The Anger of Compassion

The Blogger is a Boggler: An Appreciation of John Kreuttner

In 1977 Arlington House published The Boggle by John Kreuttner (I've mentioned it before). I was a freshman in college, one of the few readers of National Review and the only subscriber to Libertarian Review and Reason. Kreuttner, who'd spent the 1950s and 60s drawing cartoons for American Opinion, Counterattack, Human Events, National Review and The New Yorker, immediately became one of my favorite satirists. As a tribute to him I actually wanted to name this blog The Bloggle, and I was quite disappointed to find that the name was taken.

Anyway: Yes, The New Yorker. That New Yorker. Kreuttner was a great cartoonist, truly great--and I only say "was" because I can't find any information about him, and if he is still alive he'd be almost a hundred years old. And I'm not the only one who appreciates Kreuttner as a cartoonist and satirist: William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote that The Boggle is "in my judgment the most original, stylish, accomplished satirical collection of our time."

Kreuttner's technique is to do the paralogist one better. He can do this in short, medium, and long forms. For instance, "The remedy for incompatibility is association." Or, a few words longer, "Capital punishment never deterred, even when it was never used." And then the blockbuster: "My next completely unloaded question is: Should the federal government take over all social services now handled by lower echelons of government, or should local communities continue to be saddled with this unconscionable burden paid for by tax dollars pried coercively out of out local pockets?"

On page 134, we find this gem:

Brilliant.

The Boggle also features a glossary, and with the political campaign season upon us, I thought it would be fun to share some entries:

DEMOCRACY: Divine Process by which chickens choose foxes to Guard the Coop.

WAR: Armed conflict resulting from Strings Attached to U.S. foreign Aid.

PEACE: Armed conflict resulting from U.S. foreign Aid to the Wrong Side.

FACT: A four-letter word irresponsibly bandied about to harass Reformers.

NEVER: That point in Time at which Cooperation becomes Conspiracy.

PROVOCATION: Denying the unnegotiable demands of Felons and Freeloaders.

STATESMANSHIP: Half-measures for insuring the inevitability of Confrontation.

DEMOCRAT: A political ventriloquist who promises half his listeners lavish benefits, with money he promises the other half of his listeners he won't need.

REPUBLICAN: Member of the Party of Principle, who gets along by going along, and who can do anything the Opposition can do, only Better.

CENTRIST: An above-the-battle strategist confronted with a policeman and a knife-wielder, who sees equal merit on both sides.

LESSER OF EVILS: Tunnel Vision as an antidote to self-deception.

Along with the entry on DEMOCRACY, above, this one is my favorite:

MANDATE: Reassuring election results confirming that those who know what they want are safely outnumbered by those who couldn't care less.

Find yourself a copy of The Bloggle, get it, and guard it. And heed what's written on the cover: "Warning to SOCIAL ANGUISHERS. Perusal of this Product may be Hazardous to your Health."

Worse than spam?

I wonder if the spam problem could get worse. Or if the spread of viruses and worms could get worse. Or both.

See, last week we had the Blaster worm, followed by a major blackout, followed in short order by the Sobig virus. Pretty bad, right? But at Nicholas Provenzo's blog, The Rule of Reason, I learned that Sobig is the "fastest propagating computer virus ever." He goes on to ask, "What exactly should the punishment be for unleashing a computer virus?" As he relates, David Smith, the creator of the Melissa virus, which did $80 million worth of damage, spent a mere 20 months in federal prison:

A computer virus is a pre-meditated attack on the property of others. 20 months for $80 million in property damage--how about 20 years?
.... You should not be able to destroy mountains of wealth and walk away from your crime in less than two years.

Destroying mountains of wealth? Mr. Provenzo is right, of course, and I'd say that only by strengthening our cultural and legal commitment to property rights will a proper defense against this kind of destruction be possible. Now, I understand that the Sobig virus was distributed with its own email software, so here's why I think that things can get a lot worse than they already are:

Imagine some cretin combining both internet plagues: he writes a destructive virus or worm, and he obtains spam software and delivers it that way. The spam software Massive FX "allows a client to send a billion or so messages per month." That's my fear: worms and viruses delivered by spam software. And I think it's coming, if it's not already here.

