Now that I've finished with my test, I have a chance to catch up on all the library books I recently checked out. I just finished this one today:



In Piers Anthony's continuing quest to bring back characters from earlier in the Xanth series, Jumper Cable not only makes several callbacks to Ogre, Ogre, but also features the spider Jumper from Castle Roogna. Okay, not exactly, because this Jumper is a descendant of the original one, but it's the same basic idea. If you've read any other Xanth books, you probably know what's in store here. Lots of puns (some relevant to the plot and some not), a quest devised by the Good Magician Humfrey, some Demon bets, several weird but hot mythological babes flashing their panties, and lots of pairing up. That said, despite its somewhat generic plot, there were some fun new ideas. Olive Hue's talent of bringing imaginary friends to live was clever, and we finally get to see a Maenad as a protagonist. The gag of Maeve incorrectly interpreting Haughty Harpy's bleeped-out profanity was funny, and I kind of wish it had continued past the first few chapters. Since the cosmic Demons with the names of planets had been established some books ago, making Pluto's demotion to dwarf status relevant to the story was clever. The formulaic adventures in the dream world became a bit tiresome, but otherwise this was a pretty good read.

Continuing with the lunar theme, here's a song that comes to mind when I think of the word "moon." No, not "Blue Moon," "Paper Moon," or "Whalers on the Moon," although those are also good ones. I'm speaking of "Nightgown of the Sullen Moon" by They Might Be Giants, which originally appeared as a B-side on the They'll Need a Crane EP in the late eighties, and later reappeared on the Miscellaneous T and Then: The Earlier Years collections. The liner notes for the latter say that the name came from a child's drawing, and later turned out to be the name of a book. The book is real, and apparently deals with the phases of the moon, but the notes suggest that John Linnell wasn't aware of it when coming up with the song. The "child's drawing" explanation sounds suspiciously similar to what John Lennon said about "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," and it does seem like the Johns (of TMBG, that is) have an interest in Beatles anecdotes. Linnell's solo song "Idaho," for instance, is based on an apocryphal story about Lennon dropping so much acid that he thought he needed to stay up all night and drive his house. Also, the same EP as "Nightgown" features the John Flansburgh song "I'll Sink Manhattan," about which he's told a story along much the same lines, namely that the title came from a piece of Manhattan graffiti that turned out to be referring to a band, but Flansy didn't find this out until after the song had been released. Anyway, "Nightgown of the Sullen Moon" is certainly an intriguing title, and I could see the Johns wanting to use it for a song without bothering to check on its original source. Hey, I've done the same kind of thing myself.

While a somewhat obscure part of TMBG's oeuvre, "Nightgown" seems to be a favorite of many fans. I know I've read accounts of people asking why the band never plays it live, to which the response was that Flans didn't find it fun to play. Makes sense, but you'd think it wouldn't get too boring if they just brought it out occasionally. I have heard "It's Not My Birthday," another B-side from the same EP (and probably my personal favorite TMBG song) played live a few times, so why not "Nightgown" as well?

The song is pretty typical of early TMBG, with a catchy, peppy melody accompanied by somewhat bizarre and possibly disturbing lyrics. I don't think there's ever been an official explanation as to what the lyrics actually mean, but it kind of seems like it's about a sudden loss of consciousness, or something of the sort. It specifically says it's "not a drug trip," so there's no need to take that direction with an interpretation. The lines "looking up and abruptly forget what you're thinking/fire alarms go off in your head" make me think of the Kurt Vonnegut short story "Harrison Bergeron," in which people with above-average intelligence are handicapped by being equipped with devices that interrupt their thoughts with loud noises every once in a while. Linking it to another TMBG song, there's a "screaming fire engine" in "The Statue Got Me High." Living in Brooklyn as they do, the Johns are probably quite used to hearing alarms and sirens. The line "there's a feeling of boredom of the big whoredom" brings to mind the band's song "The Big Big Whoredom," but I don't know which came first. I believe I've read the line "forever is a long time" somewhere (it might have been in Catch-22), but I don't know if that's where it originates.

Any other thoughts on this song? Are there any other songs you'd like me to address? Let me know!

In addition to the balloon people I discussed the other day, the Oz books also have other characters and societies made out of rubber. One such creature is Para Bruin, the Rubber Bear, who makes his first appearance in John Dough and the Cherub. He's capable of stretching and bouncing, and he joined John in his flight from the Isle of Mifkets to Hiland and Loland. When the gingerbread man was crowned king of these two countries, Para became his Chief Counselor. He puts in an appearance in The Road to Oz, accompanying his monarch to the Emerald City and performing a demonstration of his bouncing for Ozma and her guests. Another notable rubber character is the Bell-Snickle, but I've already covered him.


In Tik-Tok, the party of adventurers journeys through the Rubber Country, a part of Ev where the ground, rocks, and trees are made entirely of rubber. A brook runs through this country, but its water somehow doesn't get things wet. There don't appear to be any inhabitants of this dull gray territory, which is right above the Nome Kingdom. In fact, Ruggedo and Kaliko try to delay the travelers using magnetic rubber wires, but learning they can safely walk through the brook allows them to thwart the Nomes' mischief.


