Oh, the humanity!

The origins of some phrases:


Oh the humanity: This expression was first uttered by radio reporter Herbert Morrison as he witnessed the fiery crash of the Hindenburg airship in May of 1937. I cannot remember where I read that Morrison was an excitable fellow who was known for reacting very emotionally to stories, as was certainly the case here. The quotation with some of the context:

It's burst into flames! It's burst into flames and it's falling it's crashing! Watch it; watch it! Get out of the way! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! ... And all the folks agree that this is terrible; this is the one of the worst catastrophes in the world... Oh, the humanity! And all the passengers screaming around here. I told you; it—I can't even talk to people, their friends are out there! ... Honest: I can hardly breathe. I... I'm going to step inside, where I cannot see it... This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed.

Nowadays, newscasters and reporters are expected to remain so calm and detached. I remember watching news coverage of the Twin Towers as they fell. I remember how disturbing it was to hear the calm, steady voice of Tom Brokaw breaking with emotion and fear. I cannot imagine how poor Herbert Morrison would have responded.
~ Quotation courtesy of Wikipedia


Have you no sense of decency, sir? Back in 1953, Joseph McCarthy began his famous quest to sniff out communist sympathizers in the government and military. McCarthy's mission was very popular with both Democrats and Republicans early on, but his tactics soon became unpopular when people realized that the man was completely insane. What started as a legitimate investigation became a paranoid zealotry, and McCarthy soon stopped bothering with little details like facts and evidence when accusing people. During a hearing in 1954, it was Joseph Welch, a lawyer for the army, who famously asked this question. The hearings lasted only until 1954, when McCarthy was stopped and censured. 
~Info courtesy of The Intellectual Devotional: Modern Culture


I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!: This comes from the star-studded film Network, in which a news anchor Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, learns he's going to be fired from his job. The news wakes something up in Beale, and he begins to rant and rave and speak his mind on the air. In one episode, he delivers the following monologue: 

We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has Value!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore.'

~Quotation courtesy of IMDB.com 


I was a fired newscaster once. Or news writer anyway. Back when I was at Baldwin Wallace, the newspaper staff got just a little to mouthy for the comfort of some of the members of the Student Senate, and the entire editorial staff was sent packing. Apparently, the people who shut us down hadn't seen Network, though, because they let us put out one final issue. We didn't manage anything quite so artful as the monologue above, but one of our reporters did manage to get one of the people who shut us down to snap "It's not pure censorship" in a recorded interview. We ran with that as the headline. It was pretty epic.

Jam Don't Shake

A couple of days ago, I posted on Facebook that I was looking for mindless fiction to read. Among the many answers came from my friend Nicholas J. Carter, who recommended I read Jam Don't Shake by Nicholas J Carter. 

Hey, I thought, I have a friend named Nicholas J. Carter... When I finally put the bits together, I demanded that Nicholas J. Carter was just telling me about this. Nicholas J. Carter replied that he guessed he just wasn't very good at self-promotion.


Well now that I've read it, I'll do some promotion for him. Jam Don't Shake is a fantastically clever, fun read about a town taken over by vicious jam fiends. It's sort of a 28 Days Later meets Dead Alive meets a nightmare version of Burger Time, but with jam. And funny. Did I mention funny?

Hold tight to your anger, don't fall to your fears

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I find it nearly impossible to communicate in any sort of coherent way what Bruce Springsteen means to me. 
Which I'm going to prove true again by trying to tell you about last night's concert.
In one of the reviews I read for this post on Bruce's newest album, Wrecking Ball, CNN reviewer Melissa Maerz writes that "whenever there's a moment in need of an anthem, it turns out Springsteen has already written one." She speaks cynically, but she also speaks the truth.
She points out that while Springsteen wrote much of Wrecking Ball before the Occupy folks began taking to the streets, the album seems to speak directly to, or even for, the movement. While Springsteen wrote the title track from this album in 2009 about the demolition of Giants Stadium in New Jersey, it could just as easily apply to the financial collapse and the devastating times that followed for so many; about our new national disillusionment and the cold war between the classes that began cooking long before occupiers took to the streets and doesn't seem to be getting any better. 
I can't tell you how often I've felt, and even tried to write what Bruce expresses when he says:

