Ketchup on That Celluloid --

Much to say, too little time!

* Children of Men: In short, brilliant direction and dead-on character focus transforms this contemporary revamp of what was once fodder for '70s off-mainstream (MGM's barely-released Z.P.G.) and TV movies into a vivid, deeply felt dystopian gem. Clive Owen delivers a perfectly realized performance as Theo Faron, a haunted man treading water in London of 2027, which isn't far from the tyrannical future postulated by Moore & Lloyd in V for Vendetta, sans the enigmatic masked vigilantism.

Here, the timely chords of terrorism (the film opens with a coffee-shop bombing which Theo barely skirts) and rampant xenophobia (immigration woes escalated to martial law on the streets and country compounds brimming with illegal detainees, fleeing their respective countries's catastrophes) are plucked in the context of a future sans procreation: mankind has ceased to reproduce, and the malady has precipitated global disaster on multiple levels. Given the extensive story giveaways of the previews, I'm not tipping any alarms by saying Theo is dragged by his ex (Julianne Moore) into an underground railroad seeking to spirit a pregnant lass (Claire-Hope Ashitey) to safety with an offshore group that may or may not exist -- on this ragged hook, director and co-scriptor Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y tu mamá también, the 1998 adaptation of Great Expectations, A Little Princess, etc.) constructs a potent cautionary science fiction parable of surprising power and grace.

The stellar cast is key -- including Michael Caine as the most sympathetic cartoonist in cinema history, a George Metzger-like 'back to the land' old hippy living self-sufficiently with his catatonic wife in a backwoods retreat (and a loooooooong way from Caine's misanthropic cartoonist antihero of Oliver Stone's The Hand)-- but it's Cuarón's exquisite orchestration of all elements and Emmanuel Lubezki's furtive, crisp cinematography that keeps the pulse quietly racing. P.D. James's novel was in the sober mode of UK apocalypse novels like The Day of the Triffids, No Blade of Grass, etc., and movies like The Day The Earth Caught Fire, though a more upscale literary incarnation in the eyes of most critics; Cuarón has honored the source novel and its precursors, forging a masterful meditation on hope, despair and reluctant activism in the face of death. Don't miss!

[More tomorrow -- off to CCS --]

Gonzales's Labyrinth

Huh, so those expecting full-blown fantasy were disappointed by Pan's Labyrinth (see comments on the blog, previous days) because it's about the horrors of war? Reckon I should have posted my comments last week. I'll get to it, but in the meantime, needless to say, I'm perversely bemused by the echoes of Goya and the current Bush era, which abound. The film is more timely than almost any film now on US screens, especially for its fusion & collision of fairy tales, wish-fulfillments dashed, and the face of real war (embodied most memorably in its pro-Franco commander, among the greatest ogres of contemporary cinema).

Recently, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gobsmacked members of the Senate Judiciary Committee with his liberal -- nay, radical -- interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. In Gonzales's labyrinth, the citizens of the United States have no constitutional right of or to habeas corpus.

This isn't news, per se, given Gonzales's previous statements and writings, but it does represent a new extreme in the increasingly transparent, utterly blatant fascistic beliefs of the current Administration.

Per the recent editorial in The Sacramento Bee and other print and online editorials, it's worth noting that the writ of habeas corpus ("produce the body") predates the U.S. Constitution and has been a bedrock legal premise for over eight centuries of Western civilization. That's a lot of precedent for an Attorney General to buck, but Alberto flinches not. Like the general in del Toro's film, he doesn't blink, even as he smashes a bottle across an innocent man's face and grinds the shards into eyes, lips, nose -- Gonzales is likewise a tough cookie, folks. He tramples rights and wipes his culo clean with the Constitution without a hint of regret.

In short, habeas corpus requires that any time a person is detained, the government must produce the prisoner in person and then clearly state why the individual is being detained; the prisoner (aka "detainee") must then either be charged or released. Period.

But Gonzales, with a somber face, testified to the Judiciary Committee, "...there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution; there is a prohibition against taking it away."

Senator Arlen Specter (Republican, Pennsylvania): "Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn't that mean you have a right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?"

Gonzales: "I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn't say, 'Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.' It doesn't say that."

Specter: "You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General."

Make no mistake, the ogres are in power, and they're indeed eating children... including our own.

Another Sunday Morning...

... and another quartet of CCS students and their abundant weirdness & wonders:

(Part the Second of a Series)

BEWARE!

That which looks like it must be touched,
but should never ever be touched,
unless you want your finger
(nay, your entire arm! Your shoulder!
Your head!)
to sink deeper than expected
into the sticky
tar-baby-like

Insidious Interior Chambers of Chuck Forsman!

HOWL!

...at the Technicolor Yawn
spraying like a
ravaging geyser
from uncanny
& unknowable cavities,
spilling like a phlegm flume
of spendiforous colors
spiced with
giggly girl-sounds
awash with
vast vomitoriums
of glee and glamor,
splashing
every
orifice
of your being
with God-Awful gorgasms
of horrific hash-flashing
dry heaves
and gag-flexing
gorgeousities
of gooberous glowworms,
steaming-hot
and ready to serve as
fresh-spewn magma
flows from

The Ralphadelic Realms of Radical Chris Warren!

SCREAM!

...as your nerve endings feel the probing talons of,
your vertebrae crack and splinter
as your spinal fluid is displaced by,
your optic nerves are entangled with,
your marrow is supplanted
and your gums are unexpectedly massaged by
(even as your remaining tooth enamel is dissolved away by)

The Stupefying Subepidermal-Invasive Tentacled Extremities of Ross Wood Studlar (He Who Is Pictured But Unjustly Unnamed In Vermont Life This Month!)

SHRIEK!

...at that fruit of two loins,
that spill of paired cranial rubbings,
the abundance which only
collaborative coupling of brain cells can yield,

The Cerebal Spawn of David Giarratana (and James D'Amato, who is not of the CCS persuasion)!

Updated "Ebery Satuhdei, waka waka," so Dave sez.
Sorry, couldn't excerpt a panel, you get the whole digdanged page:

Have a great Sunday --
more posts later today,
as & if time permits.




