Librarians eaten.

I hate this stuff.

What they think they're doing: Showing that "different" things aren't scary.

What they're actually doing: Showing that heroic men are idiots.

Here's the deal: Dragons are mythical creatures intended to be scary, even if they are good, as in Chinese mythology. A cuddly dragon is a non-dragon creature of some other kind. That's the point of dragons. 

I'm sick to death of dragons being the good guys. Dragons want to eat us. Dragons are no good for human companionship. Dragons suck. Boo dragons. Leave them alone.

Where did it start? Ogden Nash's "The Tale of Custard the Dragon," about a cowardly dragon (who does in fact eat a human)? Anne McCafferty's Dragonriders of Pern series? Wherever it did, we find now that the world is on its head, that the dragons are always (surprise!) good and the guys who want to take them out bad. Whether it's Dragonslayer, Dragonheart, How to Train Your Dragon, it's hard to find a dragon in fiction that's not the good guy. It's like finding a police office or priest in fiction who is the good guy, especially if he's white and male -- like finding hen's teeth.

It's all part of the crap that gave us Wicked and all the new Disney pictures that root for the bad guy. (As long as the bad guy is, you know, a girl -- Captain Hook and Gaston remain bad.) The ladies are just misunderstood, you know. Men were mean to them, probably. That's why they're bad. 

Or maybe they're just power-hungry crapweasels. I don't care what made the green babe mad in Oz; if she sends a pack of wolves to rip up a little kid, kidnaps her with terrifying flying monkeys, and threatens to slaughter the little girl when the sand runs out of the hourglass, to hell with her. Drop a freaking house on her. SHE'S THE BADDIE. How she got that way is irrelevant; she chose her path. 

As Germán Saucedo wrote recently in First Things:

The clear images of true evil present in the best fairy tales, ballads, myths, and legends offer both a vision of what is to be avoided at all costs, as well as a vision of virtue. As such, the “sympathetic villain” genre is a symptom of a society that disagrees on what is good and what is evil, or that tries to explain evil away as trauma, psychopathy, or pathology. But to identify and avoid evil, we must first learn to recognize the good. The insistence on subverting villains is a sign we have lost confidence in our belief that we can know what heroism looks like, a heroism that displays the good that would oppose their unrighteousness. In a world without any moral certitude or any agreed upon system to define true virtue, what is wickedness anyhow? It would be just a matter of perspective.

In this light, we see that stories like this tell us a lot more about the storyteller than they actually do about good or evil. 

One dragon story that takes a more serious approach to the topic was based on Fred Saberhagen's Swords books, which I discussed here last year. An Armory of Swords features stories by other writers about what happened to various normal people whose lives were touched by the mighty god-forged Swords that were circulating the world. In "Dragon Debt" by Robert E. Vardeman, my favorite story in the collection, a young man comes into possession of Dragonslicer, the Sword of Heroes... and also a small, helpless baby dragon. A moral dilemma ensues in which the stakes are not small. 

The point of dragons is that they're dangerous, and dealing with them requires valor, not tea and cookies. Pretending they are all nice and lovely is just pretending that there is nothing really dangerous in the world, which we know is false. As C.S. Lewis wrote in the essay "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," "Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker."

Meanwhile, the librarian type in the meme above are the sort who expect their native goodness to make everyone but the genuinely evil side with them -- and when people don't, they go on TikTok demanding the ruin of their lives. 

I've had it with dragons, but when the one pictured above turns on his bookworm buddies and eats them, I will offer him a mild nod. Not that I want the wicked dragon to win, but smugness and stupidity must be punished if we're to understand why these are bad things. 

Fluff lies bleeding.

I haven't seen all the Toy Story movies, but if they wanted to do a real horror show, they should make one from the vantage of dog toys. 

Izzy does enjoy ripping the fluff out of toys. If it's got a squeaker, he's going to get it out -- and then the squeaker must be carefully removed from his mouth, or he will keep munching it until it stops making noise. Die, squeaky heart! He might swallow it, which would be bad.

We really don't want the dog to swallow the squeaker, but it's instinct. He's a retriever by breeding and nature, so his job is to go get the duck and, if the duck still shows signs of life, to break or chomp its neck and put it out of its misery. Since I'm not a hunter, he only gets to do this to his toys. And do it he does. 

He's not as bad as his late uncle, Nipper, the legendary destroyer of toys. Nipper was once known as the Alexander the Great of dogs by tackling his personal Gordian Knot the same way Alexander did his -- direct action and ruthless efficiency.  

Tralfaz was less of a menace to toys. He would destroy them, but just incidentally because he was so big and strong. A few he did not wreck; he was a bit attached to a crunchy Mickey Mouse toy that he would groom, licking and pawing it. Gotta clean up Mickey's act. We had to keep Mickey away from Nipper or he would rip up his brother's favorite toy. 

Izzy has the Nipper instincts, and most toys don't last long around him unless he doesn't like them. Still, I would hate to see what would happen to Woody and Buzz if Izzy got hold of them. It would make the weird neighbor kid's bedroom of toy horrors in the first picture look like a day at the beach. 

Dogs in the comic books.

Throughout the history of American comic books, dogs have played an interesting but not dominating role. There have been a number of famous canine characters who appeared first in comics, and others who appeared elsewhere and made their way into comics. But considering the enormous popularity of dogs as pets in our history, they actually seem underrepresented. 

Note here that I'm not referring to funny-animal type dogs, like Snoopy or Pluto or Droopy or Huckleberry Hound or even Underdog. I'm thinking here of action hero dogs. And no, Scooby-Doo does not count. Jonny Quest's dog Bandit is close, but he's not a headlining character, I'm afraid. The same goes for Snowy and Dogmatix. 

Lassie, however, was not just a star of film and television; the world's favorite collie starred in comic book adventures by Dell from 1950 to 1962; then Western picked up the series until 1969. And I am not kidding about being the favorite of the world, or at least what we used to call Christendom -- those comics were also published in Canada, Brazil, the UK, Australia, Scandinavia, Germany, and so on. Rin-Tin-Tin didn't have as long a run in comics, but his adventures appeared in most of the same markets and Lebanon as well, according to the Grand Comics Database. 

Less down-to-earth dogs were featured in comics, of course, and we've covered a couple of the most famous ones on this blog. Krypto, Superman's super pet dog, was unleashed (ha!) on the American public in a March 1955 issue, and Batman got a part-time dog helper named Ace a few months later. Older than both of those characters by three years is Rex the Wonder Dog, a heroic white shepherd who was so smart and whose adventures became so fantastical that in more recent years has been said to have superpowers, and be a superhero in his own right.

When Marvel comics decided to have a dog character, it was of course Lockjaw, a monstrous teleporting bulldog, as part of the Inhumans, because we can't just have friendly pets when Jack Kirby is involved.

But speaking of Marvel, I'm proud to report that the inspiration for this post today is my own dog Izzy, America's Sweetheart. Yes, I was amazed to discover that before he lived with us, he was actually a friend of the Fantastic Four's Human Torch, appearing in an issue of Strange Tales in 1965.