Now when all this steel and these stories, they drift away to rust
And all our youth and beauty, it's been given to the dust
When the game has been decided and we're burning down the clock
And all our little victories and glories have turned into parking lots
When your best hopes and desires are scattered through the wind
And hard times come, and hard times go

Yeah just to come again

Similarly, even though Springsteen had already written much of 2002's The Rising before the towers fell, the album became a beautiful requiem for all we'd lost that day. The song from the album most closely associated with the tragedy, My City of Ruins was actually written before the attacks about the fall of Asbury Park, New Jersey. He first performed these words in December of 2000, but it's so hard to imagine he was writing about anything but the attacks. 

Now there's tears on the pillow
Darlin' where we slept
And you took my heart when you left
Without your sweet kiss
My soul is lost, my friend
Tell me how do I begin again?
My city's in ruins.
My city's in ruins.

Events unfolding right around the time Melissa Maerz wrote her review would prove her right again. Springsteen wrote these words in response to the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo by four NYPD officers - the unarmed man was shot 41 times while attempting to offer the plainclothes officers his wallet. Yet he might just as well have written them for Treyvon Martin.

41 shots, Lena gets her son ready for school
She says, "On these streets, Charles
You've got to understand the rules
If an officer stops you, promise me you'll always be polite
And that you'll never ever run away
Promise Mama you'll keep your hands in sight"

Is it a gun, is it a knife
Is it a wallet, this is your life
It ain't no secret (it ain't no secret)
It ain't no secret (it ain't no secret)
No secret my friend
You can get killed just for living in your American skin

One thing Springsteen and I share is that we love our country so passionately; believe so passionately in its potential. If we didn't love it so much, maybe we wouldn't be so devastated when our bloody history of hate rears its head. And I think, really, that the senseless slaughter of Treyvon Martin at the hands of another asshole cowboy is a symptom of this disease America can't seem to shake. This disease where we see everybody who isn't like us as a threat. This disease where we think a boy with a pack of Skittles is a deadly danger. This disease that makes us shoot first and blame the wardrobe later. 
I'm sorry ma'm, we understand your son probably didn't know that we were police officers and not muggers; we had to shoot him 41 times in our own defense. 
I'm sorry officer, but a teenage boy seemed suspicious and then hit me. I think it's obvious I had no choice but to gun him down.


--- 
I want to write other things. I want to write, for instance, that I never believed the band could perform with such joy and exuberance so soon after losing the heart of the band, Clarence Clemens. I was afraid that the spaces in the music where Clarence used to be would sound like broken glass if anyone else tried to fill them. I couldn't have been more wrong. Clemons' nephew, Jake Clemons, felt more like a medium for Clarence than a replacement. I'm not a particularly spiritual person, but it barely felt like the big man was gone. 
For as long as I've been going to shows, Springsteen has introduced each of the members of the band as they play a song; and after he has introduced everyone else, he says, "Am I missing anybody? Do I even have to say his name?" At which point the audience stands up, holds up its hands as one, and begins screaming the big man's name. I didn't expect to hear that introduction this time around; I don't think anyone else did either, because when Bruce asked, "Am I missing anyone," the audience went quiet. Well, as quiet as a giant sports arena full of Bruce fans gets anyway. I was not the only one crying when Bruce asked, "Do I even have to say his name?" And then he said "I know it seems like he's missing, but he's not. As long as you're here, and we're here, then he's here. Now let him hear you."
Later, the band closed out the show with Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, the song I think most people associate most closely with Clarence. After they sang the line, "The change was made uptown and the big man joined the band," the music stopped and the audience got to its feet. An arena full of exhausted fans who had been clapping and screaming for three hours clapped and screamed some more, with aching hands and sore voices, for maybe five minutes without ever tapering off. 
You could barely hear the music when it started again, and man, I remembered that this is so much more than a band, so much more than a show, so much more than an aging pop act. This was a religious experience, pure and simple. If you don't know Bruce, please do me a solid and give him a chance. Pick up Wrecking Ball or Born to Run or The Seeger Sessions or The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. Even though I'm always hearing otherwise, I've got a really hard time believing that people who don't love Bruce just haven't given him enough of a chance. 