Purple Prince contains a brief visit to the rubber city of Squee Gee Ville, which is apparently located quite close to the Emerald City, yet there's no sign of any communication between the two towns. That seems to be the way of the reclusive communities in Oz, though. The people, known as Squee Gees, are based on old rubber dolls that would talk when you squeezed them. This means that they have to squeeze or punch each other in order to hold a conversation, making a discussion look rather like a battle. Randy and Kabumpo leave the rubber city without even spending an entire chapter there, bouncing out on the springy rubber of which the ground is made, which is kind of weird as elephants can't jump. Yeah, I know they can't talk either, but suspension of disbelief is easier when fantasy characters are portrayed realistically in most ways. Oh, well. Anyway, the Squee Gee encounter is brief and uneventful, but it did introduce the phrase "exsqueeze me" decades before Wayne's World.

Finally, while Dorothy and Percy are chasing after Singra in Wicked Witch, they come across a rubber band. If you've been paying attention to how many puns there are in the series, you wouldn't be at all surprised to find that they're people made of rubber who play instruments. They play a few songs for the pursuers, but there isn't a whole lot more to say about them.

Since the balloon had been a popular toy for some time by the period in which the Oz books were written, it's not too surprising that they would appear as characters in the series. The first example of living toy balloons (as opposed to the non-living hydrogen-filled balloon that the Wizard used to reach Oz in the first place) appears in The Tin Woodman of Oz, in which the main characters visit Loonville, a forest clearing in the Gillikin Country inhabited by the Loons. They're made of rubber and filled with air, aside from the king, who contains a lighter-than-air gas and is tied to his throne with a string. The king's name is Bal Loon, and he was appointed ruler because he had less common sense than any of his fellows. Other notable Loons are Panta and Til, the former of whom was an advisor with a rather inflated opinion of himself, and the latter the one in charge of mending and re-inflating punctured Loons. The jokes behind Bal and Panta are obvious, but what does "Til Loon" mean? Well, someone who read the original handwritten manuscript reported that it was originally "Sal Loon," but that didn't go over too well at the time. Because a kid reading a play on the word "saloon" will automatically want to shoot whiskey, right? Don't ask me what the logic is behind this. I guess Wal, the Loon from Belgium, didn't play a part in this particular story for whatever reason. {g} This video includes the Loonville portion of the recent computer-animated take on Tin Woodman, and gives King Bal a surfer dude kind of voice. I'm sure that wasn't what Baum was thinking of when writing the character, but it works pretty well.



While the Loons are the only balloon people in Baum's Oz books, Thompson introduced some of two of her additions to the canon. In Hungry Tiger, Ozma is kidnapped by a giant balloon man named Atmos Fere, an explorer from the Cloud Country who descends to the surface of the Earth using a pair of iron boots. Ozma punctures him in order to escape, but when the two get to understand each other better, they become friends. A blacksmith in Ev named Rusty Ore re-inflates Atmos, and he and Ozma eventually join Evered of Rash in his search for the missing Rash Rubies.



Finally, in Gnome King, Peter Brown encounters Sandaroo, the Lord High Bouncer of Balloona, on a street corner in Philadelphia. He is described as having a "dark and merry" face, and "his long pointed beard and slouch hat gave him the appearance of a merchant from some far country." He sells Peter a green balloon, which turns into a bird and tries to take Peter to Balloon Island, where he would serve Queen Luna as an airrend boy. As the balloon bird relates, the Queen's servants were always exploding, so she had Sandaroo search abroad for a more solid one. We never get to see Balloona, as Peter lets go of the bird's leg and lands in the Nonestic Ocean near Ruggedo's Island, but the descriptions given by the bird make it sound like not only the people are inflated like balloons, but so is the island itself. If there's some kind of link between these balloon countries, it's never explicitly stated, but maybe Loonville was settled by exiles from Balloon Island, or vice versa.



By the way, happy birthday to fellow Oz fan graycardinal!

First of all, happy birthday to annamatic!

Next, I think I'll follow up my Oogaboo post by featuring another kingdom on the outskirts of Oz. This time, it's Jinxland, an area in the southeastern Quadling Country with a rather tumultuous political history. It's largely separated from the rest of Oz, being surrounded by mountains and a great gulf, aside from where it borders the Deadly Desert. Because of this isolation, it's a popular dwelling place for illegal witches, most prominently the one-eyed Blinkie. Jinxland is a quite beautiful land, but when Trot and Cap'n Bill arrive there in The Scarecrow of Oz, it has a quite unpleasant ruler, with the rather telling name of King Krewl. Not too long before, the ruler had been the beneficent King Kynd, but his Prime Minister Phearse pushed him into the Great Gulf, and usurped the throne. Phearse later got into an argument with his own Prime Minister Krewl, and the latter buried the former under rocks at the bottom of a lake. During the course of the book, Krewl himself is eventually deposed by the Scarecrow, with help from a flock of Orks.



Another significant part of the plot of Scarecrow involves Kynd's daughter Gloria, who is being raised by her uncle King Krewl, falling in love with Phearse's son Pon. At this time, Pon is working as a gardener's boy, and the King is determined to marry Gloria to the old and rich Lord Googly-Goo. The American visitors don't think much of Pon, who's somewhat of a wuss. Really, though, I can kind of identify with him, and he's quite loyal despite his fragility. Anyway, after the Scarecrow shows up and conquers King Krewl, Gloria is crowned Queen of Jinxland, and Pon becomes her consort. Krewl himself is demoted to gardener's assistant, and forced to change his name to Grewl.