Note: No rabbits.

Weekend Retreat:
Meet the CCSers!
(First in a Series)

First off, last night's opening of the Fine Toon Vt Cartoonists exhibition at the Helen Day Art Gallery
in Stowe, VT was a real treat (see yesterday's post for links, info). It's definitely the most expansive and
comprehensive collection of Green Mountain cartoonists to date, and the gallery has given the major
portion of their opulent spread to this selection of work. Don't miss this show!
More info, photos, etc.in the coming weeks, for sure.

I meant to post links to the various Center for Cartoon Studies student sites some time ago, but the vagaries of dial-up-only access in my prior Marlboro digs and the complications of the past couple of months (the move!) kept me from seeing to it.

With the permission of those listed, here's a snapshot of just some of the students cooking up a whole new generation's worth of trouble in the inky universe!

In no particular order, here's today's lineup:

SEE!

...the behemoth that wails
and beats its chest in the night,
wielding all that is and can be carved
from that which can only be called

Fresh-meat (freshman) Joe Lambert (aka Sleepy Joe) and his Amazing Electric Congtulabufabulon!

GASP!

...at all that can be found
beneath & beyond
the realm of that
which has been
spawned by

Ambulatory Andrew Arnold and his Stunning Kickapooflibejaba Ray!

SEE!

All that is both
Holy and Unholy,
tearing holes in the
very fabric of reality
with mere paper clips
and permutations
from the ashes of Pompeii,
erupting from

The Mortifying Prefabulations of Morgan Pielli!

WITNESS!

The Brain-Spew
that claims all that is
not its own as its own,
consuming the rubble of
the Box that Ate Everything
That the Bag Ate
and more, more, insatiably more
as YOU flee
the unslakeable
appetites that rule...

The ReDisorienting Universe of He-Known-As-Dane! (Martin, that is)

SEE!

Erupting from
unimaginable realms
of the Unspeakable
and Unspoken,
the Unseen
and Unheard,
the Irrepressible
and the
Irreplaceable...

That Which Can Only Be Created via the two-headed, four-limbed wonder known as Colleen Frakes & Jon-Mikel Gates!

More tomorrah,
including my movie viewing tips
(Pan's Labyrinth, etc.)
plus pix of the new Bissette digs
(the viewing room carpentry is done at last!)
... and more!

Time Didn't Permit...

...me to post again yesterday. However, that's for the best, as I kept Mark so preoccupied, meaning he had less time to obsess over whatever bile Bill O'Reilly (the Morton Downey Jr. of the 21st Century!) is spilling these days. What a putz (Bill, not Mark).

Yesterday turned out to be a pretty intense day at the Center for Cartoon Studies, though all good. I was nowhere near a computer until, uh, now.

Anyhoot, CCS: Glad to be at last into the new semester, it's all open sailing ahead! The biggest treat of the day was the afternoon session with my amigo and fellow VT cartoonist Skip Morrow, whose two hours with the students proved most engaging and illuminating. Skip was a bit frustrated that he didn't get to everything he'd hoped to cover, but still, an excellent and comprehensive kick-off for the semester's impressive lineup of visiting artists -- thanks, Skip! For those of you interested, click on over to

Skip's website,

and enjoy.



Skip and I will also be at tonight's opening at

the Helen Day Art Center site,

from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. This follows up on last year's Brattleboro Museum exhibition of Vermont cartoonists for a more expansive gallery showing of Green Mountain cartoonists's work via "Fine Toon: The Art of Vermont Cartoonists," curated by the charming Idoline Duke. She scoured the state and has pulled together originals by yours truly, Skip, Alison Bechdel, Harry Bliss, Jeff Danziger, Gareth Hinds, James Kochalka, Edward Koren, Hal Mayforth, Frank Miller, Tim Newcomb, and my old buddy Rick Veitch and fellow inky compadre James Sturm.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what the gallery has brought together. This is, bar none, the most extensive and comprehensive collection of Vermont cartooning in any gallery to date, and as such worthy of notice. Stowe's a great town to visit any time of year -- this should provide some of you a destination worth the trip.

Tonight's event is just the beginning; the show runs from January 26th through March 31st, and spills over a bit into my scheduled April 17th presentation on VT comics and graphic novels (more on that later). Anyhoot, for more info and a complete schedule, click

here,

or contact: Helen Day Art Center, Stowe, Vermont; phone: 802-253-6131.

Alas, no time as yet to get into Pan's Labyrinth; I'll get to that this weekend. Got a full day ahead, including breakfast with my son Dan -- so, later, gators!

PS: Mark, I haven't followed the Vermont case O'Reilly has made into a national hubbub. I read a bit about it last year in our local papers, but not enough to knowledgeably comment on it, much less get into the substance of it. All I know is a judge was more lenient than O'Reilly, torture-loving right-wing hate-mongering fuckhead he is, thinks the judge should have been. In the dreams of O'Reilly fans everywhere, they'd prefer to see O'Reilly on the bench, no doubt, doling out true American justice -- which would be fine in that (a) we wouldn't have to stomach his presence in the pop culture "journalism" landscape if he were a judge, 'cuz none of us would have heard of (much less from) him if he were a judge instead of a media screed monkey -- unless, that is, (b) you were the poor sonuvabitch who found themselves facing Judge O'Reilly. The man is an insufferable braggart and a bully. 'Nuff said!

News At Eleven!

I'll be posting this evening, folks, due to first-week of semester CCS duties this AM. Yesterday's class, the first of the semester for me, went well, but today's the pressure cooker.

Caught Pan's Labyrinth last night, and I've much to say about that. So, later this evening, as time permits -- apologies for missing my usual morning post!

"Patience," He Says

"If I Only Had a Heart..."

The most impatient President of my lifetime -- the man who couldn't wait for UN Weapons inspections, who couldn't wait for the United Nations or for "Old Europe" to catch up to his war-mongering faux-cowboy ("Texan," my ass; born and raised Connecticut, this man was) ways, who publicly mocked a born-again Christian who was on Death Row (imitating her born-again statements like he was some spoiled school brat, though we're all supposed to roll with his born-again piety and changed-ways from his wayward youth -- ah, adulthood) -- asked for patience last night.