As I mentioned here, Eric Scheie at Classical Values came up with a most inventive means of punishment for spammers (go thou and enjoy). I think that respect bordering on reverence for property rights will lead to the most effective solution, and would include restitution as the paradigm for justice. Absent that, though--which I do not foresee coming soon--I'm with Nicholas Provenzo and support long, long prison terms.

O tempora! O mores!

It is a sad damn day when a talented young woman's morals decline, when she descends from porn star to politician. Thanks to Kinayda, we learn this:

Mary Carey is a liar! I'm am soooo disappointed. Right there in her platform she tells a whopper. As I reported here, one of the logs in her platform was:

2. Tax breast implants. From Beverly Hills alone, we should bring in millions in tax revenue. (Note: I am all-natural and I personally discourage the use of implants!)

Yet, in this interview, when asked about her mmmmm...yeah, she responds:

Boob Job: "Do I have to answer honestly? Yes."

Emphasis Added...for emphasis.

And here I was, about to endorse her fully. Oh, the dirty dirty world of politics.

WARNING: the interview link is not worksafe!

Let that be a lesson to you: the world of the porn star demands higher ethical standards than a politician is willing to endure. Still, as Bitter Bitch says, "But, at least with her, you know that you're getting a fake who's used to screwing people for money." Nicely put, Bitter.

But that's not all that's wrong with this candidate (talented though she surely is). On her campaign site she claims

I will coordinate the state’s unemployment and jury systems, so that anyone who applies for unemployment will instantly be called for jury duty. This will save California state and local governments millions of dollars, because we won’t have to pay for jury duty. It will also relieve those with jobs from the stress of serving on lengthy juries.

If she's serious about this, I'd say that she's obviously never seen a jury pool--and has no memory of the O.J. jury.

Relying on the Competent

Nick Weininger, writing at Radley Balko's group blog, The Agitator, says:

It may sound a little goody-goody and boosterish to say so, but I think not nearly enough recognition has been given to the rank-and-file folks who got the power back on this past weekend, from linemen to systems engineers. These are people who help keep the thin veneer of civilization from breaking down utterly. In all the squabbling over Canada and Enron and deregulation that I've seen on the blogosphere, there's been too little simple gratitude toward them.

So: thanks, guys.

Too true, and thanks, Nick, for writing that. Go to The Agitator you'll be rewarded by a nice quote from Rose Wilder Lane. Both Lane's comments and Nick's are an illuminating contrast to President Bush, who "assured" the nation that federal, state, and local officials were hard at work on the blackout situation. No mention, as I recall, of the actual engineers and technicians and electricians involved, the hands-on guys who actually were fixing the problem.

I've been looking for a way to blog this, but this reminded me that my impression, the first time I saw Apollo 13, was that the engineers and technicians were the heroes of the movie. I still think so. Another good movie in which an engineer's competence and expertise saves the day: The Flight of the Phoenix. Enjoy these two movies, and imagine what our society might be like if everyone did their jobs the way these guys did theirs.

All right, this guy can use "alright..."

...and he does, with impunity, in his latest book. And I'll still bust him for it, but...but...but damn, Roger L. Simon's stuff is good. Good.

The premise of his first book, The Big Fix, is that early Sixties Berkeley radical Moses Wine is a licensed private detective in L.A. Not so farfetched when you think about it: the classic hardboiled private eyes were all more than a bit outside the mainstream, from the iconic Sam Spade through L.A.'s own Philip Marlowe and New York's Mike Hammer all the way to Fort Lauderdale's "salvage consultant," Travis McGee. Or, if not entirely outside the mainstream, they at least view it caustically. So Moses Wine fits in with this literary tradition and The Big Fix is a pretty wild read, and as one who is both a Berkeley radical and pot smoker (not to mention Clue player), Wine is definitely not mainstream. But Marlowe's creator, Raymond Chandler, argued seriously in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder" that the private investigator must be a singular man indeed, that a worthwhile fictional detective "must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor--by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it," and that he "talks as the man of his age talks--that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."