As with Oogaboo, Jinxland also makes some return appearances in apocryphal books and stories. Most significantly, Phyllis Ann Karr's The Gardener's Boy of Oz provides a lot of additional details about the history of the kingdom. According to this story, King Kynd's wife and Gloria's mother was named Tralynda, and she was also largely responsible for raising Pon. Phearse never married or had children of his own, Pon actually being a child he bought from the Wicked Witch Blinkie so that he could marry Pon to Gloria and legitimize his own reign. One issue that remains confusing, however, is how Krewl and Gloria are related. She refers to him as her uncle in Scarecrow, but since there's a reference in Gardener's Boy to Krewl wanting to marry Tralynda, he's obviously not her brother. So he's either not technically her uncle (which is certainly possible), and Kynd and Krewl are brothers. While this latter would make sense, I don't recall anyone in Gardener's Boy acknowledging it, and wouldn't Krewl's being a blood relative of Kynd's mean he would have been ahead of Phearse in line for the throne? Then again, that's assuming we really know how the laws of succession in Jinxland work. Anyway, Gardener's Boy reveals the fates of Kynd, Tralynda, and Phearse; and the former two are restored to the throne, leaving Pon and Gloria much more free time.

First of all, happy birthday to goldenmoonbear!



For my Oz post today, I'm going to take a look at Oogaboo, a small valley nestled in the mountains in the northwestern (not southwestern, as I originally wrote) corner of Oz. While Oogaboo is officially a kingdom, it's a tiny one. At the beginning of Tik-Tok of Oz, the population is given as eighteen men, twenty-seven women, and forty-four children. All of the men are named Jo, with their surnames being the crop in which they specialize. While a few of them grow normal items like apples and plums, others farm anything from ice cream cones to sandwiches to banjos. The kingdom is ruled by the Soforth family, whom I've guessed might have been named because they were the ones who handled all of the crops not covered by the others. After King Jol Jemkiph Soforth left Oogaboo, later followed by his wife, their daughter Ann became Queen. Part of the plot of Tik-Tok involves how Ann, being dissatisfied with her own kingdom, set out to conquer the world with an army comprised of the few men in Oogaboo (aside from Jo Candy, who absolutely refused to enlist). Not surprisingly, she didn't succeed, but she and her army DID play a role in conquering Ruggedo, and were allowed to take some of the wealth of the Nome Kingdom home with them. I'm not entirely sure what good the jewels would have done in what basically seems to be a closed, self-sufficient economy, but I suppose we can't underestimate the appeal of shiny objects. Also, Jo Files, the only Oogabooite who decided to become a private soldier instead of an officer, met his wife Ozga, the former Rose Princess, while on the Queen's foolish mission.



Despite the lack of size and prestige for Oogaboo, its location in the very corner of the land makes it a convenient landmark, and I can recall references in Tin Woodman, Glinda, and Gnome King to locations being identified relative to the small valley kingdom. It even appears on the maps in Gregory Maguire's Wicked series, although he changed the spelling to "Ugabu." There are also several apocryphal books and stories that feature Oogaboo prominently. In "Nero Zeero, Snoz of Oz," Queen Ann marries the title character, the king of the nearby valley of Snozland, where the people believe that intelligence is relative to nose size. Karyl Carlson and Eric Gjovaag's Queen Ann has the Queen search for her parents, and gives some interesting additional details about the kingdom, as well as bringing in some of the children as significant characters. Kids in Oogaboo are encouraged to cultivate their own new crops, after which they take the names of these crops, like their parents did before. The name "Jol Jemkiph Soforth" is also explained, with "Jol" being identified as a more archaic form of the standard Oogabooish name "Jo," and a jemkiph being a date book. Jol's wife and Ann's mother is named Dede, and the search party eventually locates both parents. In David Hulan's Glass Cat, Oogaboo is invaded by Bad Lads with guns, and it takes the efforts of several Ozian celebrities to drive them off. Finally, Melody Grandy and Chris Dulabone's Thorns and Private Files has Jo and Ozga Files trying to unravel the mystery of the nearby Kingdom of Cyrune, which is finally resolved in Zim Greenleaf.



Not much detail is given about the history of Oogaboo prior to fairly recent years, but its organization suggests that it might have been started as a commune of sorts, which developed into a kingdom over the years. While small and not too prosperous, it appears to be largely self-sustaining, and the people are quite content when not being roped into Ann's crazy schemes. Queen Ann has the title character making Oogaboo somewhat less insular by setting up trade with other nearby kingdoms.

Is there a trick to getting celebrities to reply on Twitter? Yeah, I'm sure there isn't, but I'm still kind of amazed that I've received two replies from Amanda Palmer, who has 192,162 followers. The occasional reply to a fan is actually a really clever marketing technique, though. Even if you only reply every once in a while, it presents the illusion of actual conversation. I guess Amanda has always tried to maintain a good rapport with her fans, but I think it could also work for less sociable celebrities.

