One last thing: Sarah Palin is an idiot. But you knew that.

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Okay, I’m just testing the RSS feed again, but I thought I’d try to make it more interesting. Besides, check out the mirrors on that Tele! Syd Barrett had more mirrors than Jimmy Page here; maybe there was a mirror arms race among 60′s British musicians. The man with the most mirrors wins!

Anyhoo, the rest of my day will be at the dentist. Bridgework. I feel old saying that.

New Wanderlost page up tomorrow evening.

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“Some people might think it useful, others not,” Atrios admonishes, thinking reason might prevail. In the guitar shop the other day I made a similar statement to a guy who puzzled about the longstanding rivalry between Les Paul and Strat players: “Real guitar plays like Jeff Beck don’t give a shit.” Beck played most of Blow by Blow, his seminal jazz rock album, on an oxblood Les Paul (imitations of which sell for $25,000 — which is a steep price to pay for Jeff Beck cosplay); nowadays Beck tends to play a pearl white Strat (for which there are two imitations, custom and standard — for thousands less than the Les Paul, btw…though still thousands more than they are worth).

Indeed, the Gibson-Fender rivalry parallels the Mac-PC rivalry: Macs and Gibsons tend toward higher standards of design, interactivity, and aesthetics, entailing higher prices; PCs and Fenders tend to cut corners (Fender uses a bolt-on neck, which is cheaper to make and replace than the Gibson favored built-in neck) and, while sleek and pretty in their own right, can be more mundane, aesthetically.

But so what? Gibson players like to sneer at Fenders as a bunch of “toys” (a comment you will find in almost any YouTube video of someone playing a Fender or an Epiphone, Gibson’s down-market brand.) But what guitar did Jimi play? And for all of Jimmy Page’s association with the Les Paul, he recorded the first Zepplin album with (gasp) a Telecaster! That’s right, the twangy slab of wood so cheap only Country, blues and punk players could afford. Oh wait — that’s most of pop music right there. It’s hard to be a snob when so much cultural evidence is against you.

(Sidenote: On that link to Page’s gear, I find it funny that Page didn’t have to buy his main guitars — Beck gave him the Tele you see in the pic above, and Joe Walsh gave him the LP most identified with Page. That’s what happens when you are a professional player, you and your friends have so many guitars that you try to fob them off on one another.)

By the same token, most cartoonists I know, myself included, prefer Macs. Everyone, really, except Barry Deutsch, who uses a PC. Despite his horrible lack of taste in technology, he has gone on to create beautiful work as a cartoonist and is currently under contract with Abrams to publish a graphic novel. Yes, he’s a PC loser, but a cartooning winner!

The iPad so far looks like a glorified iPhone, a product I rolled my eyes at when it came out. But that’s because the iPhone cost $600, as does the iPad; now you can get an iPhone for half that price, a cost slashing that Apple will likely do for the iPad once the hype cools off. I still can’t afford either of them; if I ever had a job that required it, I would get one. Until then both products are just “toys” to me. However, if I ever get the money, I’ll happily plunk it down for both a Les Paul and a Strat.

And a Tele. And an SG.

Against type: Hendrix with a Gibson SG.

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And perhaps you thought that was funny (I did), but otherwise irrelevant to your life. Well, Erickson became strangely relevant to my life this weekend when he responded to the email of some guy named Kevin Moore in a blog post on Red State.

From: Kevin Moore
Subject: Hello Erick
Date: April 2, 2010 9:07:19 PM EDT
To: Erick-Woods Erickson

I hope and pray that one day you and I end up in an elevator together.
It would be such a pleasure beating the s**t out of your s**t filled head.
Jerk-offs like you contribute to the decay of this country.
Crawl into a hole and die you dumb f**k or ask your wife to turn her shotgun on yourselves.