The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

The new Simon book is Director's Cut, and the Moses Wine of 2003 is not ashamed of the Moses Wine of 1973 or of 1963. But he is also divorced, the father of grown children, and the husband of a former FBI agent twenty years his junior. As he tells you at the beginning of his story

I knew I was in trouble when I was starting to agree with John Ashcroft--me a lifelong card-carrying left/liberal and graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, who had espoused every so-called progressive cause from anti-nuke to pro-choice to saving the West Indian manatee, arrested at a half dozen demonstrations and bashed over the head by at least as many cops, nodding approvingly at the utterances of our Attorney General, a man who, a mere decade or two earlier, would have delighted in locking me in the slammer and throwing away the proverbial key. And I wasn't even embarrassed by it.

He goes on to say "Of course I wasn't the only one." Wine is living in the post-911 world and thinks he has a pretty good idea what that means. And when he ends up in Prague to provide security for a movie set, and the Islamic militants...

But no: this is a mystery story, and mystery there must remain. So, no spoilers. I'll just say that Wine doesn't join the FBI, nor hook up with the Islamists or the Earth Liberation Front, and at no point does he become a vegan or a Marine.

Or a blogger. But his creator, Roger L. Simon, has done so, and he's a fine blogger indeed. His take on the new editor at The New York Times? Hey, it's a liberal paper, it's going to have a liberal editor. Get over it. He calls Arianna Huffington's television appearances as political commentator a "form of media pollution." More like that at his blog.

In the essay I quoted above, Chandler writes, "Hemingway says somewhere that the good writer competes only with the dead." Maybe so. Does Moses Wine live up to the ideals Raymond Chandler established for fictional detectives? Is he another McGee, another Marlowe? Only one way for you to find out. But as for competing with the dead, I've put Simon on a list of mine which includes Peter Dickinson, John Dickson Carr, Eric Ambler, and Alan Furst: they are writers of mystery and suspense, I want to read more of them, and only some of them are dead. Perhaps he'd regard this as undue praise, but as he urges conservative readers of The New York Times: Roger, get over it.

Roger L. Simon writes good stuff. He's not dead. But he owes me for that "alright."

Good news department

Cato the Youngest is back.

Gotta love "Riyadh delenda est!"

What is he thinking?

Why does Dick Gephardt do this to himself? Why on earth is he in the running for a job minimal reason must tell him he will never, ever have?

Note to Rep. Gephardt: give it up, and don't ever come back to it. You will never be president--not of the United States, anyway. The Institute for Policy Studies, maybe.

You are the Norman Thomas of your party, the Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon LaRouche, Gus Hall, Pat Paulsen. The eternal candidate. At least Thomas succeeded in driving mainstream political discourse in this country to the Left, which was his aim. What is yours? And Pat Paulsen could make us laugh.

And as a former Speaker of the House, you are probably seen by many, even many who wish you well, as the Neil Kinnock of your party: you will never lead the Democrats to national victory, not to the White House, nor to the House in which you have served so many years. Never. And Kinnock, you'll probably recall, resigned in 1992, recognizing a similar reality.

So why not take a hint from Kinnock? Quit this silliness, retire from Congress, and take up a high-paying position as a pest scold consultant at some Democrat-leaning think tank? Or, if you enjoy quixotic quests, why couldn't you sign up to be the liberal talk radio star that Al Gore is trying to help create? It likely pays better than running for office, and you couldn't be as dreary as Senator Daschle's blog. Not even you.

The New York Times: Carb Counters?

I've owned a copy or two of Craig Claiborne's Kitchen Primer for decades. Great stuff in there, and I've learned a lot about cooking and about food from that one, as well as another of his, The New York Times Cook Book, which I see is still available from amazon.com. Craig Claiborne was the food writer for The New York Times for many years, and it was said that he "earned a reputation as the educator of the American palate."

An interesting remark from the Introduction:

One last thing should be said about ingredients. The recipes in this book are derived primarily from French cooking, and the basis of most French cooking is butter and cream; they are called for unstintingly here and without apology. As far as I am concerned, there are no substitutes.

But there's more, and here's where I began thinking about Craig this evening: on page 38, where he instructs us on how to scramble eggs (four servings), he directs us to use eight eggs, one tablespoon of heavy cream, and 3 or 4 tablespoons of butter. That's a good deal of butter.

But Craig's not finished with his butter: on page 128 we're cooking hamburgers, and we're instructed to "top each patty with 1 tablespoon of butter."