The constant changes to the Facebook interface just reinforce what I've pretty much thought from the first, which is that it's SUPPOSED to be confusing. It's chaos with small bits of order, which is the worst kind of chaos (except possibly the end boss of the first Final Fantasy). I have more contacts on Facebook than any other site, yet I check and update it considerably less than I do LiveJournal, Twitter, or Tumblr. I do try to link to my more interesting LJ entries, but I'm not sure how many people go here from there, although I know a few have.

This past weekend, I read through the archives of Questionable Content. I'm pretty sure I'd seen it linked from various communities before, what with its plethora of references, but I'd never read it with any regularity before. I'm actually kind of pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the characters; as bizarrely exaggerated as some of them are, they seem like people I'd want to hang out with. Too bad they're, y'know, fictional. That's the story of my life, though. As much as I love the magic, humor, and weirdness in the Oz books, a large part of their appeal for me (especially in my junior high years) was always how accepting the fairyland was of characters who didn't fit in elsewhere.

Speaking of web comics, Captain SNES has FINALLY resolved the standoff between Alex and the Sinistrals, and Chaos has shown up in 8-Bit Theater. Now that latter one is a comic where I DON'T want to hang out with the cast, as amusing as they might be. Too much chance of being stabbed or Hadokened. {g}

Some time ago, I had a dream somehow involving a bus labeled as the "Hopper-Horner Express." I'm not sure if this is something that would really work in Oz, considering that the Hoppers and Horners live in a cavern in the rocky mountains of the Quadling Country, but who knows? Anyway, the Hoppers and Horners are perpetual rivals, with their villages separated by a marble picket fence. The Hoppers have only one leg each, and hence have to hop to get around. They live in marble houses, of which there are only about fifty. The only Hopper mentioned by name in the Oz series proper is Hip Hopper, the Champion Wrestler.



The Horners are called that because they each have one horn, about six inches long, in the middle of their foreheads. They have light brown skin and three-colored hair, with red at the bottom, then yellow and green. They dress in white robes, and wear no shoes. Radium mining is their chief industry, and they decorate the insides of their houses with the radioactive metal. (At the time when the book was written, radium was considered a miraculous substance, and its hazardous qualities were not yet known. Perhaps, being Ozites and all, the Horners are immune to radiation poisoning, but I have to wonder if their odd appearances are due in part to the heavy radioactivity of the area.) While the radium makes their homes quite pretty on the inside, the outsides are simply made of dull gray stone. The Horners argue that they actually LIVE indoors, and that the Hopper houses are actually quite ugly inside. The Horners are known for their terrible jokes, at which they all laugh uproariously. Oddly enough, as raucous as the adult Horners are, they raise their children (or their daughters, at least; we don't see any sons in the story) in a quite puritanical fashion, forcing them to be quiet and polite. During the time of Patchwork Girl, the Horners are led by a chief named Jak. (Get it?)



It was actually one of the Horners' bad jokes that led to war at the time Ojo and Scraps visited the cavern. Diksey Horner joked that the Hoppers had less understanding than the Horners, because they had fewer legs. His thinking was that the legs are UNDER a person and used for STANDING, but not surprisingly, the Hoppers didn't get it. Diksey eventually explained the joke and conflict was averted, but it wasn't the last time that trouble would arise between the two groups. In Royal Book, the Hoppers and Horners are at war once again, and it takes Glinda's magic to bring them into line. Hopper-Horner conflict has since become sort of a running gag in Oz stories, with mentions of wars between them appearing in Forbidden Fountain and Blue Witch, among others. They're pretty much always offstage, though, so we don't know the details.



Fred Otto reused the Horners in his short story "Mombi's Purple Polkadot Vest," in which it's revealed that Mombi's four-horned cow (mentioned in Land) is actually a four-horned Horner named Phogg under enchantment. Because of his extra horns, Phogg was a wizard, and served as town leader. At the end of the story, he is planning to take back his old position, so that raises the question as to what would happen with Chief Jak.

Despite the time in which they were written, the Oz books are relatively free from cringe-worthy racial stereotypes. Well, except for The Woggle-Bug Book, but that doesn't really count, does it? One exception is in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, which introduces the Tottenhots, a wild and mischievous black tribe that lives on the plains near the Winkie-Quadling border. The name is obviously a play on "Hottentot," which is what European settlers originally called the Khoikhoi people [1] of southwestern Africa. The book describes them as follows: "Their skins were dusky and their hair stood straight up, like wires, and was brilliant scarlet in color. Their bodies were bare except for skins fastened around their waists and they wore bracelets on their ankles and wrists, and necklaces, and great pendant earrings." They live in houses that look like overturned kettles, with cushioned floors, and are nocturnal. I can't say I ever found their portrayal offensive, but then I'm a white guy. When Books of Wonder published an edition of Patchwork Girl, they left out some of the descriptors and one of the illustrations of a Tottenhot. There is an additional dose of offensiveness in Rinkitink, with a Tottenhot being described as "a lower form of a man," and apparently less human than a Mifket (described in John Dough and the Cherub as being sort of halfway between human and animal). When Books of Wonder published this one, they didn't alter any of the text, but they removed an illustration.



