropped $75 there the other month! Why didn't I wait?)

UPDATE, 1/22/09: Broadway Books survived, and 25 people took advantage of the burrito offer.

On the heels of this news came this posting from Around the Sun that two other local indies, Twenty-Third Avenue Books and In Other Words Women’s Books and Resources are in dire financial straits. The latter store needs to raise $11,000 by the end of December, and the former's website states that they're toast “UNLESS we can find a buyer, an angel investor, or somehow rally the community to SAVE OUR SHOP!”

UPDATE, 1/22/09: In Other Words Survived. Twenty-Third Avenue Books did not.

While these are Portland businesses, stores worldwide are having a tough go of it. So if you’re planning on buying books for the holidays, opt for your local independents. Not only does your dollar has a far greater impact there, it may well stave off a bookstore’s vasoplasm.

Human Piñatas and Rejection

I'm fascinated by advertising's better efforts even as I scorn the vast majority of ads. Walt Whitman felt the same way when he wrote:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Anyway, I want to give credit where it’s due, so kudos to the creative team that concocted this Skittles ad.

Bill Shapiro (whose previous project was Other People's Love Letters) has sent out a call for writers who've been treated like human piñatas. That is, he wants their literary rejection letters. The cream of the rejected crop will be collected into a book: Other People's Rejection Letters. (The book will be large. It will contain multitudes.)

Writing in the Guardian, former editor Jean Hannah reveals that she rejected about 1,000 book proposals when she was in publishing. She fears that this new book will overlook the art of the rejection letter in favor of gratuitously pleasing material. Hannah notes:

“[W]riting rejection letters is a delicate skill... For it is not easy to achieve and balance the two central goals of a truly accomplished rejection letter: trying not to make the writer feel distraught whilst also discouraging him or her from ever contacting you ever again…. what I really wanted to write was, "Dear 'Writer', Please throw your laptop out of the window and never go near it again because this typescript is a shocking abuse of a perfectly good and innocent alphabet."

Guardian reader Mike Petty comments that his favorite rejection was, “Your work is so finely wrought and so divinely inspired that it would expose the rest of our output as the shallow nonsense that it is, leading to loss of face and a catastrophic fall in company morale, so we are reluctantly forced to return your manuscript to you.”

Without checking my own rejection slips (a trauma I'll avoid today, thank you), I'll tack on that also frustrating are editors who inform you that while THIS project of yours isn’t quite right, please keep them informed of your next great idea. This encouragement ("They like me!") leads one to immediately submit another proposal, which also ALMOST makes the cut but doesn’t… and so on. It’s almost enough to make one switch to decaf.

But in case you're feeling like a human piñata, let's end on an upbeat note: This very kind (uplifting, even!) form rejection letter (not mine!) from the literary magazine zyzzyva.

Singing Pickles

Note the other pickles' reactions after Baby Dill gets chomped.

AdGabber

"Oatmeal Sucks!" (repeat as needed)

The sports teams at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. are known as… the Friends. That’s not very intimidating, but it’s a Quaker school, so it makes sense. And Sidwell’s Friends keep it real— they're not above a little friendly trash-chanting.

At a recent high school basketball game against city rival Maret, the Sidwell supporters chanted “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!” This taunting referred to the fact that both Malia and Sasha Obama will be attending Sidwell next year. The Obama's runner-up school? Maret.

As reported by the Washington City Paper, Maret supporters were not amused by the chants, which were "insulting and incendiary” according to one parent. I suppose, though it can only hurt as much as one lets it. Perhaps it’s better to have a sense of humor about being excluded?

Anyway, what I liked was the Maret rooting section’s response to the Quakers' incendiary chanting of the President-Elect's surname:

“Oatmeal sucks! 

Oatmeal sucks!”

Sidwell won the game. Some people get everything.

It's Like the Blogs You Love, Only Evil

Evil Dead (1981) was a no-budget horror movie that heralded the arrivals of big-jawed actor Bruce Campbell (pictured) and writer/director Sam Raimi.

Anyway, some kooks adapted the film into an on-stage production in Toronto, where it ran for 400-ish performances as Evil Dead: The Musical.