Therefore, as I own Izzy, I am the official agent of a Marvel character. If Disney wants to go ahead and ruin the Fantas -- that is, make a new Fantastic Four movie, they will need to pay us a small fee -- perhaps two or three million dollars -- for the rights. 

🐕💰🐶💸🦮🤑

Okay, maybe it's just possible that Izzy did not appear in the actual comic book. I say that based on the fact that his head is not as big as a human's, as shown above, and in 1965 he was not born yet -- and would not be for 56 years. The actual panel from the story, courtesy of the entertaining Comics Archaeology site, is here: 

But if Disney would like to send us a bushel of money anyway, I'm sure we can accommodate them. Come on, Mouse House! Look at my dog! He's cuter than anything you've coughed up in at least twenty years and has universal appeal. (Oops -- maybe I should not have mentioned Universal.) 

Run run Rudolph.

One of my very earliest memories was standing on line at preschool, desperately excited to tell the teacher something of great importance. I remember that I liked her, although I do not recall her name or face; I remember the room, but not one other student; and I remember we were all on line so she could inspect us, whether for proper dress or lice or what I have no idea. My focus on was telling this person that I had seen Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on TV the night before. The Rankin-Bass special had been running for a while by then, but to me it was new, and I was so excited I wanted to tell someone, anyone! 

So I did, and she gave me a "That's delightful" or something while giving me the check, then sent me on my way. I could hardly believe it was possible that someone wouldn't have been equally excited about Rudolph, but adults were always weird and inscrutable. 

The reason I write about this today is I realized this is the first year to have passed without me seeing one single Rankin-Bass Christmas special, nor anything by Rankin and Bass, nor in fact any of the childhood favorites at all (Charlie Brown, Grinch, and so on). Even when I was a single, happenin' young dude I would always make time for the classics. It just didn't happen this year.  

It's true that I've been really busy, and also true that the dog hardly ever chills out long enough for me to just sit down and watch a TV show. (If the TV was in the backyard, I could watch epic movies out there.) And certainly, having seen these specials dozens of times, I think I'm familiar enough with them that I feel no overwhelming urge to engage with them now. Nostalgia is a strong pull at Christmastime, though. So where were they? 

Since I was a wee tot, the atomization of common culture has marched along, first slowly, then at rocket speed. Whereas everyone once watched the same handful of VHF networks (and were derided as dummies by the intelligentsia for it), there soon arose decent UHF, followed by cable, followed by home video machinery, and now online streaming. It's pretty rare that anyone watches the same thing at the same time in any large numbers now. TV networks used to try to fight for space by going big -- now they go cheap. Reality shows are the order of the day. But what could be cheaper than a 60-year-old animation? 

Ah, but in the interim, all those old specials went to videotape, DVD, and now posted online and to streaming services. Sure, the old Rankin-Bass specials might pop up on Disney's "Freeform" (once the Family Channel, when Disney cared about the family), but they are treated like poor relations coming around looking for a handout. Instead, we can watch green Jim Carrey steal presents and fat Tim Allen deliver them and that creepy train movie again and again. Seems weird to me, but I guess they know their business. 

Freedom of choice is a good thing, but the culture has become so shattered that I wish we still had some things we enjoyed in common. Taylor Swift is not going to bring us all together, trust me. But once, long ago, a red-nosed reindeer did a pretty good job of it. 

Bloody sacrifice of the cash cow.

Once you notice it, you can't stop noticing it.

All the best and brightest around us who achieve high positions in any capacity feel obliged to follow this series of steps:

1) Examine the state of the organization.

2) Determine what segment of the market is outside its current reach. 

3) Viciously attack its strongest adherents in the hope of winning over the outsiders. 

We all know the term cash cow from marketing -- that beloved quadrant of the business that just keeps pulling in money, year after year, without very much tending, a segment that yields predictable if unspectacular dividends that can be used to fund more risky, more potentially wealth-generating projects. All the company has to do is feed the cow and not murder it. 

It seems that all the grads from the business schools get a complimentary butcher knife along with their sheepskin. They loathe having to work on a dull part of a dull company that just makes money. Blech! (People who blech! at profit are people who have never had to worry where their next meal is coming from.) They would much rather be social engineering!

Step one: Kill the cow. And the fastest way to do that is to insult its greatest adherents to the point of libel and make them angry every time they see your logo. The next step is to be shocked that people got upset, and then get panicky when the sought-after new audience segment does not flood into the doors and double the revenue. Step three: Write a book about your great accomplishment a fail upward into a new job.

Gilette. Bud Light. Disney (subsets especially include Star Wars). The NFL. These are only some of the prominent businesses that have suffered at the hands of their young geniuses. 

The United States is doing it to its citizens. The very people who love this country and the principles upon which it stands and would die for it are treated with suspicion and worse by its own government, which is run by people who would not suffer a rainy weekend for it. Meanwhile, noncitizens are welcomed, no matter how illegal their entry, no questions asked, and criminals are allowed to run the streets. 

And now, the Catholic Church?

Every devout Catholic I know is worried that the Holy Father, a.k.a. Hippie Pope Frank, has called the three-year synod to make some rash changes, like ordaining women (which the church has declared is not possible), encouraging more illegal immigration (but not into Vatican City), easing up on divorce, or blessing same-sex unions, following the lead of some apostate bishops in Germany. (Germany: Birthplace of Bad Ideas Since Forever.)

The stupid logo they commissioned for it fills me with dread. Rather than being focused on Jesus, God, or the Trinity, it looks like a pagan tree god sheltering the usual multiculti mob, which schleps forward into a future of tribalism and special pleading.

I know church membership is down since World War II, but that's true for all churches. The reasons are varied, ranging from scientism/positivism to the apathy of wealth to the sickness of Communism to worldwide PTSD from the war. It's not just because the Pope doesn't like the Pill. 

Protestant churches who ran out in front to rubberstamp everything people wanted lost attendance even faster. Why? There's no point to a church that asks nothing, because a church with no firm moral center can give nothing. A church that approves everyone's bullshit can neither inspire nor educate, and certainly can't compel adherence or the personal sacrifice that leads to spiritual growth. If they're just social service stations, who the hell cares? The government already does that and tithing to them is not voluntary.

Is the Catholic church killing the cow with the so-called synod? Is it Vatican III, "Just do what you want"? Which would utterly infuriate and demoralize the faithful, who have kept the joint up all this time. And the church would be following a modern heresy. 

Heresy is not what the atheists say; that's simple unbelief. Evildoers within the church are not usually heretics; they are evil bastards who would have been better off sunk with a millstone necktie. Heresy comes from focusing on one part and blowing it up to be the whole thing. Worship of poverty like Tolstoy or worship of spiritual matters as secret magic like the Gnostics are heresies. Love of people to the exclusion of the laws of God would be the greatest heresy to ever invade the church. 

If the pope is thinking of doing something nuts -- not ex cathedra level but still -- he will not bring any of the "lost sheep" and he will lose the powerful love and devotion of those he has. He may think he's being Christlike, leaving the 99 to go after the 1, but when he gets back with the 1 and finds the 99 have fled and then the 1 kicks him in the nads and tears off, he'll feel a little stupid.

