An annual tradition

"May all my enemies go to hell.
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel."

- Hilaire Belloc

Awwww....

Superhero artist Alex Ross (yes, that Alex Ross) for the cover of The Village Voice's gay pride issue:

Why I don't read comics anymore part 74328

I could have lived my whole life without seeing this, but since I saw it, you have to see it too.

Spider-Man's penis.

Okay, it's alternate future old man spider-penis, but still...

This panel is from a Dark Knight Returns-rip off (and the reviews say it's nearly a page by page rip off) called Spider-Man: Reign by writer-artist Kaare Andrews, featuring Spider-Man as an old broken down florist. (?!) You can see the first ten pages here, and in just those ten pages, I don't see anything that isn't obvious and tired and ridiculous and lame all at once. The art isn't bad though, but nothing I think worth fussing over.

*sigh* Even if Steve Ditko weren't already an Ayn Randian kook, this would send him over the edge.

Seriously. Spider-Man's penis, folks. What the hell?

Polio Comics

Odd.

Cat Fancy magazine is fifty years old, while Dog Fancy magazine is only thirty-eight. I wonder what the logic was there. "Okay, we know people like cats, but we're not too sure about these "dogs" I keep hearing about..."

Ouch.

Part of the fun I get to have here at the library is dealing with the boxes of freshly acquired journals for our new programs, one of which is for veterinary technicians. Idly flipping though a relatively recent issue of Veterinary Medicine, I chanced upon this article about castrating elephants. Yep, castrating elephants. Not something that comes often comes up in the daily itinerary of your average vet, but it's always good to be prepared.

You wouldn't think that there would be much call for this sort of thing, as elephants are prized and endangered, but in some game preserves they are - or were at the time this article took place - overpopulated and running amok. Apparently this was in the early days of elephant castration, where techniques were still being perfected and breakthroughs had yet to be made. And this was made all the more difficult by the fact that an elephant's testicles are inside the abdomen.

The author called a leading authority in elephant castrationology, the only man to-date who had accomplished the task and survived. I mean had the elephant survive.

...he readily agreed to help. He said, enthusiastically, that he had created a new instrument for the task - a three-and-a-half-foot-long écraseur that could remove testicles from deep in the belly of a full-grown elephant - and he was eager to try it out.

After all, if you created a 3.5 foot long elephant castration tool, wouldn't you want to take that bad boy for a spin right away?

So the doctor sterilized his new instrument, wrapped it up, and went to the airport to get on a plane to fly to the operation. Unfortunately, he was challenged by security, who - oddly enough - wanted to know what this four foot long wrapped metal stick was that he wanted to bring on the airplane as part of his carry on luggage:

Dr. Fowler, who was dressed in a field jacket, blue jeans, and work boots, said, "It's for castrating elephants. I'm on my way to Los Angeles to castrate an elephant."

The security officer reacted to this in a completely unreasonable manner...

Gee, I wonder why. I wonder if the elephant also reacted in a completely unreasonable manner.

But all was well, the doctor made it to the operation and the elephant survived, with a severe case of the munchies:

I was relieved to see the elephant roll onto its sternum, arise, and walk over to a pile of hay and start to eat.