They also worked up some nice posters for it riffing on Hairspray and Les Mis. Gotta love that slogan: "It’s like the musicals you love, only evil."

Here’s a cheerfully gory video (PG-ish?) for the play.

I Love You

“I don’t like [him.] He is a bad man, an imposter, a creator of wicked schemes. I wouldn’t speak to him, but, by God, I love him.”
Representative John Calhoun (1782–1850), after getting a helpful vote from a despised colleague in 1812

I said, “I love you” to a tech-repair person the other day. It just sort of popped out of me. To review: Through a combination of user error and computer glitches, I’d thrown away my current project from my laptop. And I hadn't backed up for two weeks.

The good news is that I haven’t broken out in a nice cold sweat since seeing Ringu. That along with the adrenaline and weeping made for a nice change of pace in my day.

User error having led to user terror, I took my laptop down to the local Mac store. They could help save my files, yes? Oh please, oh please, oh please... Of course it was a "rush job.” Aren’t they all?

I returned to the shop the next day, by which time my sweat was a more comfortable lukewarm temperature. The tech-repair person (note the lack of gender giveaway) informed me that the Word documents had been mostly saved. I wanted to say, “I thank you, good tech-repair person.”

Instead I said, “I love you.” Beat.

We both consider this for a moment.

“That is, I love you in the platonic way reserved for people who save me from tech emergencies,” I added in a non-hasty or lame way.

The tech person took it in stride. I’m sure they get that all the time there. But as for me, I’m a changed man. And looking at John Calhoun's kind-hearted visage, it’s clear that he too knew about the transformative power of love. After making his quote above, he served as Vice President under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and founded the Nullification Party. (If I remember correctly, its members wanted to make hatred, ill will, and mild revulsion null and void. Oh, and I also blogged about Calhoun here.)

Graffiti Advertising Helps Me Decide!

Like many European cities, Berlin is plastered with graffiti. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like the stuff when it’s artistic, clever, or just happens to besmirch lame-o advertising. (Graffiti artist Banksy’s stencil on Israel’s West Bank wall, above.)
But Berlin’s street artists are crying foul because lately the ads have been besmirching their work. You see, advertisers looking for an edge have increasingly turned to ads camouflaged as graffiti (see above)… Ooh, they’re tricky!

Take the mobile communications company Ogo for example. According to Der Spiegel, there was a mysterious overnight appearance of “hundreds of round cartoon monsters… in the form of graffiti, on Berlin's high-rise buildings, on posters and construction site fences.” Later, the truth came out: They were ads.

Guerilla ads are nothing new, and co-opting pop and youth culture to sell stuff is likewise not very shocking. But while graffiti has been around since humankind learned to build walls, it was a big deal in 1969 when a kid wrote his nickname (Taki 183) all over New York. Der Spiegel points out that graffiti’s modern variant then “gained strength in the 1970s when it reclaimed public space from advertising. ‘Reclaim the streets’ was one of the slogans of the early activists, who saw themselves as critics of commerce armed with spray paint and magic markers.”

So much for that. And these new ads aren’t even vandalism! Charges of property damage don’t stick when ad stencils wash away in the first hard rain. But those advertising images will stick in our heads longer than that. Mission accomplished. (Right, a meshing of commerce and graffiti from Palermo, Sicily that sums up my feelings. Oh, and I love this graffiti story.)

Ratings Insight

“Wendy and Lucy” is rated R. It has some swearing, a little drug use and a brief implication of violence, but no nudity, sex or murder. The rating seems to reflect, above all, an impulse to protect children from learning that people are lonely and that life can be hard.

From A.O. Scott's New York Times review.

Holiday Meats: Your Source for Creative Literary Enjoyment

This "Holiday Meats" insert from New Seasons Market is in today's Oregonian. Unable to resist its charms ("Look, there's ham, lamb, ooh— crab!"), I leafed through and was surprised to find this inside (below).
Smirk if you must, but I do offer prime cuts of locally-harvested prose inside The Pocket Guide to Games. And given its handy size, the contents can fit nicely in a sandwich. Or bring it by my deli counter; we'll slice it thin and lay the book out with an attractive assortment of cheese and crackers. (Need a non-meat gift idea? Try the Annoy-a-tron.)