If that's possible. None of these cash-cow-killer geniuses ever seem to regret, understand, or appreciate anything. You explain that people don't like it when you attack them and their cherished beliefs, and they act like it's weird that stupid people would have feelings. They fail to grasp the most simple ideas, and we're the stupid ones?

The people in charge of things hate the very people whom they need the most. Once you see it, you see it everywhere. 

The disco menace.

It's hard for kids today to appreciate the disco menace. It came on suddenly, and when it had done its damage, it went away. But even though I was a kid, I can never forget.

The word disco was alien when I first heard it, and it seemed like a nonsense word. But it came from the French discotheque, which itself came from "disque disk, record + -o- + -thèque (as in bibliothèque library)" according to Merriam-Webster. In other words, disco is short for record library. A discotheque was a place where people would dance to music played on vinyl records rather than music played by a live band. Any little town could have a dance club even if they had no musicians. The word disco dates to 1957, but disco didn't conquer the world for a while after that.

Disco music was defined by a particular beat, as classic rock is, and as the waltz is. Whereas rock used the backbeat (the emphasis on every even beat -- one TWO three FOUR etc.) and the waltz's emphasis is on the second and third beats (one TWO THREE one TWO THREE), the disco bass drum is hit on all four beats of the measure. Thus the four-on-the-floor, thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa. It's harder to play than you'd think, but it had the advantage of letting songs run one after another with the exact same rhythm and speed, so dancers never had to stop unless it was time to re-up the cocaine. 

The thing is, during the height of the vogue, any music could be put through the discoizing machine and come out disco. Any. Music. 

They dusted off a 1926 hit ("Baby Face"), put it through the discoizer, and it got to number two on the disco charts. They took the theme from the TV show I Love Lucy and discoized that, and "Disco Lucy" got to number 9 on the Easy Listening chart. The music from  May 1977's unexpected smash film Star Wars managed to get a whole disco album out of it before the end of the year (Meco's Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk), which is not to be confused with the mashed-up film music set to a disco beat by a studio band called the Force, released as a single before the end of the year. (The B side was the timeless classic "Funky Hat.") Even Ludwig van Beethoven became discofied in 1975, his breathtaking Fifth Symphony shrunken and beat to "A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band. Disney discofied itself, doing a takeoff of the Village People's "Macho Man" ("Macho Duck"), certainly the most famous track on the immortal 1979 album Micky Mouse Disco. If you stood still long enough, you might get discoized, too -- finding yourself with a whitefro and a leisure suit, gold Italian horn chain, shirt open to the waist. 

It seems to have seized the nation and the world like a kind of mania, but ebbed within a short period. "The Hustle" was a disco landmark, released in 1975, but by 1980, when Studio 54 closed, the whole thing seemed to be old (if still funky) hat. The Who had declared disco dead in 1978. The infamous Disco Demolition Night in Chicago took place the next year. But it took a while for the rest of the culture to catch up. 

Say what you will about disco, at least it finally got out of the center ring. If only all our manias would have the good sense to ebb as quickly. I can name quite a few that I wish would go away already, or at least go on vacation.

Look back in irritation.

So here we are, at the start of a new year. 

This is it!

Before we go charging into 2023, I thought I'd have one last glance backward. I thought that, rather than a roundup of the things that made me and many others absolutely insane with fear or fury this year, I'd just note a few things that were memorably annoying, at least as far as I am concerned. As they say (and Benny Hill once quoted), it's the little things that hurt. You can sit on top of a mountain, but you can't sit on top of a pin. 

In no particular order: 

😠 Americans can't pronounce monsieur

This one's for my wife. The French makeup company Lancôme (part of Paris-based L'Oréal) released a new mascara called Monsieur Big, and all her favorite online influencers have been pronouncing the first word MON-sewer. Even one in Louisiana, a state founded by French people, where they don't pronounce Baton Rouge BAYten ROOgee. Merriam-Webster has no other pronunciation for monsieur except slight variations of the French meh-syeur. What happened? Doesn't anyone take French in high school anymore? 

😠 Whoop/whup

Ain't these people never watched wrestling? When you want to beat someone up, you want to whup him, not whoop him. To whoop is "to utter a whoop in expression of eagerness, enthusiasm, or enjoyment". If someone says he wants to whoop somebody's ass, it sounds more like he wants carnal knowledge of said end, not to leave the imprint of a boot on it. The whoop/whup menace is not as common as the inability to spell whoa that I mentioned early in December, but it's always a show of ignorance. Whup too is in the dictionary -- let's resolve to look words up before we use them this year!

😠 Political infection 

Twice I have dropped out of groups on social media that specifically demanded NO POLITICS of their memberships. People can't help themselves. In one case it was a group dedicated to old comic books, and Trump seemed to still own these people's thoughts a year after he left office. In the other, a group about the history of my home town, one member who was also a moderator kept slipping in PETA propaganda. It's like a mania. 

😠 Loving villains

Disney has been leading the pack on this, of course; in its efforts to squeeze every nickel from every bit of intellectual property it owns, it's been doing films, novels, graphic novels, and whatnot celebrating the bad guys. We've also seen it with films like Joker and Black Adam. The bad guys never seem to choose wickedness out of overwrought ambition or greed or even the left's favorite hatred to hate, prejudice; they're forced into being evil. Great, now do Hitler. 

😠 Recipe introductions 

You go online for a mac & cheese recipe -- a recipe that takes five ingredients and four numbered instructions -- and the author first has to tell her life's story. Thanks for the recipe, but I don't understand why you went to all that trouble, writing all that. I almost gave up hope until I saw the header INGREDIENTS and realized I was saved. The personal touch is great, but usually a paragraph or two is plenty. 

😠 Affirmation dumps

Don't get me wrong -- I much prefer people who want to spread hope and cheer to those who want to cackle as the world burns. But you can't just dump and run. People say the darndest things about expecting the universe to magically respond to their desires if they desire them enough. If I politely explain that this is not my experience, or ask a question, I get ignored or brushed off. You have to be able to defend those posts to an honest inquiry, not just put them out there to perfume the air. 

😠 Owned truth

This one goes back to Jim McGreevey's shameful exit in New Jersey -- anytime someone introduces "my truth" or dismisses your facts as "your truth," expect a humungous pile of crap to follow. If it's not the truth, it is a lie. This seems to get worse every year.

😠 Really bad portmanteaux

Kidult. Manscaping. Beergarita. Foodlegger. Caucacity. Some are fine and fill a niche. Most, like these, have little wit and less sense. Unless beergaritas are really good; you'll have to tell me. 

😠 Christmas cards

I'm sorry, but I think we have to let this one go. Every year I send them out and get fewer back as people just give up. We all can stay in touch online, at least enough to know who's alive. Most of the cards we get aren't even signed, and may have been ordered through something like Shutterfly. Mine may be the first human hands to hold the card. Maybe we can send out a handful of cards for people we really can't stay in touch with without mail (old folks in the home, for example, or people working at Port Lockroy), but for the rest, I think this is one tradition we ought to drop.

That's my list, and I'd love to hear your pet peeves. I have a longer list of things that are really awful, but I'd guess most of those are on your list, too. On to 2023, which I can only hope will be no more tragic and horrible, and less annoying. 