Bizy Backson

I'm off to our nation's capital for my darling Jean, her darling Chris, and our darling Bruce. You'll hear from me again soon, cats and kittens.

Nothing new under the sun

I don't know why I'm writing a murder mystery. I was never much of a fan of murder mysteries - not that I have a problem with them, they just aren't my thing. And yet, here I am writing a murder mystery. 
It's not going well, if you're wondering. I had a couple of months in there in which I was just useless. While I'm back at it now, it's not going well. I write several pages a day, but I'm not making progress somehow. 
Something very interesting about the process is how original it would appear I'm not. You would think that someone who hasn't read a ton of murder mysteries would be ideally suited for writing something totally new. Now that I've read a bunch of murder mysteries, that wouldn't appear to be true.
First, it was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I knew nothing about the dragon tattoo books when I created my pierced, dyed, tattooed hacker with no social skills and uncanny skills with machines. She's nothing like Lisbeth Salander once you get to know her, but the surface similarities are such that I had to retool. And that was a good thing, really. I was relying too much on the character's outward appearance; plus having a character who is a hacker when I don't know anything about hacking is kind of lazy. So The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was good for me. Yes.
Then I read some other mysteries. Turns out that even though I didn't know there was a very specific formula most mysteries employ, I was conforming to it perfectly - the two leads falling in love, the male lead pushing the female lead away in the interest of her safety, having a character wake up in the hospital only to have everything explained by a helpful cop who appears out of nowhere. Yep, it's all there. Well, not anymore, and my story's a lot better for it.
But then there's Fifty Shades. I swear to god this is the last time I'm bringing this book up. Fifty Shades wasn't even out when I created a character with red hair and grey eyes who was adopted from an abusive home, has his mother's maiden name for a middle name,  and who is often thought to be gay. What the hell? I mean, my character's hair is strawberry blonde, as opposed to red...
What are the odds?

My posts have been far too coherent lately

Today, I went over to a coworker to ask a question. I said, "Okay, so if a customer wants to..."
And he said "Have you ever noticed that you begin every question you ask with 'okay, so'?" And then my head exploded. Because I do begin every question with "okay, so." And it's not just questions. I begin stories with "okay, so." I begin journal entries with "okay, so." Sometimes at work I free-write a couple of sentences to prime the pump because I'm having trouble explaining a concept. I start the free-writing with "okay, so." Sometimes multiple instances. 
I think he said it so I wouldn't ask him questions anymore. Screw you, buddy. I'm asking you more questions now. And I'm going to spend the rest of the year trying to get the Sanford and Son theme song stuck in his head. Occasionally, I'm going to switch it up and go for Hollaback Girl. Because who has two thumbs and knows all the words to Hollaback Girl? This girl. 
Maybe b-a-n-a-n-a-s is Gwen Stefani's version of "okay, so."
Sr. Maria used to count how often you said like when you spoke in class. Ironically, this was why no one liked her. Actually, that's not why. It was the popped collars. Sorry, Sr. Maria, if you were looking students up on a whim and wondered whatever became of that dreadful snotty brat who never did her homework. Sometimes the truth hurts. But hey - how excited are you to note that I'm literate and can write a whole sentence all by myself? Considering how desperately hard I worked not to learn anything in high school, I'd mark that down in the win column. 
These earworms are for you, Chris:







Mom, do you see how I used the clean version? This was just for you, to make up for writing yet another entry about porn. Love you :)


Also...



I have no problem having these lovely ladies stuck in my head. Ever noticed that they look like incredibly beautiful aliens from entirely different planets? Ladies, I kind of liked some of these songs, but I will dislike just about anything you tell me to. Use your power wisely.

Fifty Shades of Scandal

I should have mentioned this a liiiittle sooner, but this post is likely NSFW (not safe for work) and definitely NSFM (not safe for mom).