The post-Baum books contain some stereotypical portrayals of different ethnic groups, and Neill's drawings were often worse than the descriptions. Royal Book has the pseudo-Asian Silver Island, and other books bring in Arabian-style countries. I've already discussed the black slave revolt in Silver Princess; and Wonder City says that the Emerald City fire department is made up of "Fire Injuns," depicted as Indian heads on wheels. Most of these seem pretty harmless to me, but they're definitely embarrassments when I describe the books to others.



[1] As with many tribes, "khoi" apparently just means "people." So my phrasing would literally translate to "people people people."

countblastula had a meme up about which authors he'd read the most books by, and that seems like a pretty cool activity. I'm actually not sure who my top author would be, though. L. Frank Baum would definitely rank pretty highly, and I've read most of his fantasy, but surprisingly little of his other works (no Mary Louise or Boy Fortune Hunters, for instance). Terry Pratchett would also have to rank up there, as I've read every Discworld book plus Good Omens. There are times when I read more by series than author, although if I like one series, I'll sometimes branch out into an author's other work. Let me try for a Top Five:

1. Terry Pratchett - 38 - Thirty-seven Discworld books (including the young adult ones), plus Good Omens (co-written with Neil Gaiman, but I'm counting it anyway)

2. Piers Anthony - 32 - All of the Xanth books except the latest one, which I'm working on now.

3. L. Frank Baum - 28 - Fourteen main Oz books, Queer Visitors from Oz, Little Wizard Stories of Oz, Mother Goose in Prose, The Magical Monarch of Mo, Dot and Tot of Merryland, American Fairy Tales, The Master Key, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, The Enchanted Island of Yew, Queen Zixi of Ix, John Dough and the Cherub, The Sea Fairies, Sky Island, Policeman Bluejay

4. Ruth Plumly Thompson - 24 - Twenty-one Oz books, The Curious Cruise of Captain Santa, The Wizard of Way-Up and Other Wonders, Sissajig and Other Surprises

5. Douglas Adams - 8 - Five Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, two Dirk Gently books, and The Salmon of Doubt

Actually, I think there might be some authors of Oz apocrypha (Chris Dulabone, for instance) in between the fourth and fifth, but I don't feel like counting those up right now. And I could easily be forgetting something.

It's been a while since the last Discworld book, but since Terry Pratchett HAS had to deal with early onset Alzheimer's, I suppose that's understandable. The newest one, Unseen Academicals, came out not too long ago, and I don't see any real decline from other recent books in the series. In fact, I think there's considerably more substance to it than there was to Making Money. Or maybe it's just that I tend to prefer books featuring the wizards. This time, the status quo of Unseen University is shaken somewhat by the Dean leaving to become Archchancellor of Brazeneck University in Pseudopolis. I liked Rincewind making a few minor appearances at part of the faculty; I think Terry had reached the point where he was getting a little tired of writing books with Rincewind as the main protagonist, but he works well in a supporting role. We also finally get to see some of the University staff other than the wizards and Mrs. Whitlow, including the first orc to appear in the series. The football theme was explored in a context similar to those that other innovations have been examined in earlier books, with more of an emphasis on team loyalty and audience mentality than on the game-playing itself. It didn't seem to contain as many inside jokes on the subject as the books devoted to movies (Moving Pictures), rock music (Soul Music), and newspapers (The Truth); I'm not sure if this was because Terry himself isn't that fond of sports, or if the fact that I'M not that fond of sports meant I didn't catch them. Another thing I noticed was that there seemed to be more callbacks to earlier books than there were in most of the series. That's not really a good or bad thing, though, just an observation.

Since Wednesday is my typical day for writing about video games, I considered writing something about games featuring bears, but I don't think I can get an entire post out of that. Banjo-Kazooie, a series of games starring a banjo-playing bear with a bird for a best friend, immediately came to mind, but I've never actually played it nor seen it played. What I've read about it makes it sound pretty cool, but I've never been particularly good at action games. Also worth a mention is Moosh, the winged bear from the Zelda Oracle games. He's portrayed as rather cowardly and not too bright, but how can you not find a flying bear who attacks by butt-slamming his enemies to be cool?



One thing I wonder about is why bears are so prominent in our culture, particularly in works for children. I grew up on the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and had my own stuffed Pooh, who was actually orange until my mom covered him with beige fur. I also remember reading some of the Paddington books, although I can't remember a whole lot about them other than Paddington lived in London, claimed to originally be from Peru, and was obsessed with orange marmalade. And then there are the Berenstain Bears, whose occasional overtly Christian messages make me wonder if there was a Jesus Bear in their universe. Even the Three Bears are really just innocent victims of breaking and entering. They do eat Goldilocks in earlier versions of the tale, but more recent ones tend to have the girl escaping, presumably having learned her lesson about entering other people's (or bears') houses uninvited. Does this prominence stem from the popularity of teddy bears? The toy, as you probably know, was named after Theodore Roosevelt, due to a 1902 anecdote and subsequent cartoon in which Roosevelt refused to kill a captured bear for sport, but instead ordered a mercy killing. There were toy bears prior to this, but the first actual TEDDY bear, with its cute and upright appearance, was made by Morris Michtom. Well, that's what the story says, anyway; we all know that the truth is rarely that neat. The teddy bear on which the character of Pooh is based was made in England by J.K. Farnell, and I would assume his formal name "Edward Bear" is due to how "Teddy" can be a nickname for Edward as well as for Theodore. Teddy bears have gone through many variations over the years (my own lifetime has seen both Teddy Ruxpin and the Care Bears, and probably other sorts of teddies I'm forgetting), but they remain ubiquitous.