You'll employ butter in your Curried Beef with Peas and in your Chili Beef with Beans, Meat Loaf with Celery, and Parmesan Meatballs, if you elect to follow Craig Claiborne's advice.

Should you?

I say yes. I have followed Craig Claiborne's advice and topped a burger with butter, and it was fabulous. I also took his word, from page 133, that "nothing improves the flavor of steak like butter," and I was glad I did. In fact, I even applied his butter idea, by covering ribs with butter. Mmmm...

But I couldn't help but wonder: butter on burgers, butter on steak, butter, butter, butter...can I be forgiven for thinking that the 1969 Craig Claiborne's Kitchen Primer is a precursor to the Atkins diet?

Just askin'.

Any more at home like you?

Recently, in a post about composers writing for the chromatic harmonica, I noted that chromatic player John Sebastian was the father of Lovin' Spoonful member (and diatonic harmonica player) John Sebastian. Now, Lynn Sislo informs us that baritone Robert McFerrin--the first black man to be signed to the Metropolitan Opera--is pop singer Bobby McFerrin's dad.

Oh yeah. Don't worry, be happy.

English Language Help from The Two Georges, or, Decline This!

Almost forty years ago, Mick Jagger sang "I can't get no satisfaction," and in almost all that time, it never bothered me. In fact, I loved the song, with Keith Richards' great, fuzzy, percussive guitar line as well as the little jokes throughout the lyrics. An all-time rock and roll classic, and one of my favorites.

Still, that double negative: "I can't get no..." Again, it's never really bothered me, although...one night about a year ago I heard the opening guitar notes to "Satisfaction" on the car radio, turned it way up in anticipation, and found myself focusing on it, on that damn double negative. I even mentioned it to a friend on the telephone, and I was told, "Look, they were doing it for effect."

Well, maybe.

Yes, I am one of those people: I see a sad, unnecessary decline in standards of English, written and spoken both, even since my own childhood. By this I mean standards of written and spoken English, and standards of editing in magazines and newspapers. I am a grammar Nazi, a punctuation fascist, a spelling and usage avenger. And I apologize for none of it, for if we are to communicate, indeed, if we are to think, then language is our only instrument. It is all we have.

This is but a blog entry, and as such is not a treatise on how to do it right, how to fix what you or I or anyone else may be doing wrong, or how to learn all of proper English in ten minutes. Nor is it a condemnation of entire classes of English speakers. My own English needs work, and my intent here is far more modest. All I'm offering is an informal list, a horror file, examples of rotten English which must, please, disappear, followed by some short items intended as amusing and helpful and, I hope, inspiring.

In no particular order, then---save that I've left the worst for last--here is Craig's More Than Top Twenty, the Horror File:

1. "Silver war" for "civil war."

2. "Supposebly" for "supposedly."

3. "For all intentional purposes" instead of "For all intents and purposes."

4. "Calvary" vs. "cavalry." The calvary won't rescue you, ever. The cavalry might, but Calvary is a location in Jerusalem, rather significant in Christian history, and has nothing to do with horses.

5. Pronouncing "nuclear," not that complicated a word, as "nucular." Ugh.

These are examples of spoken English faults, not bad English usage as such. Yet I became aware of them almost forty years ago and still hear them today. They are not just the mistakes of children: our Yale-educated, Harvard MBA president routinely says "nucular" when discussing weapons based on exploiting the physical characteristics of atomic nuclei. And he's not alone.

6. "Turn the other cheek" does not mean "reform thyself." It never did. Granted, this is not a problem of English usage, but of misinterpretation of text. Still, if we have to hear it all the time, let's force those quoting it to admit that Jesus meant "Resist not evil."

7. "An" versus "and." These are not variant spellings of the same word; they are not the same word, they do not have the same meaning, and cannot be used the same way. "An" is an indefinite article, "and" is a conjunction. Think I'm being picky? Think this doesn't happen? Here's an example, from an ad on the last page of my paperback edition of Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and it's for the book The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z. We are told that the book is "Edited by Harry Binswanger," and, on the next line, we read, "With and Introduction by Leonard Peikoff."

That's right: "and Introduction." This from a major publisher. Isn't this the kind of mistake for which children are corrected? When I was a child, it was.

8. "Everyday" employed so as to mean "every day." Both are legitimate constructions--but they don't mean the same thing.

