Perspicuity

Caption: "Chien. Chien! Comeback! 'Bye, Chien"

I Don't Get It
References - None (yet)
Merchandise - None (yet)

Nobody knows the precise date of Joan of Arc’s birth, but it is speculated to be roughly 10:34 PM, January 6, 1412. She was born the daughter of Jacques Darc, a tenant farmer, in the French village of Domremy Fasolati Do.

There seems to be no truth to the rumor (that I’m presently making up) that she had multiple personalities. She did, however, have numerous nicknames, including Joan of Arc, The Maid of Orleans, Sainte Jeanne D’Arc, La Pucelle D’Orleans, and Arc Tangent (apparently she was quite distractable).

Beyond that not much else interesting to say about her; she pretty much lived a typical Medieval peasant girl’s life: hears voices ... raises an army ... wins a decisive battle in Orleans that turned the tides of the Hundred Years’ War ... fails to capture Paris ... gets caught ... is betrayed by the very French leaders she was fighting for ... interrogated by the Inquisition ... convicted in a rigged trial ... burned at the stake in 1431 as a witch. Like that.

(As a side note, during the Middle Ages, the Church would never officially condemn anyone to death. According to Will Durant, in "The Age of Faith", the Church was to avoid "all bloodshed and all danger of death." Instead, they would sentence the convicted to the "due penalty," and turn them over to the state authorities. These folk would, in turn, heed the first part by burning the victim to death - hence not drawing blood - and ignore the second part.)

In 1456, Joan of Arc was declared innocent of all charges (oops). She was canonized in 1920 (made a saint, not part of a circus flying act). As of this writing, she is still innocent, still a saint, and still dead. If I had anything to do with it, her tombstone would say: Lived in glory, died in Rouen.

Because of the historic nature of this subject, I paid more attention than usual to designing her costume. Although you can’t see it, I gave her a pink slip; and to make the cartoon more appealling, I added some of those fancy French patterns to her uniform, 'cause nobody doesn’t like fleur-de-lis.

- July 2001

I was in Paris last week. I feel compelled to draw a cartoon about it, if for no other reason than I can begin, "I was in Paris last week." Although I have been to the city several times, I had never been able to visit the Catacombs. Until now.

Catacombs are subterranean cemetaries. The origin of the word is unknown, but it appears to have been first applied to the underground cemetaries of the basilica of San Sebastiano, near Rome.

The Parisian catacombs are roughly 190 miles of tunnels under the city. Initially, they started out as quarries, but in the Eighteenth century, fearing epidemics, it was used to put the remains of the nearby overflowing cemetaries. It took many decades to (respectfully) cart the five to six million bodies of bones into the tunnels.

Today, the tour of the Catacombs takes you down a set of winding stairs about 65 feet. After a short distance, you come to a doorway with a sign above it: Halt! This is the empire of death (Arretez. C’est ici l’empire de la mort). You then wind through a maze of twisty passages, where the walls are built from human skulls and femurs. (I presume the rest of the bones are on the other side of these walls.) Along the way, you see plaques of aphorisms and poems, such as: "Where is Death? Always in the future or the past. As soon as he is present, it is already gone."

The tour is only about a mile long, though it feels much longer. In order to keep you out of the other 189 miles of tunnels, they have set up barred gates. This is a good thing. I heard two separate stories about people who go lost (in the pre-gate days) and were found several years later.

During World War II the French Resistance set up their headquarters in these tunnels. They were also set up in the Parisian sewers (the other subterranean tour we visited on this trip).

My cartoon depicts the entrance to the Cattle Combs ("Halt! These are the cows’ combs"). While I was leafing through a book in the Sewer Tour gift shop (don’t ask), I saw a picture of a fellow who was living in the Catacombs. He was seated against the wall, with bottles strewn around him. Here, I replaced him with the cow, and the bottles with combs. I’m still searching for something interesting about combs for cows.

Here’s hoping I don’t get lost.