I feel really weird about this post because it's about porn, essentially. Or erotica, anyway. But I feel kind of compelled because I've got a pretty strong opinion here (shockingly), and it goes along with a post I wrote about two years ago about romance novels, and my concern about the seeming omnipresent undercurrent of rape in each one.
Back then, I wrote 

During my five minutes at OU, I took a writing class, and the professor mentioned that there was some kind of romance novel governing board who decide what can and can't be in romance novels... one of the things that this board decided some years ago was "no more rapes." When they said "no more rapes," they decidedly did not say "no more near-rapes." It seems, in all of the trashier fare that I've perused, that every woman in every trashy romance novels is just moments from being raped. Luckily, she's always just moments from being rescued by a handsome hero, so no harm, no foul, right?I just find it really weird that these books, which are supposed to be light and fun, have such a creepy thing always just under the surface. I find it so odd that these supposedly empowered heroines who read books and solve mysteries are always so hapless and helpless when it comes to rape.
There's also the fact, of course, that these things don't come with a warning label. You think you're getting an amusing bungling bounty hunter, and instead you're getting misadventures in rape avoidance.If I read the back of a romance novel at the bookstore, and all I know is who wrote it and the fact that there will most probably be naughty bits. Don't know what kind of naughty bits, and I don't know if they'll make me feel awkward or uncomfortable or grossed out. Porn, it's got labels. If there's going to be rape involved, that fact will be displayed right on the page or the box... You want rape, here's rape. You don't want rape, there's a never-ending supply of fantastic filthy consensual sex right over there, clearly labeled. 

Just lately, there's been a big hullabaloo about the Fifty Shades trilogy - three works of BDSM-flavored erotica by E.L. James that's geared at women. I read the trilogy. I enjoyed the trilogy. And unlike any other romance novel I've ever waded through, my inner angry feminist was offended not in the least.
Lots of folks, as it turns out, are offended. Some feminists are shrieking about how it's harming women by glorifying rape. Dr. Drew Pinsky is complaining that the book is "actual violence against women." A New York Daily News Columnist, without criticizing the book too harshly, does say that the book is a little sexist, and women would be bothered if it turned out to have been written by a man. It's sexist, according to reviewers all over the Internet; it's violent, and it's damaging to us poor, delicate, perpetually endangered women.
And you know what I say? This is porn, and it's good porn. It's well-labeled porn. And before any spanking, slapping, or bondage take place, there's an entire chapter explaining exactly what sex acts do and do not take place herein. The male lead is deeply into bondage. The female lead is naive and virginal. The male lead says "Hey, I'm into all these really kinky things." When she tells him she knows nothing of these things, he sends her home with a contract and tells her to do a bunch of research on the Internet to find out if she's interested. 
And the female lead says yes.
She's smart, she's educated, she's pretty, she's got her pick of the fellas, she has self esteem, and she knows how to take care of herself. She's strong, she knows self-defense, and she knows her way around a gun. She knows how and when to say no, and when she wants to say no, she does. 
This book is the opposite of every romance novel I've ever tried to read. Most romance novels I've tried to choke down, the particularly rape-y ones, anyway, you can tell from chapter one who is going to almost be raped, whom she's almost going to be almost raped by, and which charming hero will protect her from the fate she's got coming. 
This book is the opposite of rape. This is a book about a girl getting a very safe, sane, and consensual introduction to the world of kink and liking what she finds. The book very clearly differentiates consensual BDSM activities from rape, and like our main character, we can walk away at any time we don't feel comfortable. 
So what's all the hubub? Why is it that real rape between the pages of romance novels is fine as long as it's thwarted, but kinky sex is bad when both participants are intelligent consenting adults who know exactly what they are getting into? Why is it romantic when Rhett Butler romantically rapes Scarlet, but evil when a girl consents to be spanked? I kind of wonder if maybe some of the critics - a large number of whom seem to be male - aren't a little bit threatened by the idea of women getting off on their own without a big strong man around to tell them whether it's okay. 
Are my Birkenstocks showing? Damn right they are. Men look at porn all the time. Violent porn, kinky porn. Dominatrix porn, submissive porn, TS porn, midget porn, granny porn... but enough about my house on a Saturday night (rimshot). Why is it that porn is suddenly damaging when it comes in paperback and is written for women by a woman? I have never heard anybody complain about Dominatrix porn and its deleterious effect on poor helpless submissive men. 
Here's what my new hero, Jessica Wakeman over at www.thefrisky.com has to say about it:

BDSM is fantasy, pure and simple. People who practice BDSM — which can be anything from vanilla stuff like over-the-knee spanking to more kinky stuff like bondage —  follow the tenets of “sane, safe and consensual.” That means everything you do is with a partner you trust, it is done in a way that will cause no real harm, and mutually agreed upon. ...Bottom line: having sex with a kinky partner is generally thoroughly discussed and rather planned out, done in such a way to maximize each partner’s mutual enjoyment. Does that sound like “violence against women” to you?

Two last things: I'm not saying, by the way, that the kinky dude in 50 Shades isn't a dick. I wouldn't lay a hand on him in real life. That's the magic of fiction, kids.

Also, Jeremy would like me to make very clear that the bit about the weird porn in our house on a Saturday night is a joke. There is no granny or midget porn in our house on Saturday nights. Not when he's home anyway.

I say y'all. Even in situations in which I know folks will mock me for saying y'all, I say y'all. Sometimes people give me trouble about being a writer/English major who uses the word, as if there were something incorrect about its use. In fact, I argue, it's more correct. Most other languages already have a way to indicate whether the second person pronoun you is singular or plural. In French, tu is singular and vous plural. In Spanish (informal), singular is tú  and plural vosotros. In Latin, tu and vos. In that, as in so many things, English is lacking, and some of us aren't afraid to do something about it.
Growing up, nobody in my home ever used the word y'all. I thought, like a lot of Northerners, that it was a word primarily for Southern yokels, like victuals, crawdad, and cement pond. It wasn't until I got down to Ohio University that I found how useful the word y'all is. In Latin class, we translated words like vos as you (plural), and words like amamus as you (plural) love. In Athens, Ohio, in the foothills of Appalachia, vos was y'all and amamus was y'all love. This, I had to admit, was a much more graceful way to put it.
But it wasn't until I lived on the road that I started actually using the word. I'd been in Lexington Virginia all of a week before one of my students raised his hand in class and said "Miss Brigid, you just said y'all." So I had, and I've been doing it ever since. I wasn't out of the South long before I gave up finding decent grits, came to accept the fact that my being a lady didn't require that people open the door for me, and stopped expecting long and friendly conversations with every stranger I ran into on the street. But I never did give up the word y'all. It's just too useful a word. And the fact that so many people up North seem to think themselves too good for the word is just silly. If I walk into a room and want to ask everybody in the room a question, why on earth would I use you singular, causing people to not know whether I was talking to them? Where once I thought that people who used y'all sounded ignorant, I know feel it's a little ignorant not to use it.

Downtown Cleveland
This is not at all related to my post.

Y'all, according to Another History Blog, dates to the mid-1800s in American English, having taken the place left by the by-then arcane thou. Y'all may have much older roots, however, according to DialectBlog.com. According to that blog, linguist Michael Montgomery (probably not the same guy as John Michael Montgomery, the country singer) thinks that y'all has its roots in the Scots-Irish phrase ye aw, which means the same thing. There's some reason to believe that to be the case-- a lot of what we think of as Southern culture comes by way of Ireland... listen to old Irish music and compare it to old Southern music sometime. Banjos, guitars, fiddles, and accordions dominate the sounds of both. This is because the Scots-Irish settled primarily in the Appalachian area during colonial times and became the dominant culture there. That culture spread throughout the Southeast as people began to migrate and spread. According to HauntedComputer.com, the Scots-Irish gave Kentuckians the hankering for the whiskey they've since made their own. The Scots-Irish are are responsible for Southern expressions like fixin' to go because of their use of the word fix as a synonym for do. A-going, according to that blog, comes from the Scots-Irish phrase ag dul.
As for ye aw giving birth to y'all, I'm dubious. Sounds like a case of making a horse into a zebra to me. Sure, the fanciful expression is more interesting, but you can't really ignore the fact that y'all is a contraction for the garden-variety you all. But then, the Irish are pretty much awesome, so we can go with ye aw if y'all are amenable. 