He's asking for patience, and time for his new strategy to work.

Patience for his so-called "new strategy," which is just an escalation of the failed old one.

Patience for his mismanagement, his arrogance, his blunders and lack of imagination or the basest empathy.

Bush once again describing that perch he caught on the best day of his Presidency?
Showing the length of that fuzzy bunny-rabbit Mark keeps asking about?
I think not.

Patience with the ongoing utter waste of human life for a failed Messianic foreign policy that has yielded only agony, death and disaster.

Thankfully, at last, the Democrats chose someone to respond who speaks openly of his contempt for these inexcusable failures: Senator Jim Webb of Virginia handled the party's formal televised response to the speech (Webb, you may recall, is the former Republican Navy secretary and Vietnam veteran who in responding honestly to President Bush's "good ol' boy" "How's your boy?" query shocked Washington and won the instant respect & gratitude of those of us who wish others could and would respond as candidly to Bush's glad-handed bullshit). Webb pulled no punches:

"...The president took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the Army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command," and others, Webb stated. "We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable -- and predicted -- disarray that has followed."

Kudos to Senator Webb. If only the Senate had half his backbone, had demonstrated a fraction of such resolve, back in 2002.

___________________

"Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work. And I ask you to support our troops in the field — and those on their way," our President said last night.

How is he supporting "our troops in the field"?

He has allowed ("ordered," more likely) the Pentagon to once again extend tours of duty for already overextended soldiers.

Some support, there, Pres.

This is hard to take, and harder to take still when soldiers are informed of this abuse of their commitment from family members instead of their commanding officers: note, for instance, this past week's tale of the 150+ New Jersey National Guard troops who found out their Iraq tours of duty were extended another not from their commanders, but from frantic phone calls and emails from family members who'd heard President Bush's speech last week.

That's right -- the National Guard had notified families the day after Bush's first "new strategy" speech that instead of their loved ones coming home in March, as previously scheduled, they'd be there another 125 days.

The military did not inform the troops themselves.

Four days after Bush's televised speech -- four days -- the troops were at last notified by their Army commanders on the ground, and only after New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine made not one but two phone calls to the Army, demanding the troops be informed.

Hey, Pres, way to go. Love this new strategy.

As I noted last week, it's become horrifically identical to how the Bush Administration is handling the Gitmo prisoners and others incarcerated, sans redress, in this nonsensical "war on terror."

Let's see some "new strategy" that reflects some sacrifice from the rest of us.

Starting with, oh, you. Your family, President Bush.

How about sending your daughters over for a little R&R duty? USO show, you know? Some hint of sacrifice the rough equivalent of Bob Hope's over three prior wars, perhaps?

To add profound insult to ongoing injuries, Bush this past weekend responded like a complete idiot to a politely-worded, very direct question about the fact that the "necessary sacrifices" for what he himself has called "the ultimate ideological struggle of our times" is being placed entirely on the shoulders of the volunteer military families.

MR. LEHRER: Let me ask you a bottom-line question, Mr. President. If it is as important as you've just said - and you've said it many times - as all of this is, particularly the struggle in Iraq, if it's that important to all of us and to the future of our country, if not the world, why have you not, as president of the United States, asked more Americans and more American interests to sacrifice something? The people who are now sacrificing are, you know, the volunteer military - the Army and the U.S. Marines and their families. They're the only people who are actually sacrificing anything at this point.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night. I mean, we've got a fantastic economy here in the United States...

This infuriating side-stepping is reflective of an ongoing and utter disconnect from reality in one way, but as my Jamiaca VT amigo HomeyM noted in a recent email to me, it does reflect our current national reality quite succinctly. At least Bush learned something from Vietnam: avoid, at any and all costs, the draft. Keep the populace insulated, complacent, about the reality of the war.

HomeyM puts it quite nicely:

"He doesn't really address the question, of course-- evasion of the question (while still sounding "sincere") is the main mode of political response-- but in a way he is right, not as a valid description of sacrifice, but the psychology of the country is indeed "somewhat down" (or more than "somewhat" down) as a result of revulsion and depression at who we have become... or some would say, at seeing who we always were anyway but were more able to deny. Our way of life is inhuman, wasteful, destructive, and ugly, prizing material goods and gadgets over sacred values and human life, putting our eyes and ears on videogames, Ipods, and television, rather than looking directly at nature and at other beings, rather than seeing what we are doing to ourselves and to each other and to others far away. So it is an interesting response because he admits that his actions have brought out guilt and disturbance in the American public, that we have "lost our peace of mind" over horrible violence that we are a major part of, and that we are depressed and unhappy nation as a result of what he has done. He then gives it the little sophistic twist that this is being done as a 'sacrifice' to a great cause of some kind."

Have a great day, one and all...

And A Fine Tuesday AM It 'Tis, Too.

Here, we've gotten some sweet snow overnight and it's now sunny and cold. Nice.

Yesterday was our closing on the sale of our Marlboro home, which any regular reader of this blog is likely sick to death of hearing anything about. Well, this is it -- and it went beautifully, could not have gone better. Our beloved Marlboro home now has two new owners, really good folks who are already being welcomed into the Marlboro community with open arms -- and they're overjoyed to now be part of it. We graced the new owners with a bottle of champagne for them to celebrate with later in the day, and I gifted our attorney Richard Coutant with a hardcover copy of Frank Miller's 300, which he'd expressed keen interest in a year or so ago.

After the closing, Marge and I attended to the various banking chores (momentarily free of mortgage and debt!), and I closed my venerable Wilmington, VT post office box of 26 years. That's where all my Swamp Thing years, SpiderBaby Grafix efforts, and oh so much more sifted in and out of my studio and life. We savored a delicious lunch at my/our fave Wilmington diner -- Dot's Diner, downtown, right by the only stoplight in town, where routes 9 and 100 meet -- and then bid Wilmington farewell.

Hereafter, if we visit Marlboro and Wilmington, we're just tourists.