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Makes Me Sad

In my continuing tour of the websites of the United States' 16 military intelligence departments, I visited the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The NGA's mission is to make and analyze maps and photographs.

Ah, but can the NGA’s Kids’ Page rank up there with the National Security Agency’s CryptoKids page (post here)? It's not even close. Take a look at Exhibit A from from the NGA's “Games” section (right).

Since when is coloring in a weaksauce worksheet a “game”? This doesn’t even qualify as educational… I’m picturing the two cartographers charged with the task of putting this Kids’ site together. “Well, making sandwiches is kind of fun.” “Yeah, it's like a game!”

Another NGA kids' classic is being able to watch a desultory “fly through” of a map of... a copper mine?! “Pilots use information like this to ‘fly’ around areas just like a computer game” the text exults. Uh-huh.

For any kids mysteriously inspired by this material to seek out a career with the NGA, this page fills them in on the educational background they’ll need to enhance their geospatial-intelligence. (That would be elementary school, then middle school, high school and college.)

Man, the CryptoKids never looked so good.

An Ergonomic Medical Device (with a 9 mm. chamber)

Khalil Semhat lives in Lebanon. He grew a big potato. But today’s bigger news comes from this report in New Scientist, revealing that the FDA has labeled the 9 mm. handgun below as a "Daily Activity Assist Device.” In other words, it’s not a gun, it’s a medical device aimed to assist seniors with arthritis to shoot more easily.
According to Matthew Carmel, president of the company that makes the Palm Pistol, “The justification for this would be no more or less for a [walking aid] or wheelchair, or any number of things that are medical devices.” I love that "the justification would be no more or less.” In other words, a Palm Pistol is exactly the same thing as a wheelchair. But what else is it? The Palm Pistol website reveals more (and less):

“The Palm Pistol is an ergonomically innovative single shot... only defensive firearm [sic].” Elsewhere on the site: “Suitable for home use, concealed carry enthusiasts, collectors or backup gun. Ideal for disabled, seniors [sic] and others with manual dexterity limitations.”

Oh dear, there is such a thing as concealed weapon enthusiasts? If Khalil Semhat's hands are tired from digging up that big potato, perhaps the Palm Pistol would make an ideal Daily Activity Assist Device for him. But I'd hope Khalil would be more enthusiastic about owning an equally deadly (but more nutritious!) concealed parsnip.

I Can Has Over-Analysis

Jay Dixit at Salon weighs in with nearly 1,800 words on why the lolcats of Icanhascheezburger fame are so appealing. (Left, the book inspired by the website. After the success of blogs turned books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Stuff White People Like, does that seem like a backwards process anymore?)

More on Dixit's analysis in a moment, but the real news (for me) was that lolcats have spawned legions of lol-imitators. There’s lolpresidents, loldogs, lolhan (that’s Lindsay Lohan in lol-speak), and lol-walruses, which are known as lolruses (picture down below).

Returning to the felines, there’s also the lolcats Bible Translation Project. It’s what it sounds like; a complete translation of the Bible in lolcats lingo. First entry, Genesis. (FYI, the Ceiling Cat is the Divine Entity):

Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs. "Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.… At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz. An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin."

Wow. As to the Salon article, Dixit supports his thesis with these points, which I'll reveal after this lolrus picture.
— The amusing misspellings and bad grammar of the lolcats result from the imagined reality that, “Cats are dumb and can't spell.” (Check.)
— As engineered by human photographers and caption writers, the lolcats are not trying to be cute. (What?! No check.)
— Jay argues that lolcats “don't represent cats at all. They're a completely different kind of beast, [who are] mischievous (if incompetent) rascals.” Jay adds that “We've gone from cats as cats... to cats as human beings. The sad lolcats represent people.” (Check withheld as I contemplate why this would make the lolcats more appealing than… cats.)
— The sad lolcats are “tragic figures of grief, yearning and unrequited love.” And the cheeseburger is not really a cheeseburger— it's a symbol of that ineffable something that we all yearn for. Jay continues:

“The comic form is generally a prophylaxis against sentimentality. By articulating profound feelings through cats… speaking garbled English, we're able to shroud genuine emotions in pseudo-irony— which means those animals can evoke deeper emotions without fear of mockery or cheapness.”