Dog job description.

What we have with our dogs in a failure to communicate. 

One of the ignored features of the movie Up is that the evil Charles Muntz invented one of the most ridiculously important devices of all time -- a machine that not only allows dogs to communicate in English without even vocalization, but apparently helps them to understand us completely and without training. Not only that, but the dogs are able to express their own thoughts to one another that way. It's completely mind-boggling. Nothing else in the movie comes close to that level of crazy, not Kevin the magical-ish bird or using sails to steer balloons or the fact that Muntz has lived almost a century and is still pretty spry. The idea that animals have human-enough brains to communicate with us via a proper device would have made Muntz the greatest biologist and inventor in history. So it's better not to think about it while watching the movie. 

"Hi there!"

As things are in the real world, dogs hardly understand us and very often don't even try, because it would interfere with their own interests. I don't know if they're being stubborn or willful, or just didn't read the job description properly.

WANTED: DOG

JOB DESCRIPTION

One (1) dog sought to fulfill position of: Dog. No experience necessary; will train. Duties include:

Obedience: Will listen to and obey a short list of commands

Exercise: Will encourage humans to get exercise with play, walks, etc.

Affection: Will provide affection to humans occasionally, as inspired (not mandatory at all times)

Protection: Will provide canine protection against wild animals and human assailants as needed (not a common occurrence)  

Toys and food to be provided to match your preferences (to be determined over time) and health needs. Note: No chewing on walls, floors, furniture, or rugs permitted. 

That's what I would have written as the want ad. What the dogs would have read, however, seems to have been an entirely different ad. 

WANTED: DOG

JOB DESCRIPTION

One (1) dog sought to fulfill position of: Dog. No experience necessary. Duties include:

Listening: Optional, with obedience as you feel like it

Exercise: Lying on the grass or the porch when inconvenient. Best time for play is in the wee hours, or whenever humans want to sleep.

Affection: To be determined by dog

Protection: Go insane at UPS man, other dogs; responding to threats close to home optional

All things within home may be chewed as determined by dog; anything may be a toy or food as required. Optional self-assigned jobs may include: eating poop, chewing baseboards, eating inedible objects, digging miscellaneous holes.

Sometimes I think those Muntz collars might be helpful to prevent these little misunderstandings. Other times I think I'm happier not knowing what my dogs are thinking. I'm always glad that the neighbors don't know what my dogs are thinking. It would lead to fistfights or at least embarrassment. 

Dogs are not frogs.

My wife drew my attention to something she came across while shopping for stuff for the dogs. 

Jiminy's is a brand of dog products that makes its food out of crickets. "Cricket Crave" is not a joke. It is made from crickets, as well as oats and sweet potatoes and the inevitable quinoa. But the main protein is good ol' bugs.

I have a few thoughts on this, which I would like to share with you today.

1) Yuck.

2) This crap is expensive as hell: $21.95 for a three-pound bag. Double that price and you can get a 33-pound bag of dog food from most decent brands. You know, ones made out of meat.

3) Why do these kind of people always want us to eat bugs? This is the thin end of the wedge; if they can get us thinking the dogs like it, maybe we'll want to eat some bugs, too. 

4) And they really do want us to eat bugs, you know. CRIC, the Costa Rica Insect Company, gives us five reasons why insects are the food of the future, which I dispute thusly:

    Insects can be used for different purposes -- To which I note they already are, like food coloring, and I don't need to eat them to help them be used other ways.

    Insects have great nutritional qualities -- So does Soylent Green.

    Insects taste great -- Ask any toad.
    Insects are sustainable -- Even Vox had doubts about that; maybe if you just go around and eat whatever is in your yard, it would be sustainable. But factory-raising bugs may not be.  

    The consumption of insects is growing -- So is the number of Cardi B fans; don't try to bandwagon me, child.

5) The left-wing Guardian newspaper tells us, "If we want to save the planet, the future of food is insects." Are there any things so disgusting that we would be allowed to not do if the planet itself is at stake? "If we want to save the planet, we need to kill the feeble and everyone over 70." "If we want to save the planet, we must destroy Western civilization." "If we want to save the planet, we must all kill ourselves." Well, if it means saving the planet, then...

6) I am not feeding my dogs bugs. Dogs are not frogs. When little Nipper was a very young puppy he ate an ant out of curiosity and did not like it. I'm not doing this to them. I wouldn't if they were giving Jiminy's food away.

7) I was not the kind of kid that would eat a bug for a dollar in school, and I'm not going to pay to eat them now. Let Andrew Zimmern go eat all the bugs he wants; he gets paid a lot more than a dollar to do it. Even the kid from How to Eat Fried Worms was doing it to win a $50 bet, which was a good amount of dough when the book was published in 1973. Equivalent to $327 today.

8) Back to the dogs: You may remember a show called The Goode Family by Mike Judge of King of the Hill. On the animated show, the Goodes were such a painfully perfect liberal family that they only fed their dog Che a vegan diet, which results in other pets and woodland creatures disappearing from the neighborhood. Dogs are carnivores and they want meat.

9) When we had one of our dogs in training class, there was a couple that was trying to train their dog using... Cheerios. Now, dogs like Cheerios, and Cheerios are not bad for them, but training a dog means getting it to go against its own intentions and even instincts, and you have to come through with something better than dry cereal, especially if every other dog in the class is getting meat. That poor pup couldn't concentrate for beans. It's possible that the dog had some kind of chicken allergy or something else that made typical training treats no good for him, but I've always thought that his owners might be vegans and were intending to raise a vegan dog. Maybe it could be done--but not around other dogs eating meat. They had to leave the class. 

10) Anyway, vegans can't eat bugs, either--they won't even eat honey. Like the bees get the sads when we steal their loot. Bees are morons. Eat the honey.

11) Naming the company Jiminy's is kind of cannibalistic, isn't it? Jiminy, the well-known Disney pest, is a cricket himself, so by using his name the company is acting sort of ad litem for the bug, making him a quisling character at best. I'm surprised Disney hasn't sued. 

So there are my thoughts. If you don't like them, well, go eat a bug, I guess. I ain't doing it.

Cold places that don't exist.

It was mighty cold here by New York standards over the weekend, those standards being four degrees Fahrenheit with the windchill. That ought to be cold enough for anybody.

But no! 

While turning to ice outside with the dogs, Tralfaz and Nipper (a.k.a. Thing 1 and Thing 2), I got to thinking about cold places in fiction, or rather places that are very cold that don't really exist. This is hardly a comprehensive list -- in fact, if you can think of any others I'd appreciate your leaving a note in comments. Just a fun thing to think about while freezing to death waiting for the dogs to defile the lawn.  

Frostbite Falls, Minnesota: The first place I thought of was the hometown of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. According to the show's Wiki site, the population of this chilly spot roars to 48 during the summer rush. For such a tiny and cold place it is not underserved; it has a Rotary club, a newspaper (the Picayune Intelligence), a train station, and a hospital. It also has a town hall, movie theater, and bowling alley -- all in the same building. Apparently the inspiration for creator Jay Ward was football player Bronko Nagurski, who came from International Falls, Minnesota. Bonus Cold Place: The island that would become known as Moosylvania on the show became the focus of a comical campaign for statehood by Jay Ward and publicist Howard Brandy -- the timing of which turned out to be very bad, as they arrived in Washington, DC, in November 1962. 

Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude: The pulp hero Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze, had a Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic that predated Superman's. This is where Clark "Doc" Savage Jr. goes "in order to make new scientific or medical breakthroughs, and to store dangerous technology and other secrets." That includes things from "Doc’s labs, and many of the inventions Doc has captured from the villains around the world," according to the Doc Savage fandom page. I only read a couple of Doc's books, because he was so perfect, so without weakness, he made Superman look like a wimp. And speaking of which:

Superman's Fortress of Solitude: When you're the world's most famous superhero, where do you go to get away from it all? Not just Clark Kent's apartment -- city apartments are too small for that, and the landlords complain if you keep interplanetary crap around. So, Superman totally ripped off Doc Savage. Originally he built a "Secret Sanctuary" in a mountain outside Metropolis, but later moved it to the "polar wastes." As time went on the in the comics, the Fortress was established to be in a secret location in the Arctic, and Superman literally used a huge arrow disguised as a luminous marker for airplanes as the key.

The Fortress had all kinds of stuff, like a zoo of animals from other planets, Superman robots, rooms dedicated to his friends (Lois, Jimmy, and so on -- and Clark, in case someone came in and wondered why his friend Clark Kent wasn't represented). There was alien weaponry, Superman's giant diary (written in Kryptonian), world monitoring systems, all kinds of stuff. It also contained the bottle city of Kandor, an entire Kryptonian city that had been shrunken and stolen by the evil android Brainiac before Krypton exploded. Superman spent a long time trying to find a way to bring the Kandorians back to normal size and a place to put them when he did. And you think your closet is a mess.

Santa Claus's Workshop and Castle: Got to be the most famous frozen fiction fortress. According to Oceanwide Explorations' blog, it was New York cartoonist Thomas Nast, remembered for driving Boss Tweed crazy and for designing the first modern Santa Claus, who put Santa "way up North where the air gets cold" (cf. Beach Boys). "St. Nicholas’s migration to the North Pole is due most directly to Thomas Nast, an American cartoonist who submitted 33 Christmas drawings to Harper’s Weekly magazine between 1863 and 1886, one of which featured a village called 'Santa Claussville, N.P.'" And, as they further point out, reindeer, who live in the arctic, had already been established as Santa's ride by Clement Clarke Moore. But why the North Pole? "During the 1840s and 50s, public imagination in Europe and America was stirred by several highly publicized expeditions to the Arctic, which at that time was largely unexplored." Just think -- if it had been the early 1800s, when there was great interest in exploring Africa, Santa's place might have been the source of the Nile.

Lake Woebegone, Minnesota: Garrison Keillor's chilly town of Lake Woebegone, whose tales were told for years on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion and featured in the best-selling book Lake Woebegone Days. I enjoyed reading the book, but that was many years ago and I can't recall anything much about it now. But the town is in Minnesota, like Frostbite Falls, so you know it's cold.

Blofeld's Research Station: From James Bond's adventure On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Located atop the Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps, the evil Ernst Blofeld uses the cover of an allergy research station to plan biological warfare that will either destroy England's agriculture (1963 novel) or kill people all over the place (1969 film). Personally, if I were Blofeld, I'd have located the lab in a nondescript building outside Cleveland, but Bond villains always like to live it up. 

Arendelle: People kind of think that the setting for Disney's film Frozen is Norway, and if more proof were needed, the Maelstrom ride in Epcot Center's Norway pavilion, which was great, was replaced by a stupid Frozen Ever After ride in 2016, which is stupidly stupid with stupid sauce. What's the point of the "permanent world's fair" gathering of nations if you're just going to shove Disney junk everyplace anyway? Anyway, yes, Frozen takes place in Norway, during summer, which Queen Tantrum ruins for everyone by plunging the whole joint into freezing cold. But, being Norway, we know they're used to it. I'm sorry I even brought it up, but at least I haven't mentioned that pile of cowardly excrement, the snow homunculus Olaf. Oh, damn it. 

End of the Road, Alaska: Tom Bodett, best known probably as the friendly voice of Motel 6 ads (and author of the "We'll keep the light on for ya" slogan) is also a story writer and novelist. He has written several books about the people of End of the Road, which is based on his real-life home town of Homer, Alaska (Homer's nickname is "the End of the Road"). The stories are pretty good, and definitely in the style of Garrison Keillor. Bodett clearly loves his characters, except for the Lutheran minister and his wife, whom he paints as the stupidest people on earth. Go figure.

Ice Station Zebra: Drift Ice Station Zebra is located an ice floe, and is the setting of a British arctic meteorological station, in Alistair MacLean's 1963 novel and the 1968 movie loosely based on it. The men at Zebra have suffered a catastrophe, and no one knows if anyone has survived -- so a U.S. submarine is sent to find out. I haven't read the book nor seen the movie, but it's a freaking ice floe, so coldness is assured. And it's imaginary, so it's on the list. For the record, ice-floe based stations are real -- MacLean was no slouch for research. I loved his The Guns of Navarone before I saw the movie.  

City of the Elder Things: Maybe the worst thing to ever be found at the Antarctic in fiction was this ancient city in H.P. Lovecraft's 1936 novella, "At the Mountains of Madness." I haven't read a lot of the famous horror writer's work, but that was one I read around Halloween and it was truly unnerving. More horrible than discovering the evidence of the advanced and awful Elder Things is discovering that some are still alive.... Surely no cold place Man's imagination could be more terrible than this!

The Ninth Circle of Hell: Unless it's this. In Dante's Inferno, every circle of hell is horrible, but the lowest, the innermost, the place reserved for abominable traitors like Judas and Brutus, the place Satan himself stands, is not burning, but frozen. I almost didn't include this because... do we really know that it's fictional? 😱

Lake Lebarge: To end on a lighter, if still eerie, note, Lake Lebarge in the Yukon is the place where the cremation of Sam McGee takes place in Robert W. Service's poem about that singular event. It's a terrific poem for several reasons -- for one, I love that it introduced me to the word moil. The problem is that there is a real Lake Laberge (note spelling) in the Yukon in Canada. But since Service changed the spelling and thus pronunciation, I'm calling it fiction. Also, I wanted to include this poem, because it makes you feel cold and it's so good.

Well, I've moiled through all the ones I can think of; what've you got? 🧊❆⛄

Fred's Book Club: Hell on Earth.

Hello, book fans, and welcome to today's amazing entry in our Wednesday Humpback Writers feature, the feature named for Hump Day, not for the writers, some of whom may have humps of one sort or another, but I've never asked. You have to draw the line somewhere.

Today we have a classic of journalism by a writer who was not afraid to get down in the mud (sometimes literally) to dig for information, who has probably had more guns pointed his way than the average mid-level drug dealer, and yet has retained his sense of humor through it all.

Holidays in Hell, originally published in 1988, is a collection of pieces by P.J. O'Rourke, the one-time National Lampoon writer whose career has been headlines by two constants:

1) Go to places in the world that completely suck, or don't suck, and find out why they are the way they are; and

2) Make fun of them.