OK, much CCS work ahead. I've pretty well spruced up my office; hours of file organizing and unpacking ahead, but I've got a pretty good handle on that, too. With the Vt Dept. of Education arriving Thursday, it's a big week for all of us at CCS, beyond the 'big week' factor of this being the start of the new semester -- wish us luck.

More later, as time permits...

Putting on the Ritz

Spent the day yesterday -- and will spending today -- at last getting my CCS office set up and functional.

First, though, I tidied up the senior's studio, which meant picking up lots of empty beverage containers; I don't drink coffee, but if I did, the cup of calcified and molded Jo I removed from the computer workstation would have done me in on that. It was like Green Acres coffee: a solid mass. Tried to dump it down a restroom sink, but no go -- fungoid solids don't flow. Into the garbage it went; the rest of the beverage containers went into recycling after I rinsed them out. I used to handle returnables in my dad's store (Bissette's Market), from age six to 21: nothing grosses me out in the returnable bottles and cans department, I've seen and handled it all. Still, new studio rule: End of every workday, guys and gals, you clean up all empties!

Though most had neatened up their work and drawing tables sufficiently, the floors in a few stations were keeping feets warm with slagheaps of paper, lost art tools, and the occasional organic matter (hmmm, is this a chewed up pretzel?). I swept that all up and out; paper, particularly with drawings, went on to the top of the respective drawing area; the rest, recycled or into the trash. Took about an hour or so, then I set up the Critique area, which was last semester a loosy-goosey set up: not this semester. The wall is clear and ready for the students's thesis work to be posted, eighteen chairs (all black) set up and ready for our first crit session. All in all, it wasn't bad. I mean, these are cartoonists, folks. Young cartoonists. Their work stations will never hold a candle to the descriptions Tom Sutton used to give me of his studio.

Then, on to my shitheap in the office. I've been pretty lenient on cleanup issues thus far because I've not set any kind of respectable example -- well, that's no longer the case.

First off, dig, throughout the move -- from the first day Marge and I decided we were moving closer to CCS -- I hauled various and sundry boxes and items to my CCS office, and did my best to keep them neatly stacked and organized. But they were, after all, boxes, full of books and very odds & ends. Many of my art tools made the pilgrimage, too, ahead of our move. And my desk became the repository for all CCS paperwork and files I'd had loosely organized in my then-pretty-new Marlboro office/studio space; in short, a moveable shitheap, shifted around on the desk as necessary to make room for each week's pressure-cooker, two-day work stint. Time to organize at last! Set it up! Get it up!

Despite the warning posted on one of two pipes running throught the far wall (Danger - Asbestos - Cancer Risk - Avoid Creating Dust -- the insulating wraps on the pipes are indeed asbestos; I give 'em wide berth, and otherwise spend minimal time in the windowless office), it is a nice work space. I've at last hung up mucho art, all my various comics industry and horror writers awards (my son Dan always wished I'd hung this stuff up in my home studio, but I never had the wall space), my graduation diploma and letter of recommendation from The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon & Graphic Art, Inc., some family items, etc.; emptied boxes of paleontology, zoology, and various photo reference books and racked them in a trio of bookcases (bringing in one more bookcase this morning, to shelf the oversized paleo, Zdenak Burian and science books); and finished placing the stacks of 'textbooks' and back issues of my work in the two metal cabinets in the office. The latter are also now homes for my bizarre and beloved magnet collection (including a batch of vintage '50s sf miniature movie posters I bought from me old pal G. Michael Dobbs from his management tenure at the Tower Theaters down in Massachusetts; Mike's concession stand sold the coolest movie collectibles and best movie popcorn ever!), and some of my fossil collection and coolest toys grace the tops of the filing cabinets.

Which leads me to today's task: filing. I've tons of CCS paper already in file folders, but it's time at last to centralize and collate the filing system, get them organized in the file cabinets, and today's the day.

One huge liability in the office, though, other than the lung-cancer-inducing asbestos: the radio doesn't pick up the local NPR stations. I shouldered through yesterday listening to local crap-rock broadcasts. Today, audio cassettes of music I love or can at least stomach: Doc Watson, Captain Beefheart, Patty Smith, Ennio Morricone, Charlie Poole, Tom Waites -- get me through the day.

It's sunny, spectacular even, outside -- I've also got some drawing to do at fellow CCS faculty Peter Money's house, for a secret assignment -- so, off to the CCS Verizon Building office now so I can savor some of today's sweet weather!

_______________

Marge said her goodbyes to our Marlboro house yesterday, en route home from a birthday lunch date with her sister Pat Lambert (who is an amazing artist and photographer; hello, Pat!). Marge and our neighbor Arlene Hanson spent a little time in the now-empty home we rebuilt (it was a gutted shell when we bought it in December 2001), were wed in (April 2002), and lived in ever since. She came home and said pretty much what I have felt for some time now: she will forever love our Marlboro house, it was good to us, but this Windsor house is our home. It feels like home, and our connection with the Marlboro digs has been severed completely. Odd feeling, but there it is. The closing is tomorrow morning, and we're both ready to see this end. Emotionally, we're already past it.

_________________

Followup to my time at Cole Odell's Middlebury College class: Hey, Cole, get some photos of your class, I'll post 'em here. I'm also going to post some CCS photos this semester; time to dress up this tired old blog with some up-and-coming students! It's their generation's world, we just get to live here.

That said, I've also begun to come across a lot of vintage photos from my old convention days/daze, and once the new computers are set up and I have a functional computer-and-scanner work station in place, I'll start posting those, too.

Followup to Dave Booz's comment yesterday: Hey, Dave, drove through Killington this week en route to Middlebury, and passed the road to your place. Hey, there's snow at last! Not a lot, but snow, baby! You guys coming up?

Have a great Sunday, one and all.

For some inexplicable reason, the blog isn't accepting posts for the second day in a row.
Sigh -- just like old times, only faster, thanks to high-speed access!

Hopefully, this'll all be corrected soon. Just posting to note the problems and delay.

Saturday Musings

Well, the move is over -- tried to post an announcement here yesterday afternoon, but for some reason it wouldn't go through. Maybe it'll post this AM.

