DAS Blog

The third panel has me thinking -- what if, subconciously, Dems really are afraid of winning and that's why we keep fondling the duck (*)? After all, we believe, even the DLC believes, that with power comes responsibility -- we believe that government has a role to play, so whenever we're in power, we must take responsibility for leading the government in the proper direction -- even the most corrupt, Dem. machine politician at some level believes this.

OTOH, the Republicans don't fundamentally believe "gummint" can do a lick of good. So they don't fret about "what happens if we win" -- it's all a power grab and game to be played to win for them. So it's no wonder they win and we don't?


(*) In high school physics, our teacher, a West Virginian with a very similar accent and tone of voice -- though his lack of affect was from his former boxing days not from schizophrenia -- to John Nash, had a drinking bird. It was fragile, so he wrote a poem about it to warn us of what might happen if we were to handle the toy roughly. It went something (my memory is rusty, HS was over a decade ago -- wow! I can't believe it's been so long!) like this:


Do Not Fondle the Duck

Do not fondle the duck
Glass breaks
Cuts hand
Hand bleeds
Loose hand
Lots of pain


We, being good students and taking HS Honors and AP English, upon encountering such an obviously deep and meaningful poem, interpreted its symbolism. We figured out that "fondling the duck" must refer to something akin to "shooting yourself in the foot whilst your foot is stuck in your mouth" ... especially, but not necessarily only, if you've done so due to inaction rather than action.

I would like to popularize this phrase. Please do use it.

I might have other phrases I'd like to popularize. E.g., when we were young, my brother would like to stick cold toys, pieces of ice, etc., down my shirt on my backside -- when he asked how I liked it, I replied "not in the least bit". I guess one time my mouth was full and, a la the origins of Heffalumps (perhaps one of us in left blogistan should begin Pooh blogging? the Heffalump trap seems like something that occurs in our own time) and Woozles, he thought I said "not in the Leash Pit", which he took to be the pit (named after some hypothetical anatomist named Leash) formed between the shoulder blades -- so, whenever you want to refer to that indentation -- do, as my brother and I do to this day, call it the "Leash pit".

My brother, incidently, had a poem very similar to my physics teacher's:

I'm cold
Do you know what cold is?
Freezing.
Do you know what freezing is?
Blue.
Do you know what blue is?
Depressed.
Do you know what depressed is?
Suicidal.
So if you don't want me to kill myself, we better get someplace warmer.

These memories of me and my brother must have been from when we were about 10 and 6 respectively. I think we were a little mature in some ways (or at least had larger vocabularies and understandings of how language and naming worked) for our age -- especially my brother, whom they thought was language delayed. Shows you what "they" know ...