Sincerely,

Kevin Moore

For the record: no, I am not the Kevin Moore who wrote that. I found out about it when I noticed a dramatic uptick in the Webstats for one of my sites. Was it In Contempt, the political cartoon site that would be of most interest to the politically minded blog audience of Red State? No. Was it this blog, where I write about political issues a lot? No. It was Wanderlost, the webcomic about a little pig who runs away from home a lot to seek silly adventures. The one site I do with no political content whatsoever. Someone in the comment section to Erickson’s post linked to the site approvingly or with mock approval (I can’t tell), saying, “Cute little piggies and stuff.” Apparently visitors who followed that link agreed, because their page-views to unique visitor rations are pretty high; they stuck around to read the webcomic for a least one or two stories.

So I felt it necessary to make a notice on Wanderlost that I am not the Kevin Moore whom Erickson wrote about. Erickson and I may occupy opposite poles of the political spectrum, but I would not resort to an insulting, immature e-mail to respond to whatever nonsense he might spout. I’d rather draw an insulting, immature caricature mocking him. That’s my skill set. I play to my strengths.

The upshot is that I may wind up with a small contingent of conservative fans of Wanderlost. Fine by me. I meant for Sheldon’s adventures to be an apolitical anecdote to the anger and venom I used to bring to my political cartoons. Admittedly, had I attracted a huge conservative audience for In Contempt — akin to the liberal audience that feels obligated to watch FOXNews — that would have been fine by me, too. It was always a bit worrying to me that In Contempt attracted so little hate mail. It doesn’t matter what they say about you, etc.

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A Defense Intelligence Agency publication available as recently as yesterday on its Web site noted “an Israeli F-16 raid to destroy an Iranian nuclear reactor” in 1981.

Just one problem: publicly-known history includes no Israeli raid on an Iranian nuclear reactor in 1981. Israel did attack an Iraqi facility at Osirak that year, however.

Remember when George Bush didn’t know the difference between Shia and Sunnis or that it would matter before invading Iraq? Or WMD? Let’s hope the CIA’s recent defector will help us avoid similar mistakes in the future.

“So…yer Iraqi, right?”

“No. Iranian. We’re a totally different culture, history, ethnic group. Persian.”

“So…that’s from Iraq?”

“I-RAY-NEE-AN!”

“???”

“!!!!”

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Although there is no reliable estimate as to how many dogs have had their vocal cords cut, veterinarians and other animal experts say that dogs with no bark can readily be found — but not necessarily heard — in private homes, on the show-dog circuit, and even on the turf of drug dealers, who are said to prefer their attack dogs silent.

The surgery usually leaves the animal with something between a wheeze and a squeak. The procedure, commonly referred to as debarking, has been around for decades, but has fallen out of favor, especially among younger veterinarians and animal-rights advocates.

Ja think?

Love that euphemism. It’s not invasive surgery that causes unnecessary suffering. It’s pressing your dog’s mute button.

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By staying in Hawaii, the president has sent the message that the situation really isn’t all that serious, that things can proceed just fine until he’s back. And isn’t it that kind of reasoning that emboldens our never-vacationing enemies into thinking Christmas Day is the perfect time for them to strike?

The president took a nap! Do terrorists take naps? No, they don’t! They are specially trained with advanced methods of sleep deprivation. While the president sleeps, America’s enemies are loading their underwear with explosive chemicals and accidentally torching their testicles. Is the president torching his testicles? We can’t have a torched testicle gap!

Perhaps this picture is a more adequate rejoinder.

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Don’t let it in the house. And merry Christmas.

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In journalism there is perhaps no end to shitty beats. But the anonymous drone for Associated Press who wrote this story must have really pissed someone off. Let the headline suffice to convey the self-loathing and dismay the assignment must have instilled.

Obama dog Bo has own Christmas stocking

The article notes that it took an Oprah interview with Michelle Obama to draw out this “revelation.” That word was indeed used.

No word from Bo about his feelings on the philosophy of “just war” as elucidated by his master upon receiving a “peace” prize.

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I sense some irony here.

The only “Christmas Carol” worth watching (not counting The Muppets.)

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