Apologies for missing two daily posts this week. The move, the move -- and the down-to-the-wire Center for Cartoon Studies tasks (the move derailed my administrative paperwork chores terribly) -- kept me preoccupied.

_______________

There was also Thursday's trip to Middlebury College, to speak to Cole Odell's excellent comics class, among the missing time blog-wise -- Cole was a gracious and attentive host, we had some fun, and his class was great, a remarkable mix of students. If I had a photo of the group, I'd post it, because they really were a lively and engaging group; their questions were insightful, it made for a solid session.

I was invited to join the group for lunch after our session in the classroom, and we were joined by two professors (one of whom, Don Mitchell, I knew from my Breadloaf Young Writers Conference days and was overjoyed to see, though we didn't get to talk much) and I shamelessly showboated, answering any and all questions.

The drive to and from Middlebury was a treat, too, though loooooooong: having moved over an hour "closer" to Middlebury, I still had the same duration drive I used to have from Marlboro! Such is the "ya can't get thar from heyar" nature of roadways in Vermont, especially midstate. It's a two-and-a-half hour drive, I was told -- that said, I gave myself extra time and made it to Middlebury with time to spare. Two pancakes and two sausage patties worth of time, in fact.

The drive to was ravishing: it was two degrees outside and crystal clear; the air was so cold that the running rivers were steaming (a procession of uncanny, non-moving vapor wisps that hung over the water, which was and is churning too fast to freeze) and the vegetation on the immediate banks were bristling with whiskers of frost. Stunning, eerie, beautiful.

The ride home meant taking another route (I'm exploring this part of my home state every chance I get, having a fresh geographic orientation now to all points), which involved a steep climb up Route 125 from Ripton, a route I chose for sentimental reasons: it takes me right by the old Breadloaf Campus. I love that place.

Cooler still, though, were the deep-frozen brooks and streams along 125, which were spectacular; the play of light and shadow midday, with the sky just easing into overcast with the occasional peek of sun, was mesmerizing. I stopped at one point and pulled on my boots to wander down by the brookside and savor the frosty tableaus. Winter, at last.

Cutting down Route 100 -- the road I grew up on and know so well -- I saw a sign saying "Bethel: 18 miles" and thought, "Huh, that'll cut me over to interstate 89 in no time!" Sure enough, where 100 and 107 meet/split (depending which way you're headed) in Stockbridge, I cut up over to Bethel (driving by the ever-alluring Advanced Animations sign; it's not an animation studio, but a remote VT business that builds all the life-size animatronic creatures and dinosaurs that tour the world, including the popular museum "Dinomation" exhibits) and was on 89 South in record time.

Home again in a little over 90 minutes -- a faster route to Middlebury, when it isn't storming! Cool!

Once home, I was scrambling: Dave Gabriel and his brother Mike were working here (wait until you see the shelving work they've done -- photos, soon!) and we were scheduled to complete the platform and assemble the flat file before they headed home. That meant ripping into Windsor and picking up some last-minute supplies needed for the task, which I did, and before Dave and Mike were out the door, my flat file was assembled in the basement atop its new platform (in case the basement ever floods) and ready at last.

This means I can now file my artwork, all of it, and clear my small studio room -- and bring in my drawing board and light table. This means this week, amid all first-week-of-the-new-semester CCS hubbub, I'll be able to chip away at finally setting up one portion of my new home. It's been weeks; I'm eager to get into it.

__________________

With the conclusion of the movers work at Marlboro yesterday afternoon, I took a few moments after the truck pulled away to wander the house, say goodbye to one of the sweetest homes I've ever lived in: the first I've owned, too. It was indeed kind to us, and we were kind as we could be to the house, rebuilding it from the shell it was when we first saw it. The new owners are excited, the closing is on Monday -- they have heady plans for further reworking the house, making it into the home they need and want. Ah, I love change, transition: it's always an agonizing process, but necessary to life.

I took my last walk through the house, seeing the rooms empty, completely empty and open for a new family, for the first time. It's never been completed as a house and empty before, in our experience. We were moving in as the work was being completed back in December 2001 to April 2002, so I'd never seen the house empty, clean, free of the clutter of our lives (and, ahem, my enormous quantities of shit). I went outside and walked around, took one last, lingering look from the back yard across mid-Marlboro, and then I was off. Met the movers in Ascutney, we unloaded (into my rented storage space), and that was that.

Then, back to work at home. All in all, a most eventful couple of days.

I finally wrapped up my syllabus work this AM, and Marge offered to help me set up my CCS office space in White River Jct., which must be done by Monday night -- so, with that, I'm off. Got bookcases to pick up from the storage space, work to do in my Verizon Building office at CCS -- see ya here tomorrow.

The move...

...is over.

At last!

(January 19th, final move with Dartmouth Moving & Storage and last of my hauls in my Toyota to our Windsor home; said goodbye to the Marlboro house and hit the road after locking up. Closing on the sale Monday AM, the same day CCS's new semester begins.)

Ratchet-Ass Bissette

Not posting much today; too much to do, with crunch-time here on many obligations the move/house purchase/house sale and all attendant duties has back-burnered. The move concludes -- at last! -- on Friday; our closing on the sale of our Marlboro home is Monday. Soon, this'll all be behind us...

But what's ahead today is what's essential. Two meetings today, one decidedly Center for Cartoon Studies intensive, etc. -- and contractor Dave Gabriel is back in the saddle here today (at last, the flat files will be up by tonight!), so I've got to be ready for him in about 15 minutes -- but there's always time to touch on making sense of our President's behavior.

First up, comics amigo Howard M. (morning, Howard, good to hear from you!) sent me

this link concerning another possible rationale for the Negroponte move, and one that "is more logical than Cheney resigning" to his mind (though he's no fan of Novak).

Howard adds, "What pisses me off most is why there is no debate on why the Bush plan doesn't included diplomacy. As bad an idea as the military surge is, if there was also a diplomatic surge (like the ISG recommended) to get the Iraqi's to resolve their political differences it would be hard to argue against. Better still would be to do that while withdrawing but that would make too much sense. But all the Congress can manage to say is that sending more troops is a bad idea. The level of "debate" is pathetic..."

