Young Narcissus

[Henry, October 17, 2012.]

One can never have too many gum machines on the streets of one’s comic strip.

Live-blogging the debate

Barack Obama just characterized Mitt Romney’s mysterious tax-proposal as “a sketchy deal.” Too true. I am delighted to hear sketchy in its slang sense in a presidential debate.

[The post-title is mock-serious. I’m offering one observation, not a running commentary.]

Mitt Trail arrives for the debate

[Mark Trail, October 16, 2012. Click for a larger view.]

As dedicated Mark Trail readers know, facial hair is the mark of a villain. Long sideburns and a mustache are dead giveaways. (Guns are another clue.) The man in red must be a rogue town-haller who insists on doing things his way. Things do not look good for Mitt Trail in tonight’s debate.

As dedicated Orange Crate Art readers know, I have long suspected that D-list comic-strip hero Mark Trail and Mitt Romney are the same (two-dimensional) person. If you need more proof: more Mitt Trail posts.

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, October 16, 2012. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Hi and Lois offers yet one more additional variation on a theme by Slylock Fox. Can you count the differences between the panels?

More disturbing than the panel-shifts though is the black slab on or outside the window. Monolith?

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Found

I discovered this 2" x 1" inspection slip Saturday night in the inner right-hand pocket of a tweed jacket. It’s the kind of jacket my son Ben once called a “professor jacket.” (That term is now part of our fambly’s vocabulary.) This professor jacket is by Lands’ End, and is old enough to have been made in the United States. I’ve had it for well over a decade, perhaps closer to fifteen years.

Betty Tingle, if you’re out there: I finally got your message. The jacket was perfect at the start and has held up well. The inspection slip bearing your name has gone back to the inner right-hand pocket.

A related post
Found (a 1968 receipt)
The Old Trading Post, Lisbon, New Hampshire (a postcard in a book)
Thanksgiving night (a letter in a book)
Whose list? (in a 1967 paperback)

Mitt Incandenza

The New York Times has a good editorial commentary today on the “moderate Mitt myth.” Quoth the Times:

The way a presidential candidate campaigns for office matters to the country. A campaign should demonstrate seriousness of purpose and a set of core beliefs, and it should signal to voters whether a candidate shows trustworthiness and judgment. Those things don’t seem to matter to Mitt Romney.

From the beginning of his run for the Republican nomination, Mr. Romney has offered to transfigure himself into any shape desired by an audience in order to achieve power.

Yep, Proteus. But Proteus didn’t aim to please an audience. I’m reminded less of the ancient shapeshifter and more of Orin Incandenza, the tireless seducer of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. In a letter that forms the content of a long endnote, a former friend describes one of Orin’s pick-up strategies: Orin would approach a woman in a bar or at a dance and say, “Tell me what sort of man you prefer, and then I’ll affect the demeanor of that man.” The difference between Governor Romney and Orin Incandenza: Orin acknowledges that it’s an act.

The strangest part: the name of Orin’s former friend is Marlon Bain.

“The necessary limitations of our nature”

W. H. Auden:

Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.

From the essay “Reading,” in The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (1962).

The ages might vary, but it’s sound advice. It reminds me — don’t laugh — of what management consultant Peter Drucker says in Managing Oneself (2008): that we must figure out our strengths and values and ways of working, and be who we are.


[“Peabody here.” Mister Peabody, at peace with the necessary limitations of his nature.]

When I was a much, much younger fellow, perhaps just a tad bookish, my so-called peers bestowed upon me the nickname Mister Peabody. Ugh. But now I celebrate the Peabodily elements of my style.

Other Auden posts
On handwriting and typing
Six lines from Auden

Britishisms

I was delighted beyond reason this past summer when a Scot called me mate. But I think I’ve typed my last cheers. The New York Times reports on America’s slippery slope into Britishisms.

Word of the day: malarkey

From a New York Times editorial:

Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. would not sit still for a parade of misleading and often blatantly untruthful descriptions of the state of the economy and the Republican prescriptions for it. Though his grins and head-shakes were often distracting, he did not hesitate to interrupt and demand an end to “malarkey.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it:

Humbug, bunkum, nonsense; a palaver, racket. (Usually of an event, activity, idea, utterance, etc., seen as trivial, misleading, or not worthy of consideration.)

One might say that malarkey is Irish for bullshit, but that would be malarkey. The OED notes that “A surname Mullarkey, of Irish origin, exists, but no connection is known between any person of that name and this word.”

Live-blogging the debate

You go, Joe Biden.