This book, which is a pretty good snapshot of the state of the world in the eighties, features essays of his visits to horrible places like Lebanon, El Salvador, South Africa, the Gaza Strip, and Epcot. He would go to these places so we wouldn't have to, and God bless him for it.

O'Rourke is a keen observer with a great eye for detail and a sharp wit, some of which would ensure no large modern New York publisher would go near him these days. Here's P.J. on ...

LEBANON 

Miss Phillips was gone for two hours. She emerged from the donnybrook perfectly composed and holding three bus tickets. I asked her what all the shooting was about. "Oh," she said, "that's just Lebanese for 'please queue up.'" An ancient horrible Mexican-looking bus pulled into the crowd smacking people and punting them aside. Amal was carrying a co-ed's full complement of baggage in two immense suitcases. I handed my kit bag to Miss Phillips, grabbed these and made for the bus. Or tried to. Three steps put me at the bottom of a clawing, screeching pile-up, a pyramid of human frenzy. I heard Miss Phillips's voice behind me. "Don't be shy," she said, "it's not rude to give a wee shove to the Lebanese." I took a breath, tightened my grip on the suitcases and began lashing with Samsonite bludgeons at the crowd of women, old men, and children. If you ask me, it was pretty rude, but it was either that or winter in South Lebanon. 

POLAND 

"Let's start with nightclubs," I said as soon as the cop had given up on us. Zofia raised an eyebrow.     "There's one called Kamienolomy, 'The Quarry,'" said Tom. The decor was budget Mafia. Because of the name, I guess, the walls were covered with Permastone house siding. There were little strips of disco lights around the dance floor, but they just flashed off and on; they didn't move around the room or change colors or anything.        A bored combo -- one singer, one guitar player and a guy on the electric organ doing the rhythm, bass and drum -- played a Ramada Inn lounge arrangement of "I Got You, Babe," lyrics in memorized English:            Ugh gut you to told me height            Bucket jute tuchus god night

THIRD-WORLD DRIVING 

Traffic Signs and Signals: Most developing nations use international traffic symbols. Americans may find themselves perplexed by road signs that look like Boy Scout merit badges and by such things as an iguana silhouette with a red diagonal bar across it. Don't worry, the natives don't know what they mean, either. 

EPCOT 

At Epcot Center, the Disney corporation has focused its attention on two things greatly in need of Disneyfication: the tedious future and the annoying whole wide world. 

The book is also educational. I would never have heard this theory of colonialism otherwise:

The historian C. H. Haring points out that there are two kinds of colonies. Farm colonies are refuges where Pilgrims, Quakers and other fruitcakes can go chop down trees and stay out of everybody's hair. But exploitation colonies are places for wastrel younger sons and sleazed-out noblemen to get rich on gold and slave-labor plantations. Farm colonists are interested in forming their own permanent institutions. Exploitation colonists are interested in getting home and spending their money. For this reason New England, Canada, Costa Rica and parts of Argentina are reasonably nice places, while Mississippi, Jamaica, Mexico and most other sections of the hemisphere are shit holes.    

Holidays in Hell was not the first book of O'Rourke's I read. Parliament of Whores, his 1991 deep dive into American politics, was an eye-opener for a lot of people and an introduction to economics too -- and funny as hell. It stated the reasons why America has been so successful -- rule of law, respect for institutions and vice-versa, freedom of enterprise, etc. -- and how fragile these things can be, as we are seeing now.

But O'Rourke lost Libertarian street cred in 2016 with his semi-endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president -- the woman of whom he once said "Every man looks at her and sees his first wife," part of the couple he called "blathering highbinders." I'm not sure if he considers himself a Never Trumper, but he's at the very least a Trump Despiser. With the backs of the conservatives against the wall as never before, this kind of attitude is hard to swallow to his longtime fans.

Be that as it is, although he's getting up there now (72 now and probably not going to any real hellholes these days), O'Rourke is one of the sharpest writers of his generation, merciless on the foibles and failings of his generation, and a real talent. If you hate his politics (or you support Mississippi), you'll still love The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig, which I also recommend without reservation.

J-skool play skool.

Journalism itself has been in the news of late, partly because there have been more layoffs of journalists at places like Vice Media. And if you find it hard to believe that a place like Vice Media actually employs journalists, you're not alone. Poor, poor Disney.

This kind of news story sparks some hilarity from some of the older guys in the game, like P.J. O'Rourke and Andy Ferguson, and (a bit younger) Kyle Smith. They have reminded me of a few points of importance:

1) Journalists have gone from being tough, man-of-the-people guys to pesky do-gooders who might have joined the Peace Corps in other times.

2) The movie version of All the President's Men is the main reason why. No modern journalist thinks he or she is doing his job unless he gets a Republican to leave office in shame. Every intern covering the town council tax revision meeting dreams of it.

3) In the olden days, reporters all learned the craft by covering boring meetings and writing obits, but now they arrive with master's degrees! and expect to start closer to the top. Even if they write like drunken buffalo. And because they have not learned the basics of the job, most of them have wasted untold thousands on that degree in journalism (at "J-school") and, with the shrinking market for journalists, can never earn enough to justify spending the money.

And in my experience in the field, I would add:

4) Many of these kids came from rich or at least way-upper-middle-class families, because no family like mine would have put up with footing the bills while the kid took an unpaid internship at some media outlet that pays more to blow-dry an anchor's hair in a week than to develop young talent, if it said talent even exists. This puts the young journalist in the awkward position of having been spoiled rotten and yet still exploited.

5) Also, one must add a note from President Obama's own Deputy National Security Administrator, Ben Rhodes: "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing."

They literally know nothing, but think they know everything, so much of it that they are too full to add any more. Liberal Arts programs are in the business of filling up heads with intellectual Twinkies so there's no room for a porterhouse. In fact, journalists think they can tell us how awesome Communism is and rewrite history, which leads me to think it's not just the under-30s who literally know nothing.

Therefore, I offer the free course below for all journalists of every age, because I think most of them have demonstrated the need for it.

Of course, the main bit of wisdom I would offer the youth of America is: Don't plan to be a reporter; find something to do that you like better and that pays more. Whatever you do, don't pay a place like Columbia a small fortune for a useless credential. Or let your parents do it.

Jack and Stan: My take.

When Stan Lee died last year, I got sick of the hagiography pretty quickly.

Polite people, of course, prefer not to speak ill of the dead, especially when the dead is still warm, but it's silly to ignore the fact that Stan was a personal wrecking crew to some very talented people, a glory hog, and before being rescued by Disney movies, his Marvel Comics stock was tanking and the company was in danger of falling apart. It had bounced back from its debt-ridden depths, and Lee was not the man behind the worst of the financial shenanigans, but if the Mouse had not stepped in to snap up the works in 2009, Marvel might have sunk without trace in a quagmire of unreadable comics and bad Sony movies.

The thing that irked me most, though, were several cartoons of Jack Kirby (who died in 1994) welcoming Stan into heaven. When I heard Kirby speak in the eighties, he sounded like a guy who would have been promising St. Peter a great action-packed portrait if he could arrange to keep the gates closed when Stan the Man showed up.