Agreed. Alas, though, as the past six years have demonstrated, Bush doesn't 'do' diplomacy. I know, he said he didn't 'do' nuances, but clearly diplomacy falls within that category (in the mind of the man unable to sort out strategy vs. tactics, leading us all into an international war on a tactic). Pathetic is far, far too kind a word.

This in hand from truthout.org, compliments of HomeyM this AM. (Have a great Wednesday, see you here tomorrow with something less depressing, I hope):

New Oil Law Means Victory in Iraq for Bush

By Chris Floyd
t r u t h o u t | UK Correspondent
Monday 08 January 2007

Surging Toward the Ultimate Prize

The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.

At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," says the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. "It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972." If the government's parliamentary majority prevails, the law should take effect in March.

As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works since the very beginning of the invasion - indeed, since months before the invasion, when the Bush administration brought in Phillip Carroll, former CEO of both Shell and Fluor, the politically-wired oil servicing firm, to devise "contingency plans" for divvying up Iraq's oil after the attack. Once the deed was done, Carroll was made head of the American "advisory committee" overseeing the oil industry of the conquered land, as Joshua Holland of Alternet.com has chronicled in two remarkable reports on the backroom maneuvering over Iraq's oil: "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and "The US Takeover of Iraqi Oil."

From those earliest days until now, throughout all the twists and turns, the blood and chaos of the occupation, the Bush administration has kept its eye on this prize. The new law offers the barrelling buccaneers of the West a juicy set of production-sharing agreements (PSAs) that will maintain a fig leaf of Iraqi ownership of the nation's oil industry - while letting Bush's Big Oil buddies rake off up to 75 percent of all oil profits for an indefinite period up front, until they decide that their "infrastructure investments" have been repaid. Even then, the agreements will give the Western oil majors an unheard-of 20 percent of Iraq's oil profits - more than twice the average of standard PSAs, the Independent notes.

Of course, at the moment, the "security situation" - i.e., the living hell of death and suffering that Bush's "war of choice" has wrought in Iraq - prevents the Oil Barons from setting up shop in the looted fields. Hence Bush's overwhelming urge to "surge" despite the fierce opposition to his plans from Congress, the Pentagon and some members of his own party. Bush and his inner circle, including his chief adviser, old oilman Dick Cheney, believe that a bigger dose of blood and iron in Iraq will produce a sufficient level of stability to allow the oil majors to cash in the PSA chips that more than 3,000 American soldiers have purchased for them with their lives.

The American "surge" will be blended into the new draconian effort announced over the weekend by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: an all-out war by the government's Shiite militia-riddled "security forces" on Sunni enclaves in Baghdad, as the Washington Post reports. American troops will "support" the "pacification effort" with what Maliki says calls "house-to-house" sweeps of Sunni areas. There is of course another phrase for this kind of operation: "ethnic cleansing."

The "surged" troops - mostly long-serving, overstrained units dragooned into extended duty - are to be thrown into this maelstrom of urban warfare and ethnic murder, temporarily taking sides with one faction in Iraq's hydra-headed, multi-sided civil war. As the conflict goes on - and it will go on and on - the Bush administration will continue to side with whatever faction promises to uphold the "hydrocarbon law" and those profitable PSAs. If "Al Qaeda in Iraq" vowed to open the nation's oil spigots for Exxon, Fluor and Halliburton, they would suddenly find themselves transformed from "terrorists" into "moderates" - as indeed has Maliki and his violent, sectarian Dawa Party, which once killed Americans in terrorist actions but are now hailed as freedom's champions.

So Bush will surge with Maliki and his ethnic cleansing for now. If the effort flames out in a disastrous crash that makes the situation worse - as it almost certainly will - Bush will simply back another horse. What he seeks in Iraq is not freedom or democracy but "stability" - a government of any shape or form that will deliver the goods. As the Independent wryly noted in its Sunday story, Dick Cheney himself revealed the true goal of the war back in 1999, in a speech he gave when he was still CEO of Halliburton. "Where is the oil going to come from" to slake the world's ever-growing thirst, asked Cheney, who then answered his own question: "The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."

And therein lies another hidden layer of the war. For Iraq not only has the world's second largest oil reserves; it also has the world's most easily retrievable oil. As the Independent succinctly notes: "The cost-per-barrel of extracting oil in Iraq is among the lowest in the world because the reserves are relatively close to the surface. This contrasts starkly with the expensive and risky lengths to which the oil industry must go to find new reserves elsewhere - witness the super-deep offshore drilling and cost-intensive techniques needed to extract oil form Canada's tar sands."

And this unholy union is what Bush is really talking about when he talks about "victory." This isthe reason for so much of the drift and dithering and chaos and incompetence of the occupation: Bush and his cohorts don't really care what happens on the ground in Iraq - they care about what comes out of the ground. The end - profit and dominion - justifies any means.

Winter At Last!

Just a week or so ago, folks were tubing down the West River in Dummerston (with Global Warming protest signs) -- I kid you not -- a first for Vermont history in January.

Finally, though, we got hammered Sunday and yesterday with just a bit of the winter weather that's been nailing the rest of the country. Though precious little real snow fell yesterday -- it was a lethal mix of sleet/freezing rain, maybe an inch or so -- it was, at least, real winter weather. Mid-January. In Vermont.

Now, the last winter I recall with this little snow at this point in the season was back in 1979-80, while I lived one my own (pre-marriage to Marlene) in a brick school house on Fisher Hill Road in Grafton, VT. We had no snow until late in January, but we had the usual winter cold -- meaning the frost layer sank dangerously deep, sans the protective insulation of snow cover to keep it at bay. Folks had their wells freezing, and the mud season that spring was mind-bending, the worst I've ever seen.

This winter, though, has been the warmest on record for Vermont and New Hampshire. While it's been a real blessing for Marge and I, with the move and all, it's been a disaster for every VT business imaginable, from ski areas to eateries, including local yokels dependent in part on the money they earn plowing. With 60+ degree days (and some nights) until this past weekend, it's been unlike any VT winter in this half-a-century-old Vermonter's memory. Weird.