Even the Roosevelt story doesn't totally explain why bears have been deemed good toys and story protagonists for children, but they ARE pretty cute and furry, especially as cubs. They're also associated with hugs, and while a bear hug isn't something you'd want to experience, they perhaps give them impression that bears could give friendly hugs as well as deadly ones, if they really wanted to. Besides, the animals live on four different continents, so they'd be familiar to kids in many different parts of the world.

Are you ready for more Ozian bears? If not, then I guess I wouldn't read the rest of this post. In The Gnome King of Oz, when Scraps is appointed Queen of Patch, she meets the former Queen Cross Patch's pet, a small bear named Grumpy. This seems to have become a popular name for ursine characters. The Care Bears have a Grumpy, and I believe some other toy line (maybe Raggedy Ann?) also includes a Grumpy Bear. I suppose it's a popular archetype. Anyway, despite his temper, the Ozian Grumpy is actually quite friendly, and serves as a good companion to Scraps and Peter Brown on their journey from Patch to the Emerald City. On Grumpy's first night in the capital, Ozma gives him a bare room in the back of the palace, and perhaps he still lives there now. While sort of a pet to the Patchwork Girl, the pet-human relationship is obviously quite different when the pets are sentient.



My favorite bear in the Oz series, however, shows up in Ojo in Oz. When Ojo is kidnapped by a band of gypsies, he meets a fellow prisoner, a bear who was lured into the gypsies' clutches with honey. (Winnie-the-Pooh had been published just seven years prior to Ojo, so I guess it's possible this was an intentional reference to Pooh's honey obsession, but I'm not sure how likely this is. I mean, bears really DO like honey, after all.) The roving band forced the bear, whom they called Rufus, to dance, beg, and play the accordion at fairs. When he befriends Ojo, he says that his real name is Snufforious Buxorious Blundorious Boroso, which Ojo decides to shorten to Snufferbux. Considering that his first three names look like they could be adjectives, I would think that simply "Boroso" would have also worked as a nickname, but what do I know about bear names? Besides, "Snufferbux" is a fun name to say, and seems somehow appropriate. Thompson presumably intended the similarity to "snuffbox," although there's no actual connection or pun there as far as I can tell. Broadly speaking, Snufferbux fits into the common Thompsonian mold of sarcastic and curmudgeonly but fiercely loyal animals, of which Kabumpo is the most frequently used example. Anyway, when he and Ojo end up traveling with a bandit chief called Realbad, the bear is quite eager to protect the boy from the outlaw, who has expressed a wish to turn Ojo over to the nasty magician Mooj for a large reward.



Neither Grumpy nor Snufferbux plays an important role in any later books, but they do both appear at the celebration in Wishing Horse. Also, the endpapers of Wonder City show a bear labeled "Sniffer." Was this supposed to be Snufferbux? It certainly looks like him, but Neill didn't always vary that much in how he drew animals of the same sort. And if it is Snuffer, was he ever intended to have a role in the book? Presumably not, since no one who's read early manuscripts of Wonder City mentions his having appeared, but who knows what Neill originally intended? Maybe he just liked drawing the character.

We all know the chant in the MGM Wizard of Oz about lions and tigers and bears, and anyone who's either read the Oz books or my previous entries on them knows that a lion and a tiger are prominent characters in the series. It's a little while before we see a bear as a protagonist, though, and it's actually a plush toy bear stuffed with curled hair. In The Lost Princess of Oz, the Frogman and Cayke the Cookie Cook come across Bear Center, a town of toy bears who live in hollow trees in an isolated Winkie forest. Their king is known simply as the Lavender Bear, and he's somewhat embarrassed by the sillier aspects of his own composition, like the squeaker in his chest and the fact that he's merely lavender instead of royal purple in color. This carries over to some of the other bears as well, including their sentry Corporal Waddle, who is armed with a popgun. On the other hand, the king has some magical powers, the most prominent being a wand that allows him to project images of whatever he wants. Also, he is the keeper of the Little Pink Bear, a being that might or might not be alive. The Pink Bear operates by means of a crank, and can move on its own and correctly answer any question regarding the past or present. The Lavender and Pink Bears both join Cayke and the Frogman in their quest for the Magic Dishpan, and eventually join forces with Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. The Little Pink Bear proves invaluable with its ability to answer questions, although Dorothy and her companions initially dismiss its weirder answers. More recently, Bill Campbell and Irwin Terry gave the king his own book, The Lavender Bear of Oz, in which some of his subjects are bear-napped by babies from Merryland.