-March 2001

The caves at Lascaux (say "Last Call" in a drunken slur) in southwest France contain Paleolithic paintings. Produced between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C., these images are considered some of the most important prehistoric art ever discovered.

The depictions of horses, reindeer, bison, and mammoth are jaw-droppingly accurate. Speculation holds that the drawings were created for magical ceremonies designed to boost hunting success. Curiously, the representation of humans is almost completely absent, and the few that do appear are noticeably less accurate than the animal images. Perhaps this was done so that the magic would not be applied to the humans themselves.

The history of alcoholic beverages also dates back to prehistory. It was probably discovered accidently when some honey or fruit (like grapes or berries) was exposed to a warm environment for an extended period of time. Airborne yeasts acting on these substances would have changed their sugars into ethyl alcohol or ethanol (C₂H₅OH), an intoxicating agent. Some early humans must have liked its effect (as do some late humans), and figured out how to recreate it.

Thanks to the preservation of the cave drawings, we know the symbol in this Lascaux "language" for a variety of animals and hunting events. Unfortunately, we don’t know Lascaux for alcohol.

Paris is divided into 20 municipal subdivisions called arrondissements. They are numbered from 1 to 20, begin in the center of the city and spiral outward, in snail shell fashion. Through the city runs the river Seine. Traditionally, the arrondissements north of the river are referred to as the Right Bank (Rive Droit), and those south of the river are called the Left Bank (Rive Gauche).

Juxtaposed with Parisian arrondissements is a common phrase found in old IBM manuals. Empty pages (I suppose to ensure that there were no printing mistakes) would have printed on them: THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK. Over time, others have noted the blatant inaccuracy of this statement. I chose to take it to France.

In the mid 12th century, the bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, had the idea of converting two small basilicas into one larger building. Soon after that, Pope Alexander III laid the foundation stone for Notre-Dame de Paris. It was ultimately finished in the mid 14th century, and stands today as the most famous of the Gothic cathedrals, noted for its size and architectural beauty.

In the mid 20th century, my mom would pack a lemon in my lunch bag, that I would peel and eat like an orange. Yum. I knew only one other kid in 6th grade to do that, but he was weird.

When my son, James, was a kindergartner, his favorite TV show was "Arthur." He knew all of the characters, plots, and lines. But then, when he got to second grade, the lovable aardvark was replaced by a large mutt from the '60s (and early '70s). I found myself waking up at 7:00 on Saturday and Sunday mornings so that he could watch "Scooby Doo." I have to admit that I enjoyed watching the show with him, though it amazes me how bad it is.¹

The cartoon I drew is pretty self-explanatory. In my typical dunderheaded way, I originally thought that the smart girl’s name was Thelma. I was actually quite pleased when my friend Randall told me what it really was. The references were a bit too close before the change.

As for the Louies, we have: "Huey, Dewey, and...", the XIVth, and Mr. Armstrong. Which is which and who is who? We leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Nostradamus was born in mid-December 1503, in the village of St. Remy, Provence, France - an event he predicted himself. We’re not sure if it was December 13th or 14th, but such is the imprecise nature of reading the future. His early education came from his grandfather Jean (future namesake of Ms. Dixon), who taught him Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Astrology, and Good Oral Hygiene.

During the Plague he practiced medicine and became well-known for his ability to help those with incurable ailments, such as halitosis. He got married and had some kids, but lost them to the plague - an event he had not predicted. He got married again, had more children, and began studying the occult - presumably hoping to get some warning this time.

In 1550 he published his almanac of rhyming predictions grouped in centuries (units of 100). These predictions became very popular with the masses, and he soon had a hit program, "The Nostradamus Show." It featured a group of perky pre-teenagers called the Propheteers. Their theme song was soon in the Top 10 and everyone was singing:

N, O, S (Es-timates the future),
T, R, A (A priori knowledge of events),
D, A, M, U, S.
Nostradamus (Nostradamus)
Nostradamus (Nostradamus)
One-size-fits-all predictions ever apply....