It was a long time ago, and I was a kid, so I don't remember the Kirby event very well. I certainly don't recall Kirby sitting on the panel complaining "Stan Lee is a bastard" and such. But he gave Stan as little credit as possible for any of their supposed collaborative efforts. Jack explained how he had created the Fantastic Four, for example, and detailed meticulously how he came up with the Silver Surfer, whom he imagined as an angelic herald from the Bible, and how that led to Galactus -- because you can't have an angelic herald without a god. Jack gave Stan no credit for any of this.

When Kirby jumped ship to DC Comics, he created a minor toupee-clad character named Funky Flashman, a fast-talking promotional jerk, as a sort of foil to escape-artist hero Mister Miracle. It was an obvious and unflattering portrayal of Stan. So there was clearly not a lot of love.

I don't know if Kirby and Lee ever made up, but I doubt it. The irreplaceable Mark Steyn had this bit of information in his obit for Lee:

With the exception of Spider-Man, almost all of Lee's household-name heroes were drawn by a fellow called Jack Kirby, who never enjoyed the star cameos Stan did in the Marvel movies. Kirby lived modestly in Irvine, California, and spent his days sat on "an old, straightback kitchen chair parked in front of the crummiest old drawing table you ever saw". He ought to have died the wealthiest guy in Irvine. Instead, his widow had to beseech Marvel for a modest pension sufficient to cover her mortgage, groceries and medical bills.

Stan was worth $50 million when he died.

The biggest names in the Avengers movies were all Kirby creations, if you asked him: Captain America (with Joe Simon), Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye -- even Groot started life as a Kirby monster. Oh, but not Spider-Man and Dr. Strange -- Steve Ditko created them. I'm not saying Stan Lee had no part in the creation of these characters; other people would know better than I. I'm saying that neither Kirby nor Ditko would give Stan much credit. Something about Stan Lee, at least in the sixties, was not inspiring a lot of love among the artists.

At DC, Kirby had a gigantic creative explosion, a pile of "Fourth World" books that seemed to contain every idea he'd ever wanted to use at Marvel, maybe some he shouldn't have. He started proudly by reforming DC's lowest-selling title, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen; people are amazed to hear that it was in Jimmy Olsen's book that the great villain Darkseid of Apokolips was first seen. (Darkseid was totally ripped off when Jim Starlin created Thanos, a bad guy currently causing some fuss in the Avengers movies.) At DC, Kirby set himself a workload as artist and writer that was probably more than even he could handle, fountain of crazy ideas that he was. The books New Gods, Mister Miracle, Forever People, and even Jimmy Olsen were really wild, unlike anything seen before in DC or maybe anywhere else.

But, to be fair to Lee, Kirby needed a good editor, and DC didn't give him one. Letting Kirby go his own way gave us some truly bad ideas, including the infamous Don Rickles series in Jimmy Olsen.

Yes, that Don Rickles. Benton Grey, who's been running a great series on Bronze Age DC comics on his blog, summed it up neatly:

Apparently Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman, Kirby’s assistants, were huge fans of then popular insult-comedian Don Rickles, and they thought it would be fun to have him appear in a comic for a few panels and insult Superman. They wrote up some dialog and showed it to Jack, who loved the idea. He, in turn, took it to Carmine Infantino, who never met a gimmick he didn’t like. The editor got permission from Rickles and decided that this needed to be promoted and made into a two-issue feature. Then, out of the unfathomable, beautiful madness of Kirby’s mind came what followed. Apparently, Rickles himself was none-too-pleased with the final result, and I can’t say I really blame him.

The problem was, Kirby was a lot better at writing ponderous operatic hero fantasy than stand-up comedy, and his assistants weren't much help (and I say this as a guy who loved Evanier's work on Blackhawk and other DC properties).

Amazingly, the series continued publication for three more years, but Kirby left a year after this storyline.

Kirby and Lee were probably better together, even if all Lee did was prevent Jack's excesses and sillier ideas from running amok. I have always felt that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were much better together than apart for the same reason, curbing each other's worse impulses. Possibly the same was true with Ditko, judging by his work with DC. What happened to Kirby was like if John Lennon had kept the rights to all the music and Paul was stuck begging for work. Guest starring Steve Ditko as George Harrison.

So I don't quite see Stan Lee as saint material, no.

(Fair warning: This deep dive into dorkitude continues tomorrow, on a different but equally dorky topic....)

Characters that killed names.

I was thinking about the unpopularity of certain great names -- like, oh I don't know, Frederick -- and how they often become unpopular because they get linked in the popular consciousness with certain characters. It doesn't even matter if the character is supposed to be a goofball; just the fact that a name becomes famously associated with a character makes it toxic playground fodder. And I ought to know, having been called Flintstone for most of my childhood.

Here are some examples.

Lois -- There is nothing wrong with the name Lois. It's pretty, but not too girly; it's Biblical; and it means "more desirable." And it hasn't been in the top 1,000 names on the Social Security Index of popular baby names in this century. Why? Because every Lois is going to be asked how Superman's doing (hyuk hyuk hyuk). On that note, Clark, popular at one time due to Clark Gable (which is how the character Clark Kent got his first name), has fallen off, but strangely is making a comeback; from #761 in 2000 to #380 in 2017. Doesn't that open up boys to get a beatdown in the schoolyard? ("Guess I got a pocket fulla kryptonite, huh?") I wonder if hipsters have started to name their daughters Clark. (Funny note: Superman's creators were not thinking of the Lewis and Clark expedition when they named Lois and Clark -- just a coincidence, I guess.)

On the topic of superhero first names, I've addressed Bruce before (#431, currently in a long holding pattern).

Homer -- Okay, Homer was never going to be popular again unless there was a big revival of classical learning in this country, which, given the state of modern colleges, is rather somewhat less than impossible. Kids come out dumber than they went in. Even if that were not the case, The Simpsons killed all hope of a Homer revival. Bart and Bartholomew are also not in the top 1,000. (Trivia note: Something about the name Homer seems to attract doughnuts, as in the book Homer Price and two films made of the titular character's adventures with the baked goods. Maybe it's the big O in Homer that does it.)

Bert and Ernie -- And speaking of duos, one doesn't meet many Berts or Ernies around since Sesame Street introduced its iconic Muppet roomies. There are Ernests -- but at #967, barely in the top 1,000 and falling almost every year since 2000. Clearly, there is no longer any importance to being earnest. Albert is hanging in there at #430, but has been dropping steadily since it was #280 in 2001. Not sure whether we can blame the fall of Albert on Bert, as we don't know if that's Bert's full name, and Fat Albert didn't do the name any favors. But Bertram hasn't in the top 1,000 for like, ever. Something's making Bert fail.

Felix and Oscar -- Another outstanding name-killing duo are Felix and Oscar from The Odd Couple, but the further back the movie and the TV show recede in our cultural memory the safer Felix seems to become. It has climbed from #376 in 2000 to #276 in 2017. Oscar's fortunes, perhaps conflated with that of the well-known grouch, have gone in the opposite direction, falling from #122 to #192. I think the reason the name ranks even that high is that there's a lot of love for it still in Hispanic communities.