Check? No check? I have just one word:

Wondering About the CryptoKids

“Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”
Secretary of State Harry Stimson explaining why he shut down the U.S. code-breaking operation in 1929

The U.S. spends well over $50 billion a year gathering intelligence and there are SIXTEEN different agencies in the federal government devoted to this task. I don’t expect anyone to be able to name all of them, but can you name the largest intelligence-gathering agency? (The graphic to the left may be of assistance.)

Nope, not the CIA (motto: “Human intelligence on foreign targets”) though that would’ve been my first guess. It’s the National Security Agency (NSA) which is in charge of breaking and making codes and waging “information warfare.”

Like most self-respecting government agencies, the NSA has a "Kids' Page," and in this case, it's staffed by the CryptoKids. In addition to providing fun and games for the grade-school set, the CryptoKids reveal their own biographies. But the back-stories are oddly rich in seemingly irrelevant detail... which makes me suspicious that there's a secret message inside of them! Case in point, Decipher Dog.
I've gone through this a couple of times no with no results, so let me know if you find anything. Now where's that Ovaltine decoder ring...

"Signs Point to... Oddness"

Yes, I sometimes find on-line user reviews of obscure products entertaining and thought-provoking. Not all of them; it’s usually the most vehement or adulatory reviews that make me crack a smile or scratch my head.

Enter the Magic 8 Ball. In the course of researching (don’t ask) the fortune-telling device, I was struck by these “one star” reviews on Amazon. Exhibit A: Arthur, a self-identified "skillful reviewer":
Although Arthur is Australian, there may be a second-language learning issue here. Nonetheless, following the train of thought in that last paragraph alone is sort of fun... until you get lost in the rough. Here's another Australian incensed by the 8 Ball.
This review is interesting because the reviewer seems to have the rare 8 Ball that asks questions. And that last sentence is awe-inspiring: "If a robotic company invented a talking 8 ball with no random questions and can be your pal as a lie detector, than that one I like."

Admittedly, it's possible these reviews are rigged... that is, knowingly written to be off-the-wall by some irony-drenched hipster. It's happened before; witness what happened to Tuscan whole milk on Amazon, e.g.:

Merry Christmas from Austria!

He’s incredibly ugly. He carries a stick to frighten naughty childen in the Yuletide season. And as if all that weren’t bad enough, his name is Krampusz (from the old German krampen: “claw”).

Meet Austria’s resident seven-foot tall Christmas mascot. Krampusz looks a little bit like Pan’s rougher cousin after a bacchanalian bender. As explained by Der Spiegel, starting on December 5, the longstanding tradition was for folks to dress up as Krampusz and then go around the neighborhood knocking on doors. If children answered, the faux-Krampuszs would brandish switches, ring cowbells, and basically make the kids REALLY look forward to the arrival of Saint Nicholas.

This frightening routine was well-established before the Inquisition, which began in the 13th century. The threat of torture and execution was enough to get the Austrians to lay off the Krampusz fun/heresy for a few centuries, but the hairy fellow made a comeback in the 1600s, and he's stuck around ever since.

The town of Schladming is the epicenter of the Krampusz society. It holds a parade with over a thousand Krampuszs that includes lots of revelry and cowbells (yes!). As they say in Austria: Krampusz gerne Partei. ("Krampusz likes to party.") Check a Krampusz enthusiasts' site (auf Deutsch) here. (And if you hear cowbells on the 5th, don't answer your door.)