Anyhoot, it was therefore a treat to stay in all day yesterday, pretending the winter storm was much, much worse than it was. That said, while I'm unafraid of driving in any kind of snowstorm, I give the greatest respect and widest berth to freezing rain and sleet storms -- hence, easy-pie decision to just. Stay. Put.

Nice, too, to have a leisurely day home with Marge. I did fuck-all. Sweet.

Back to work, now.

________________

Bush, Whacked -- For Real?

I've thought this for a long time, and with greater conviction since watching all I could stomach (rather than just listening to) last week's Iraq War speech from our President (that was fifteen minutes of a twenty-minute speech -- I almost made it):

check out this weekend's edition (you may have to scroll down to "One Flew Over the .... White House?") of NewsForReal.com,

and tell me it just ain't so.

Delusional? "Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture."

Antisocial Personality? "Is a psychiatric diagnosis recognizable by the disordered individual's impulsive behavior, disregard for social norms, and indifference to the rights and feelings of others. Central to understanding individuals diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, is that they appear to experience a limited range of human emotions. This can explain their lack of empathy for the suffering of others, since they cannot experience the emotion associated with either empathy or suffering. Risk-seeking behavior and substance abuse may be attempts to escape feeling empty or emotionally void. The rage exhibited by psychopaths and the anxiety associated with certain types of antisocial personality disorder may represent the limit of emotion experienced, or there may be physiological responses without analogy to emotion experienced by others."

And so on.

It all makes so much sense of the insanity of the current situation.

While you're at it, scroll down to "News For Real" for January 4th:

"The Washington media spent the holidays trying to guess what the President's new plan for Iraq might be. Meanwhile in the back rooms of the White House Karl Rove and White House Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten were doing what any world-class chess player does when facing defeat -- plot a series of aggressive moves to throw their opponent off balance in the hopes of regaining the initiative.

How do I know this? Well, since God only talks to Rev. Pat Robertson – and, when He can't get through to Pat, George W. Bush – I didn't get it from Him. No it came to me in this news flash late yesterday:

Washington, D.C. - As President Bush prepares a new statement and stance on the war in Iraq, his cabinet is once again in the midst of transition. In the latest change, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte will resign to become deputy secretary of state, according to a government official....The shift, while seemingly abrupt, will allow Negroponte to return to his former career path as a diplomat. Negroponte will serve under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

It was that last line that gives away the strategy. “Negroponte will serve under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.”

Never! Negroponte quits as head of one of the most important and powerful posts in government, a job that puts him face to face with the President of the United States every morning, of everyday of the week, to accept a position as Rice's assistant?

Fat chance.

So what's up? Here's what I think is up -- and if I were Bush I would be itching to get on with the game.

Move 1: Announce what the administration knows will be a very unpopular decision to send more troops to Iraq.

Move 2: Let the Democrat-controlled Congress throw a fit and hold hearings the administration knows will stir up additional opposition and shake loose new damning information on the administrations march to war and mismanagement of that war.

Move 3: Just when all the above is hitting the fan, Dick Cheney announces he is retiring from office early due to “health concerns," and because he does not want to be "a distraction" when he is called to testify in purjury trial of his former No. 2. Scooter Libby.

Move 4: The next day Bush announces he will nominate Condoleezza Rice to replace Cheney.

Move 5: At the same time Bush announces he is nominating Negroponte to replace Rice as Secretary of State.

The above series of moves makes political sense on so many levels that I consider it inevitable...." etc.

[Thanks to Tim Viereck for steering me to this blog; much appreciated, Doc!]

Crazier still, I'm willing to bet yesterday's post about Swamp Thing merchandizing atrocities continues to score more hits and comments than this does.

Ponder the insanity of our Commander-in-Chief and the Biblical Armageddon he's determined to foment, or fuzzy Swamp Thing slippers?

The slippers win every time!

It's a whacky ol' world...

Have a great Tuesday, all.

PS: Ah, before you read the Swamp Thing merchandizing rant below, check out

Bob Heer's amazing flashing Varnae/Primal Vampire comparison,

and note how

completely President Bush and Vice President Cheney don't give a flying fuck for what anybody thinks about this crummy war, anyhow.

Happy Martin Luthor King Day, one and all.

Swamp Thing Shit

Ya, I know, I'm supposed to be en route to Middlebury. Due to the first winter storm of the winter, we powwowed last night and rescheduled my guest lecture visit to a kinder day of the week, weather-wise. Marge is much appreciative, and thanks, Cole (Odell, Middlebury College comics class instructor extraordinaire), for being flexible.

Having ensured Marge sleeps in this morning (she's off from work today), allow me to indulge my nightmares for the pinch-hit blog post for this Martin Luthor King's Day I expected not to be posting...

For those who don't note the comments on this blog, Bob Heer has been posting links from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin,

steering me to Mike's postings on the worst of all the early 1990s Swamp Thing merchandizing crap.

I have all this mind-boggling drizzle in my own collection -- now, and forever, housed for all to see at

the Stephen R. Bissette Collection at HUIE Library and Henderson State University.

Special Collections librarian and amazing HUIE Goddess Lea Ann Alexander in fact had the HUIE Library glass display cases brimming with this insane Swamp Thing pop debris back in November of 2005, when Marge and I made our pilgrimage out there for the opening of the Collection.

We've got those photos... around... here... somewhere, but until we can unpack them and I can post them, I'll give you my personal choice of the lamest Swamp Thing merchandise ever (using photos from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin,

which I urge you to visit if you want to see more!)

Special thanks, then, to Bob Heer for navigating me there, and to Mike Sterling ("The Most Dangerous Man Alive Since 1969" -- only in California) for harboring such loopy delights online.