Spiffy and Fleabag are not in the top 1,000...
Coincidence? 

Archie -- Had to have been killed by Archie Bunker from All in the Family; neither Archie nor Archibald are in the top 1,000 names. There was a time when we had Archies all over the place, but I guess we used them all up, and now they're gone.

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha! -- Of all the names from The Brady Bunch, Marsha is the best remembered, which seems to have killed it outright. Marsha Brady was pretty and popular, but the name doesn't rank in the top 1,000, even with the more cultured spelling Marcia. Jan as a girl's name is also not in the top 1,000, by the way, so Jan's revenge is incomplete.

Casper -- I usually think of the villain from The Maltese Falcon first, but the Friendly Ghost is the one that probably still leaps to mind for most people. Others may think of Caspar Weinberger, the late secretary of defense, or a variation of the legendary name for one of the Magi. I will go with the ghost, because Casper (or Caspar) is not in the ranking, and thus a ghost of its former self.

Donald -- Been a long, slow decline for Donald; currently at #488 but at #217 in 2000. Yes, Donald is a little geeky, but Don is cool. Many cool Dons out in pop history. I think Disney's duck has slowly strangled the name. You might as well name your kid Daffy.

Dexter and Hannibal -- Popular culture's favorite psychopathic murderers have not only killed dozens of characters in horrible ways, but they've also killed their names dead. Too bad; Dexter is associated with right-handedness and thus propriety (also dyeing, which is weird); and Hannibal was the general from Carthage who almost destroyed Rome. Good names with a lot of life left in them... but not anymore.

For the record, Frederick is bobbing around at #494. Barney and Wilma, though, aren't in the top 1,000.

To be fair, most of these names are considered dorky now anyway, which is why they were chosen for those characters. It helps make them memorable. Most are boys' names, maybe because boy characters are dorkier than girl characters, or maybe because girls are stealing all the good boy names.

I think eventually Harry (as in Harry Potter) might get the treatment, when the books and movies start to look old-fashioned. Maybe around the time there's a big Bertha revival.

My cheapskate Valentine.

I noted last week that it was time for a trip to the ol' warehouse store, and indeed I went. There's just no replacement for a skid of TP when a storm is coming. 

While I was getting my act together on the checkout line, I spotted these: 

Now, you may think that this is one of those rants where I say that selling holiday candy early is a sign of the collapse of civilization, but A) it's less than a month until Valentine's Day so I consider it within a proper time frame, and B) I live in New York State, so I'm getting a good look at much bigger causes of the collapse of civilization.

No, my issue with this 12-pack of chocolate boxes is the middle guy -- the guy who looks like Mr. Incredible's brunette brother with the "You're Incredible" tag line.

Thinner, though.

I think I smell a cease-and-desist letter from Disney's lawyers on the way.

I really don't know how the chocolate company expects to get away with it, Disney being so notorious for suing everything that moves to protect its money-machine characters. Maybe they don't expect to get away with it... over the long term. Elmer Chocolate, the 164-year-old company behind these, might get the fiery missive from Disney and say, "Sure, we'll stop selling it as quickly as possible!" And "as quickly as possible" turns out to be February 15.

The thing is, kids know trademarks better than adults do. Mom or Grandma might buy that set of chocolate boxes and think, Okay, it's got that super whosis from the movie Ethan watches over and over, but Ethan and his friends all know that's not the REAL Mr. Incredible. "Grandma went cheap," Ethan mumbles in embarrassment. "She didn't get the REAL Disney-branded candy."

Well, Ethan, take heart. (Literally.) You're better off. I swear on my taste buds that the worst piece of chocolate I ever ate, possibly among the three worst things I have ever put in my mouth, was a real-life honest-to-God Disney/Star Wars branded piece of chocolate. If you like the taste of fossil fuels, you might have liked it better than I did. Just know that being an officially licensed character product doesn't mean it's good.

(You shouldn't have to worry for a while about the two other worst things I alluded to, Ethan -- a Flaming Viking shot and a Sputnik cigarette from Village Cigars -- dreadful -- fortunately I did not have both on the same night.)

I don't blame Elmer Chocolate for not kowtowing to the Mouse to spend a fortune to get a dumb Disney face on the box. I just think using the word "Incredible" was a little too on the nose. It doesn't fool the kids and it just pokes the bear.

Getting low on anvils.

Drawing up the ol' shopping list for the week and realized that we're in need of some of the things that would encourage a trip to the ol' warehouse club -- paper towels, TP, coffee, and so on.

Good price on anvils!

I kind of enjoy my bimonthly-ish trips to the warehouse store. It's no good for the regular supermarket run; I read years ago that the club stores have about 400 different items, whereas your supermarket has thousands. Much better choices of meats and produce. But once you drag your humongous packs of facial tissues or dog biscuits home, you don't have to worry about buying them for a while. And you save money... or do you?

It doesn't feel that way when I pay the annual fee, which is about $55; it doesn't feel that way when I drag my loaded cart up to the checkout and fly past $300 (usually that high if I've bought toner for the damn printer). And of course, as the movie Wall-E wanted us to know, buying in bulk will destroy the entire planet. (If you haven't heard of Wall-E, it's a small art house science fiction film by some anti-capitalist outfit called Disney.) More practically, or at least more immediately, not everything in the warehouse store is actually cheaper than in a typical market.

My real concern is waste. Not food waste; while some economists and environmentalists are concerned about food waste from people buying enormous loads of meat and such from the club store, that's not something I typically do. I rely on the club for the less-perishable goods. Besides, the way I eat, there's little food waste in this house. In my experience, houses with children are houses where a lot of food winds up in the garbage, because parents shop in the produce section with great intentions and kids wind up snacking on buttered saltines or scooping Jif right out of the jar. No, the waste I mean is behavioral -- the way I act when I know I have a huge supply of something.

I just have a feeling that bringing home a skid of paper towels makes me overly cavalier about their use. Wash hands? Why use that towel hanging by the kitchen sink when there's a more hygienic roll of paper towels right there? Taking a shower? Here, dry off with a roll. We've got tons of it! We're rollin' in it! Hyuk hyuk.

It's the kind of attitude that makes us imagine rich people lighting $1,000 cigars with $100 bills. Why not? It's fun! There's just so many of them!

This goes completely against my upbringing. My family had not gotten over the Great Depression by the time I came along decades later. It was like it had all just happened, and was just waiting to happen all over us again. Waste not, want not would have been our family slogan, if we'd had one. (Despite that I was a spoiled kid -- a very, very guilt-ridden spoiled kid.)

But back to the wasteful habits of bulk shoppers: Has anyone studied this? I haven't found any studies, only krexing about food going to waste. I want to know about the wasteful habits for nonperishables bought in bulk. We have two big dogs and believe in self-preservation through good hygiene, but if I know I only have one roll of paper towels left I'm going to be cautious with it. Not so if I have a package of a dozen.

As much as I dislike mindless anti-consumerism, which is as fractious as mindless consumerism is dumb, I would suggest some clever economist with a means of getting grants look into this. You could start right here. When we buy anvils at the warehouse club, we go through them awfully fast. When we buy them individually at the anvil store, they seem to last longer.