Blog #NaN Reporting for Duty

Well, the Daily Show puts another notch in its belt with special guest President Jimmy Carter tonight. Damn! They're getting more ex-presidents than Leno and Letterman combined!* They probably get very well acquainted with specific Secret Service agents at this point, sending them Christmas gifts and what not. Speaking of Christmas, it's apparently under siege again. See, people just don't understand that every holiday goes through this phase where its relevance is questioned. Look, all the corporations are saying is, what's wrong with working on Christmas? Everybody does it! Jesus himself was probably very busy on Christmas day! If only we had better historical records of the time. Maybe some video. Anything. So what? We're all just supposed to put down our laptops on Christmas day? Does it have to be a law now?
What else? Oh yeah, Stephen Colbert and Maureen Dowd finally buried the hatchet tonight on a very special edition of C.R. She's a hottie! Gotta find a good picture of her to post. And I'll think about buying her book. So many books, so little time. Why, I still haven't even read 'No Country for Old Men' yet. Quite popular at the library, apparently. Might have to circumvent the library system and just go to a bookstore.
Anyway, that's about it for me, but before we say goodbye, tonight's picture is in honor of what I don't like about Hanna Barbera cartoons. Or rather, here's a specific example that transcends the usual cheap production values. You got the eloquent Snagglepuss, whom I'm growing rather fond of, by the way, but give me the Pink Panther any time. Anyway, S.P. is caught between a rock, being the Frankenstein monster Baby creature with Barney Rubble circle eyes, and the hard place being a giant mouse, not from WB's The Great Piggy Bank Robbery. Now, the nails-on-the-blackboard detail here is that all the Frankenbaby says is "Wuh, wuh" and all the giant mouse says is "Snarf. Snarf-Snarf." I only caught part of the cartoon, but I don't want to make a mistake about this now. It's not just Snarf, but it's one Snarf, followed by two Snarfs in hyphenated succession. I believe this is a statement, similar to the one made in Barton Fink, that in general brawn-ism trumps intellectualism, for even though Snagglepuss may be smart and witty, (he does say in this one that he's going to write his congressman, not something you usually hear cartoon characters say, even back then in the 60s or whatever year this cartoon is from) he's still stuck between these two sorry souls. But then again, isn't that the Grand Dilemma that befalls all cartoon characters at one time or another, that they find they can never transcend the media or the situations they're trapped in, and must constantly contend with Neanderthals of one flavor or another?


*Probably wrong about that...