Several other bears appear in the Oz series, including King Gugu's adviser Bru and a blue bear rug that's inadvertently animated with the Powder of Life. The story behind the latter is that a relative of Dr. Pipt's named Dyna had a pet bear that choked to death on a fishbone (another exception to the no-death rule, I suppose), and made a rug out of the body. When the Crooked Magician faked his own death, Dyna inherited some of the Powder of Life, but thought it was moth-powder. Sprinkling some of it on the bearskin rug made it come to life, but it was unable to speak. Kind of odd considering that other magically animated beings in Oz can talk with painted or carved mouths, but maybe it just took some time for the rug to figure out how to speak. When we see the rug again in dennisanfuso's The Astonishing Tale of the Gump of Oz, it can talk a little bit, but in a hoarse voice. Ruth Plumly Thompson doesn't reuse any of Baum's bears, but she does introduce two of her own ursine protagonists, Grumpy and Snufferbux. If all goes according to plan, we'll take a look at the two of them tomorrow.

Today, we turn to Mary Magdalene, a figure about whom the Bible says very little. Even the widely held belief that she was a prostitute is treated with skepticism these days. From what I've seen, it looks like this idea came from a combination of: 1) the Gospel of Luke mentioning a repentant prostitute soon before its first specific reference to Mary; and 2) the association of Magdala, which the name "Magdalene" suggests was her hometown, with prostitution. In 591, Pope Gregory decreed that Mary Magdalene and the repentant prostitute were the same person, as was Lazarus' sister Mary. The Catholic Church overturned this position in 1969, however. That still leaves us with the statement that Jesus drove seven demons out of Mary, as well the fact that all four Gospels agree that Mary was the first person to learn of the resurrected Christ (although they disagree on whether or not she was alone at the time). So, despite the scant mention of her in the scriptures, it's not too surprising that she's seen as having been particularly close to Jesus. The Gnostic Gospels increase her role, with some of them presenting her as the only one who really understands Jesus' teachings, and as having to explain them to the male apostles.



Some people have expanded the closeness of Mary to Jesus as an indication that they were married, with The Da Vinci Code probably being the most famous modern work to incorporate that idea. I've heard that some prominent Christians of various denominations were really angry about the book for this reason, apparently not bothering to take account of the fact that it was FICTION (and, based on what I've heard, rather poorly written fiction at that; I'll admit I haven't tried reading it myself). Anyway, one argument I've seen in favor of Jesus being married is that most men of his status in first century Palestine WERE married, and if the Pharisees were as willing to criticize everything else about him as the Gospels indicate, why wouldn't they have given him trouble about his bachelorhood? My counter-argument to that would be, "How do we know they DIDN'T?" The confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees that are recorded were presumably only a sample, after all. Besides, if not being married was considered an aberration, why would the writers out of the Bible have been so intent on portraying him as unmarried? I believe the explanation by Dan Brown and his ilk is that the later Catholic Church suppressed the material that says he was, which doesn't seem too far-fetched in and of itself, but then wouldn't we expect ancient writings discovered after the Church's initial suppression to support the marriage? As far as I know, none of it does. The texts discovered in Egypt in 1945 give Mary a prominent role, but no suggestion at all that she and Jesus were married. Most of the information we have on Jesus suggests that he was an avowed bachelor. Also, John the Baptist presumably wasn't married, and he played much the same role as a wandering rabbi. Still, the idea persists, probably largely because the idea that the Son of God might have had a normal family and sex life is kind of a slap in the face to the common presentation of Christ. (Interesting that even the supporters of the married Jesus concept don't seem to consider the idea that he might have had sex and even children OUTSIDE wedlock.) Not that the idea of an avatar of God being married is all that bizarre (Rama and Sita, anyone?), but it goes against the typical image of the celibate Jesus. It's commonly thought that, if Jesus WAS married, then the wedding at Cana described in the Gospel of John was most likely his own, which I suppose would explain why his mother was there. Wouldn't marrying someone with your mom's name be a little disturbing in bed, though? Then again, HIS name was...oh, never mind.



There are several traditions associated with Mary's deeds after Jesus' ascension to Heaven. One even ties her in with the origins of Easter eggs, saying that she brought an egg with her to a banquet held by Emperor Tiberias, and it turned red in her hand. After this, she is said by some legends to have sailed to Marseilles with her family, and served there as a successful missionary. Combining this with the presentation of Mary as Jesus' wife gives us the idea put forth in the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (known in the States simply as Holy Blood, Holy Grail) that Jesus and Mary's child was the ancestor of the Merovingian dynasty. The book also attempts to present references to the legend of the Holy Grail as actually referring to Holy Blood (i.e., the blood of Jesus that flowed in the veins of his descendants), but this involves word games along the same lines as the speculation that, when penning the tale of Cinderella, Charles Perrault somehow mistakenly wrote "glass" when he meant "fur." Pretty much all of these conspiracy theories didn't develop until ages after Mary's lifetime, and I can't ascribe them to much other than wishful thinking and the desire for potentially controversial story plots. On the other hand, I rather like the idea that Mary Magdalene was actually Jesus' closest companion and disciple, but that could just be due to my preference for strong female characters.