Now, Bob maintains that this admittedly crap Swampy item is the single most absurd of all the Swamp Thing merchandizing to date, and he's got a point. It is singularly bizarre; here's what Mike Sterling had to say about his eBay acquisition:

"This piece of merchandise boldly tells you, the consumer, just what exactly you're getting. "I'M CHALK!" exclaims the package, and by God, chalk is exactly what you get. Chalk carved in the general likeness of Swamp Thing and colored green, perhaps, but that, my friends, is Washable, Dustless chalk in its purest form. According to the back of the package, some of the suggested uses for Swamp Thing chalk are "Do Your Homework," "Play Games," and "Draw Funny Pictures" - yes, Swamp Thing chalk can cover the full spectrum of life. Also, according to the package, the Swamp Thing chalk "works great on chalk boards" which must come as great relief to someone.

Okay, seriously, I'm sure the "I'M CHALK!" legend on the front is some kind of warning that this item isn't candy, just in case having "CHALK" in orange letters on the front, and having pictures of kids drawing things with chalk on the back, weren't clue enough."

(Image and quote from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin, Monday, September 20, 2004 post; scroll down to read the original Sterling post.)

In the same September 20th, 2004 posting, Mike also unveiled the likewise silly-ass Swamp Thing Bop Bag -- also high on the "What the fuck?" list of Swampy merchandise -- but at least one can cite 1960s movie monster bop bags as precursors, thus reducing the absurdity component of the Swampy bop bag to near nil.

As the attentive comics and Swamp Thing fans likely can make out from Mike's posted photo, here, the artist of note on these merchandizing miracles was none other than Alfredo Alcala -- or, I should say, those are definitely Alfredo's inks, perhaps working over some uncredited penciller. You may recall that it was John Totleben who first suggested Alfredo as the best fill-in inker on Saga of the Swamp Thing (during the tag-team collaborative effort editor Karen Berger orchestrated on the title around the buildup to Alan Moore's ambitious Swamp Thing Annual #2 script, "Down Amongst the Dead Men," which necessitated some fancy footwork on SOTST #30 and #31 to buy me time to pencil the Annual without a break: it was double-page-count, natch, and we were starting behind the deadline eightball -- where we'd been, like, forever). Anyhoot, it was John T who suggested Alfredo as the best alternative to his own inks, an astute call given John's and Alfredo's shared roots in Franklin Booth's pen-and-ink aesthetic. This was so that Rick Veitch and John could collaborate on #30 while I pencilled (the tightest pencils of my career) for Alfredo to ink on #31, allowing John and I to collaborate on the Annual (with a couple of pages of pencil assist from Rick Veitch). So that's how Alfredo was brought into the fold -- leading, ultimately, to his becoming the regular inker on Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing run (as penciller with Alan scripting, and later with Rick writing and pencilling), culminating in these ST merchandizing monstrosities.

A long road to China, indeed.



Well, OK, so now you know Bob Heer's choice of most absurd Swamp Thing merchandizing item ever. Though Mike Sterling doesn't indulge such nominations, he does bring special personal history to this gem, which also rank pretty high in my personal choice for most absurd Swamp Thing merchandizing ever -- the Swamp Thing Pencil Sharpeners!

I have 'em all -- again, now in the HUIE Library Bissette Collection archives (thank God, I didn't have to move them again!) -- and there are indeed three different designs, as shown on the back of the packaging (below). Mike's original post reads:

"This is one of the very first things I'd ever bought on eBay, over six years ago now. In fact, I think this may be the very item that inspired me to get an eBay account in the first place. Let me distract you from that highly embarrassing and very sad bit of personal information and draw your attention to the ballyhooing of "ACTION! Movable arms" blurbed on the package. While, yes, the arms do appear to move, I would have had a hard time attributing any kind of exciting "action" to that. Maybe you could pretend to move his arms around as if he were writhing in pain as you jab a pencil into his hip...."

Now, I have no such history. I bought these damnable things at local toy stores (in Keene, NH and down in Massachusetts) as they surfaced in the blow-out sale bins. I've been harboring these in my archives for nigh on 13 years now. Thankfully, I didn't have to suffer the public humiliation of bidding for them on eBay! That might have prompted a Heidi MacDonald column or something, Bissette bidding on Swamp Thing shit on eBay. No, I just put up with my kids saying, "Dad, why are you buying that? It's not for me, is it?", with relief beaming from their wet little eyes (brown for Maia, baby blue for Danny, like his Poppa) when I told them it was for (choke) me. "Oh, good," they said.

My misguided affection for these pencil sharpeners, though, lies in the fact that you're using a tiny Swamp Thing idol to further carve/maim a wood product already mechanically sculpted from ravaged trees -- a pencil, natch -- thus using a replica of DC's protector of the trees, the Plant Elemental incarnate, to, like, sharpen pencils. Among tree-huggers, this isn't only misapplication of a false idol, it's ideologically abhorrent in the extreme on so many levels, one can't comprehend them all. And that, I love.

(Images and quote from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin, Monday, September 20, 2004 post; scroll down to read the original complete Sterling post.)

But for me, the nadir of the Plant Elemental's false idols, the ultimate absurdity of all the 1992 Swamp Thing merchandizing, the most perverse and brain-wrenching of all these misbegotten horrors, that-which-should-never-have-been-made, much less worn and adorned, are these little wonders:

AGH! SWAMP THING SLIPPERS!

Beastie booties for wee feet! Yep, they're bright green fuzzy kid's slippers with the dumbest little bright green hollow plastic Swampy heads imaginable perched (well, actually, glued) atop the isky-li'l toes of the tots who tottered around in 'em.



Of course, licensed merchandizing isn't licensed merchandizing until you've slapped the official registered trademark logo on the damned things, so there 'tis, Swamp Thing, on the sides of the slippers, adding elegance and grace to these hideous mass-production nightmares.

That's it, the point at which I concede that those who once held all rights, save comics rights, to Swamp Thing did their utmost to exploit every conceivable niche market abomination the human mind could concoct.

The slippers, the slippers -- Marge catches me some nights, muttering that in my sleep as I lay, slavering and glistening with cold sweat, in the grip of some dreadful recollection of what once lurked in my own home.
The slippers! IT WAS THE DAMNED SLIPPERS!

(Images from

Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin, Saturday, January 13, 2007 post.)

And that, my friends, is all I can stomach of that.

Again, all this -- and more! -- is forever sheltered and selectively showcased in