9. Newspaper editors, you should be ashamed: I was taught, in the Sixties, how to hyphenate a word, and I was taught that one shouldn't carry a single letter of a word by itself onto the next line. Why is it now acceptable? As Dennis Miller might say, Did I miss a meeting? It still looks just as bad, and just as ignorant. This is an arrogant lack of concern for one's readers.

10. I don't care who you are or of whom you are writing, one does not "wreck" havoc. I don't even care which alternate spelling of "havoc" you employ. The word you wanted, but didn't care to find, was "wreak." Look it up.

I owe the next few examples to my brothers in the U. S. Marine Corps...but I've observed soldiers and sailors and civilians make the same errors, so I'm not picking on the Marines.

11. Using quotation marks instead of italics to emphasize a word or phrase. Yuck.

12. "Last and final," as in "Your last and final exercise of the Marine Corps Daily Seven..." Tell me, please, since you insist on using both words: what is the difference between "last" and "final?" And if there's no difference, why are you using both?

13. Misuse of the reflexive pronoun "myself," as in "If you have any questions, ask the First Sergeant or myself." If you don't know what a reflexive pronoun is, you probably should avoid the word "myself." Note to civilians: this applies to you as well.

14. All acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms. The two terms are not synonymous, and never have been. And do not abbreviate "acronyms" as "acros...." We're in bad enough shape without that little "contribution."

15. Learn how to use an apostrophe. It's not hard.

16. Sorry, retailers, but "thankyou!" is not a word.

17. No matter who you are, your spell-checking software can't know whether you mean "from" or "form." You have to know, and you must type it correctly or fix your error. Otherwise, it's there for all to see.

Dear readers, I apologize if I sound angry, but this is all bad, very bad...and easily avoided. Easily corrected, too, for those who care. And now, the countdown to the worst:

18. This is a losing battle, and I realize it, but I'm begging you: don't use "choice," alone, as a synonym for "abortion." Sure: "a woman's right to choose." That is a valid political question. But: to choose what? Which book she'll read? Which car she'll purchase? This is a corruption of the language for political purposes, and I'm just hoping that Dante has a place for those who---but that is uncharitable.

19. When you mean "freedom" or "liberty," use one of those words. "Democracy" does not mean either of the above, and is no replacement for either one.

20. If the only time you'll ever use "copious" is to say that someone took copious notes or consumed copious amounts of alchohol, then please spare us, and eschew the word. Similarly, if you mean "amusing," don't use "ironic." Take my word for this: it's an easy way to stay out of trouble.

Of course, I've saved the worst for last, and we have a tie, as I couldn't decide which was the most offensive. I still can't.

WORST OF THE WORST CANDIDATE A: "You" when you meant "your." I blame, again, software spell-checkers, because "you" is a real word, as is "your." The problem is, your software can't know which you mean, and if you can't tell, or don't know, or simply don't catch it, then there you are, ignorant to the world, and for all to see. But, ultimately, I blame you, not your software, and for making the rest of us read it, you deserve a damn good floggingcensure.

WORST OF THE WORST CANDIDATE B: I don't care where you've seen it, I don't care at all. "Alright" is not a word. Not, not, not a word. You want, and your readers want, "all right." Period.

Most of us can't read the Pearl Poet: his dialect of English hasn't survived, so for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight we must turn to a translation. The dialect of Chaucer, however, did survive, and thus we can read not only Chaucer himself (with some difficulty, granted) but those after him who wrote in his English: Spenser and Shakespeare and Milton and Marlowe, for example, and the King James Bible and The Book of Common Prayer. And we should. And we can write that English, too: Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov and Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand--Europeans all--mastered English and wrote in it professionally (in fact, only von Mises wrote professionally in his native language). We cannot demand genius of all who speak or commit words to paper. Still, native speakers of English should at least aspire to employ the language without mangling it, and the Horror File above shows mangling galore.

Just after World War II, George Orwell wrote two insightful essays on using English, and I recommend both of them: "The Prevention of Literature" is available here, and the slightly later, and better known, "Politics and the English Language," is available here. At the end of the latter essay, Orwell offered a few prescriptions:

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Commendable advice, all of it--especially the last bit. As bloggers are wont to say, read the whole thing.