The use of the term "undead" to refer to certain sorts of monstrous creatures might well have originated with Bram Stoker, who applied it to vampires. The actual definition of the term is a bit vague, so some types of beings sometimes count as undead and sometimes don't. Werewolves are sometimes grouped in with the undead, but I don't think they were originally, as there's no real connection between turning into a wolf and acting alive after death. Legends of vampires and other monsters eventually merged with those of werewolves, however. While Dracula's most famous alternate form is a bat, the novel clearly states that he could also turn into a wolf. The common ideas of lycanthropy being communicable and its victim becoming indestructible unless killed in a very specific way (silver being one popular killer of both werewolves and vampires) turned the werewolf into a sort of undead being, but not all modern werewolf stories hold to these concepts.


Zombies are very popular these days, although I'm not entirely sure why, as they have no real personalities. I guess there's a certain appeal to mindless grunts, though. Zombies are sort of like Goombas from the Mario series, or the Foot Soldiers from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons and video games. There are millions of them, and even though they're pretty dumb and not too hard to defeat individually, they just keep coming. And there isn't a whole lot of guilt involved in killing people who are already dead. The idea of zombies originates in Voodoo, and is thought by some to be based on the results of drugs. As voodoo zombies are said to be under the control of a sorcerer, I suppose they pretty much have to be mindless drones. I have seen attempts to give personalities to zombies, with my personal favorite being Reg Shoe from the Discworld series, who spends his spare time campaigning for rights for the undead. Can Discworld zombies, who have their own minds, often hold down steady jobs, and seem to achieve their undead state due to determination rather than magic, truly be considered zombies in the traditional sense? Maybe not, and there are a few lines in Reaper Man that suggest even the characters realize this, but "zombie" has come to be a pretty generic term for the animated undead. If you want to get technical about it, "revenant" is a more generic term for a reanimated corpse. There's also the lich, which developed by way of Dungeons & Dragons into a person who became undead by choice, and retains his or her original mind. I've seen it suggested on an Oz mailing list that the Wicked Witches of the East and West, kept alive only by means of their magic, could count as liches, but that might be a bit of a stretch.


I believe the idea of mummies as undead monsters originated with horror movies. While mummification was presumably intended to preserve the body for a person's journey to the next world, I don't know of any indication that the ancient Egyptians thought the bodies themselves would come back to life. The embalming process does add a certain amount of flavor to the zombie concept, though. And speaking of classic horror characters, I'm not exactly sure how to categorize Frankenstein's monster, who was brought to life through a scientific process, and was quite capable of human thought and emotion despite his hideous appearance.


Finally, we come to ghouls, and if the Wikipedia page is to be believed, they were originally demons from Middle Eastern folklore. They're known for eating the flesh of dead bodies (and apparently sometimes living ones as well) and taking the forms of the people they eat. The idea that zombies eat flesh as well was presumably borrowed from ghoul stories, and George Romero played a major part in popularizing the idea of reanimated corpses eating human flesh. I think it makes more sense for demon to eat bodies than for a revenant to do the same. Do zombies even have functioning digestive systems? Oh, well. As long as the rules are internally consistent and your vampires don't sparkle, you can pretty much do what you want with these undead monsters in your own fiction.

I'm not really that familiar with the Castlevania series, but I've seen some of the games played, and it's definitely an appropriate subject for Halloween. The first game was released in 1986 (in Japan, anyway; it was the following year before it came out here in North America), and starred Simon Belmont, a vampire hunter armed with a whip for the purpose of taking down Count Dracula. The Count's minions included monsters from classical mythology and folklore, as well as some from twentieth-century horror films, including Frankenstein's monster and Igor.

Dracula himself was modeled on Bela Lugosi's portrayal of the vampire, although he'd take on other forms in later games. The series has developed a rather complicated mythology, taking place over a span of centuries, with Dracula coming back to life approximately once every hundred years. There are several Belmonts who face him, starting with Dracula's former friend Leon in the twelfth century, and continuing with Trevor, Christopher, Simon (whose adventures take place near the end of the seventeenth century), and Richter. Quincey Morris, the Texan who sacrifices himself to defeat Dracula in Bram Stoker's original novel, was worked into the games' ongoing story as a relative of the Belmont clan. Another significant character in the series is Alucard, the son of Dracula and his second wife, who sometimes assists the Belmonts in their ongoing fight against his father.

While I believe Alucard's real name in the games is Adrian, his more famous appellation first appeared in the 1943 film Son of Dracula, and has been used in several other media since then (sometimes as a son or descendant of Dracula, and other times as an alias for the Count himself, presumably the source for the running gag in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series about how vampires all think no one will figure out who they are if they spell their names backwards).

There's been talk of making the series into a movie, which doesn't sound too promising, considering the track record of films based on video games. Perhaps the fact that the game series was inspired by classic horror movies in the first place would make it better than other such game-to-film adaptations, but that also means that it wouldn't really give us anything we haven't seen before in numerous monster movies. I remember seeing a trailer for the Van Helsing movie a few years ago (I never saw the actual movie), and thinking it looked an awful lot like Castlevania. The main character certainly seemed a lot more like an action hero Belmont than the scientist Abraham Van Helsing from Stoker's book. Personally, I think that if the movie does get made, they should be forced to use the vain, arrogant portrayal of Simon from the Captain N series. {g}

The Angry Video Game Nerd has been covering the Castlevania games recently, so you might want to check out what he has up so far. And in case you haven't seen it yet, his first review was of Castlevania 2.