Golly, this should work, no problem

So here's where I was going with my cartoon post before I was so rudely interrupted by, you know, the thing I've lanced out of my memory with an ice pick.
I used to worship Gadget from Chip n' Dale's Rescue Rangers, who was, I learned, voiced by Ms. Tress MacNeille. Tress didn't just voice Gadget, I later learned, though. She also played the titular Chip, along with the fly Zipper. Over the years she's appeared in 246 hows or movies, often in multiple roles, from show Disney's ever made to The Simpsons to Futurama and The Animaniacs. She's kind of a god. I'm not the only person to think so, either. Inexplicably, I'm not the only worshiper - Tress MacNeille stalker is like the third result when you search her name. Weird.
But I'm not just here to sing the praises of my favorite voice actor. Even though I could, and kind of want to. No, I've got some other voice actors to lay down on you. If you know one voice actor, it's probably Looney Tunes' multi-voiced star, Mel Blanc. He's known for playing Bugs and Porky, of course, but according to The Intellectual Devotional: Modern Culture by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim, Blanc also played Daffy, Sylvester, Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn, and Others. He's no Tress MacNeille, but he's pretty decent.
And lest you were under the impression, Mark Hamill - Luke Skywalker - was not just a three-hit wonder. He's also been the voice of The Joker starting with the awesome 90s Batman cartoon. 

Also, your brain just exploded. You're welcome. 

I learned something else from the Cracked.com article 8 Actors You Won't Believe Voiced Famous Cartoon Characters. Would you believe that Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air played Shredder on theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Of course you wouldn't Cracked.com says you wouldn't. Makes Shredder seem a lot less scary and a lot more... corpulent, doesn't it?
Also Fergie, you know, she of My humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps? She was, long ago, the voice of Sally Brown in 1985's Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show as well as two earlier Peanuts movies. She was 9. Meaning Fergie's older than me and at least 1,000,000 times hotter. 
Arsenio Hall voiced Winston Zeddemore on the cartoon show The Real Ghostbusters starting in 1986. Do you, by the way, remember why it was called The REAL Ghostbusters? There was another cartoon called The Ghostbusters, which was also first released in 1986, following the success of the films. The other show, The Fake Ghostbusters as it's generally known, was actually based on a very short-lived sitcom that predated it all, 1975's The Ghostbusters, starring Forrest Tucker, along with Bob Burns as his sidekick Tracy the Gorilla. Nope, not even kidding.

The Google Image search for these suave sailors revealed
no porn, thank Jebus.

Finally, Jerry "nobody-puts-Baby-in-a-corner" Orbach, none other than Law & Order's famously dour alcoholic wisecracking cop Lenny, played the candlestick Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast. I guess this isn't too surprising considering the guy got his start on Broadway, originating the role of Julian Marsh in the play 42nd Street, and Billy Flynn in Chicago, also starring as Sky Masterson in a Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls. 

Shake that thing, Lenny.




Speaking of hero worship, my mom used to sing this to me :).

Just hit the Back button and take a slug of whiskey

John Cusack's character, Rob, began the movie High Fidelity with the following question:

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

I would ask a similar question: Which came first, the cartoons or the staggering unpopularity? My parents tried to save me from the fate, withholding Popeye and Mighty Mouse and GI Joe and the Ninja Turtles. They made me do sports, play outside, read books, hang out with my grandma. Yet the cartoons found me, and they sucked me in.
As you may well know from my mindless ramblings on the subject, of Bruce Springsteen and Mr. Rogers, I'm a bit prone to hero worship. Which is where Gadget comes in. 

Which is where the headline of this post comes in. Even Google Images' safe search couldn't protect my childhood from being horribly assaulted by that unholiest of unholies, fan art. Don't search it man, just don't. I mean some of it's almost tasteful but... no, I can't do it. I can't continue with this post. I need to curl up in a ball and go to my happy place, then bleach all of the memories of every cartoon I've ever watched from my mind.