Finally, I did mention amusing, so I offer you the other George: George Carlin. In "Offensive Language," his hilarious sendup of garbage English, he announces: "This is the language you will not be hearing tonight....You will not hear me say 'bottom line,' 'game plan,' 'role model,' scenario,' or 'hopefully.' I will not 'kick back,' 'mellow out,' or be 'on a roll.'...I will not say 'concept' when I mean 'idea.' I will not say 'impacted' when I mean 'affected.' "

But it's not just the bureaucrats: New Age or "cute" language comes in for its share of abuse as well: "I will not 'share' anything with you....I will not 'relate' to you, and you will not 'identify' with me....I will give you no 'input,' and I will expect no 'feedback.'... and we definitely will not spend any 'quality time.'...and if you're one of those people who 'needs a little space,' please...go the fuck outside!"

Banana Usage

File this under Good News: Ian Hamet of Banana Oil fame has managed to snag a first edition of Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

Lucky Ian. Ian, Ian, Ian. Do you yourself realize how fortunate you are?

Nietzsche wrote something to the effect that the errors of great men were more interesting than the accomplishments of average men. Fowler is so good, so erudite and learned, so scrupulous, so clear, so bloody informative that he is worth reading even when he is clearly wrong.

And yes, I've found spots where Fowler is wrong and I'm right, and I'm preparing a blog entry about just that (Kingsley Amis was wrong there, too). Coming soon: The Anger of Compassion corrects Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage--and Kingsley Amis: in the same post! Bells will toll, women will dance, children will sing; all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well...

(Ahem) And I'm not trying to be a snob, either: I only managed to obtain my own first edition Fowler this year. But I'd kill before surendering it, so Ian, congratulations again and don't ever lose yours.

And check out Fowler on beer and ale, and think on how he errs what he says. Until further notice.

Sharing a Laugh

Ever since discovering Doonesbury in the early Seventies (I think somewhat less of it now) and John Kreuttner's The Boggle, I've loved political humor and political cartoons. The poor sods living [sic] under Soviet communism were masters of the former.

Example:

Shortly after the end of the 1956 Hungarian revolt, three strangers find themselves in a cell in the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. Finally one of them introduces himself. "Comrades, brothers! What are you in here for? Me, I'm in here for supporting the forces of Imre Nagy!"

The second man looks up, laughs, and says, "You know, that's a good one. I'm in here for opposing Imre Nagy!" The two laugh uproariously and turn to the third man, who has hasn't yet said a word.

"Well, what about it, brother?" they ask him. "What are you in for?"

Miserably, the third man looks up, shaking his head sadly. At last, he shrugs his shoulders.

"Well...I'm Imre Nagy."

And: two Russians are exchanging their thoughts on the afterlife. Dmitry asks Ivan, "So, going to hell when you die. Would you rather go to the Communist hell or to the capitalist hell?" Ivan responds immediately, "Why, the Communist hell of course. There's bound to be a fuel shortage there!"

I learned both of those and more from the scandalously unavailable Main Street, USSR, by journalism legend Irving R. Levine.

Cartoons get the message out, too, and can deliver quite a blow. Here you can find Hayek's classic, The Road to Serfdom in cartoon form. Pretty good treatment, I think, although humor is neither the intent nor the result. I like the way it leads to its ending. And here is a cover of Famous Fantastic Mysteries from June 1953; the cover story was Ayn Rand's Anthem. I wonder about that issue and its editors: Rand shared the issue with Kafka's Metamorphosis. Are graphic novels that serious today?

Appropriately enough, I saved the most contemporary for last: everybody else blogs them and links them, so I'll follow suit. Cox and Forkum can be found here, and blogger Dean Esmay interviews them here. (Hat tip on that goes to Objectivism Today.)

Sorry, no mention of P.G. Wodehouse, The Simpsons, P.J. O'Rourke, or Yes, Minister. If you haven't already found those yourself, then laughter is probably not a high priority for you.

UPDATE: Ian Hamet has an interesting rumination on just what the Anthem illustrated periodical may have been: comic, illustrated pulp magazine, what have you. Check it out: Ian, though he slanders me shamelessly, is clearly knowledgeable in this area. For the record, Ian, I'm sure the publication was legal and sanctioned by Ayn Rand.