Superman - ink and watercolor on crappy sketchbook paper
Superman is © DC Comics

Update: Fixed the strange pant area.

Con artist and arctic trooper, Snow Job

Have you seen these new GI Joe figures that use the old card art? Here’s Snow Job, courtesy of Steve Hamaker. That is, in fact, his thumb.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the brave snow patroller:

His real name is Harlan W. Moore, and his rank is that of staff sergeant E-6. Snow Job was born in Rutland, Vermont.

Snow Job was a major Olympic Biathlon contender who enlisted for the special training and support privileges that the army gives to Olympic champions. It’s been suggested that he got his nickname more from being a con artist than from his primary military specialty on the arctic ski patrol. He is competent with a rifle, and his secondary specialty is as a rifle instructor.

In the Marvel comics G.I. Joe series, he first appeared in issue #11. He first appeared in the animated series in the A Real American Hero mini-series.

I’m pretty sure he’s bald. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can ski while holding a blue-laser-zapping rifle. I’d be on my tail bone seconds after getting off the lift. Probably accidentally shoot the stoner running the thing.

The conversation turned odd when, after telling him that I was looking for stuff for my Dad’s layout in Michigan, he said, “that’s one of the few states that McCain carried last night.” I gave him a look, trying to figure out if he was happy or sad about that false belief, but I couldn’t read his pudgy face. I said, “Nope, Michigan went to Obama.” There was a long — L O N G — silence, the awkward sort.

He finally said, “We’re all going to have to play with our trains just to try to feel better about this.”

Hm. Play with our trains?

Maybe we could try … I don’t know …

…offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited. (from McCain’s concession speech)

Wish I had thought to say that to him. I could have pulled McCain’s eloquent, humble and wisely stated speech up on my phone right there and spouted it off. But the long pauses were painfully awkward, and did I mention it was cluttered?

His phone then rang, providing me with my exit.

Smallville’s Clark Kent
Ink wash on sketchbook paper

I’m several episodes into season 4 of Smallville at the moment. The Flash episode made me giddy with fanboy glee. I hate to say this, but I think that if they were to lose Lana, the series would be perfect. Not trying to hate. Just saying.

I have a couple of friends who like the Tom Welling, maybe even wish he was their boyfriend. So this is for you, Jen and Steve.

As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

Letter to C.L. Moore, August 1936 quoted in “H.P. Lovecraft, a Life” by S.T. Joshi, p. 574

You may agree or disagree with the message, but you can’t deny the eloquence.

I digress, big time

Now, let’s go completely off point for a moment. He mentions one element that I’ve been thinking about: the loss of the agrarian life.

…dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world…

He’s right, it is gone by, this way of living, for most of us. To be a farmer, to dig deep into the soil, live off the land. To trade with my local community, providing services and goods that I have in spades for the stuff I lack, and to embrace that dependency on my neighbors, helping them achieve their goals as they help me achieve mine. I cannot has that life at the local, simple level, but it sure would be nice. And yes, I have been listening to the Thomas Jefferson Hour a lot lately.

Who can say. We all might start thinking more agrarian, more simplistic, if we don’t solve some significant economic and energy-related issues around these parts. If it all goes south, I’m moving next to a farm and hoping my new farming neighbors will exchange their corn for a cartoon colored in Photoshop.

That’s the real point of this ramble, and it’s a sentiment that I first heard another friend of mine share. I think I get it now. If things got crazy and society broke down, I would be doomed! I can’t provide things that people need at a basic level. I need to learn how to sew or tan leather or something.

Anyway, as for the rest of this quote, if you lean left, you’ll probably dig it. If you’re on the right, you’ll likely hate his broad generalizations. For me, I say thanks to H.P. Lovecraft for sharing, as only he can, a well stated sum-up of modern day republicanism, 70+ years old, surprisingly accurate, and mournfully so.

She is seriously hilarious.

She is hilariously serious.