Giving Us the Electrocuted Bird III: In Which I Rest and Rescind My Case

“The scum of every nation gravitates to the frontier.” Benjamin Franklin

Wrapping up my charges (earlier ones here and here) that Benjamin Franklin was the most overrated Founding Father, let me point out what a bad roommate he was. When Franklin and John Adams were on a diplomatic mission regarding Canada, the two men had to share a bedroom on Staten Island. (Make up your own “politics makes strange bedfellows” joke.) It was cold outside and Adams shut the bedroom window.

“No, that’s very unhealthy,” Franklin said, opening the window and praising the healthy benefits of fresh air. This lecture was so boring, Adams slept through it. But the poor little guy was still cold!

Not only was he an annoying roommate, but historians agree that Franklin wasn’t much of a father. For example, his only son William was forced to risk electrocution flying a kite in a lightning storm while dad took notes from a covered shed. Of course, images like this engraving by Henry Sadd usually show Franklin going it alone, or if William is present, he’s a mere accomplice.

As an adult, William opposed the Revolutionary War because he believed the only way the American colonies could achieve independence was through a series of bloody battles, and he couldn’t bear to see that happen. Opposing the war meant that William was defined as a “Loyalist” for King George III of England.

This infuriated his father, and after signing the Declaration of Independence, Franklin personally arranged for the arrest of his son. William’s subsequent three years of solitary imprisonment left him with no teeth, no job, no wife (she died in the interim), and no father. Benjamin Franklin cut all mention of William from his autobiography, and William was exiled to Great Britain for the rest of his days.

What a jerk! Let’s see, what else... One could say that Franklin was indirectly responsible for the renegade State of Franklin, a real place from 1784–1788. You see, North Carolina originally reached west all the way to the Mississippi. But its inhabitants living on the western frontier were such a pain in the roughneck, North Carolina’s governor cut them loose by turning the land over to the federal government.

The frontier folk then formed their own territory, the State of Franklin. To see where it was, check the right inset on this map (from a 1923 book by William R. Shepherd, courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries).
The State of Franklin applied to Congress for statehood and received seven of thirteen votes, two votes short of the two-thirds majority required. In 1786, the North Carolina Assembly passed the Act of Oblivion (how cool!), which was intended to bring the State of Franklin back within North Carolina. It didn’t take, but ten years later, the state formerly known as Franklin became part of the new state of Tennessee.

But can I really define Benjamin Franklin (or anyone!) by the worst thing he ever did? I suppose not. You've got to love anyone who wrote, “I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich.” As a final point in his favor, Franklin was both a printer and a book lover, thus cementing his merit for the ages. Below, the epitaph that he wrote for himself in 1728:

[Here lies] the Body of B. Franklin, Printer;
Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
And stripped of its lettering and gilding,
Lies here, food for worms.
But the work shall not be wholly lost;
For it will, as he believed, appear once more,
In a new and more perfect edition,
Corrected and amended,
By the author.

The Henry Sadd engraving is from the Library of Congress. My sources are here. Oh, and as a final aside, Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, became a newspapermen who delighted in tweaking George Washington’s image. Bache once wrote that the president was “a despotic, anemic counterfeit of [King] George.” Guess the kid had a little gadfly in his DNA.

Indoor Plumbing Convenience Devices in the Land of the Rising Sun

Sadly, here is yet another twist on the continuing saga of our indoor plumbing convenience devices.

It’s well known that Japanese scientists have come up with a science-fictional array of toilet accessories (e.g., heated seats, interior lighting, music consoles). These options are so legion, toilets have been equipped with their own control panels for years now. And as of 2008, you can use that panel to let the toilet know whether or not you want a tiny electrical charge to be sent through your buttocks to check on your body-fat ratio.

Ahem. And that’s nothing! According to this BBC article by Duncan Bartlett, the latest toilets (from Panasonic!?) will assess the gender of potential users and then automatically lift or lower the toilet seat accordingly. (Hmm, a little mischievous counter-programming could lead to hijinks...)

Mr. Bartlett notes that in Japan, “comedies sometimes include scenes of pranksters luring people into loos whose walls then collapse, and the embarrassment this causes the victim is a source of great hilarity. The Japanese —like the British— [don’t mind] when comedians… joke about scatological matters.” (Above left, not high tech, but an interesting design for saving space!)