Comic for Tuesday, February 28th, 2006

Posted: 12:02 am, Tuesday, February 28th

Is it seriously the end of February already? Damn. I had a teacher back in collitch (grad student, so he insisted we not call him 'prof' ever - or, as I for some reason insisted on doing, 'doc') who used to mark off the end of each month utter disbelief and a reminder of what fraction of the year (1998) had gone by thus far. I thought that was a lousy way to have to live when I was not yet 20 and my supply of piss and vinegar was much closer to full than it is now. For some reason, the obsession with time seemed futile to me. I understand it much better now - a sixth of another year is already gone, and I've done almost nothing I meant to thus far in 2006. 2.0 and I wrote our New Year's Resolutions out and tacked 'em to the fridge at the beginning of the year, and I'm sad to say that I'm doing horribly on them. Luckily! Tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, and the only thing more Catholic than loathing yourself because you're a dirty sinner is setting up bizarre systems of deprivation and penance for yourself. (We'll leave out the part when you fail all of those systems for the purpsoe of this conversation.) Wow, what an odd way to start a post.

The ad behind Pete on the train is the beatuiful and now-discontinued campaign the Bahamas had going about a month ago. These things were really wonderful design, but, sadly, depicted a bathroom-sign guy fishing on the subway tracks, and people worried that it would inspire real people to fish on the subway tracks. I weep for society. A lot.

In other images, did anyone happen to see Google on Sunday? I usually use the little field in the navigation bar of Firefox, and therefore miss their wonderful little custom logos, but for some reason caught this one.

How cool is that? Certainly those are better renderings of Neve and Gliz than the official ones.

She's a snowball, he's ice. I don't understand why a) you need an Olympic mascot and b) they must absolutely suck.

There was a discussion on Fark of the craptitude of Dan Brown (which someone who's not Umberto Eco is claiming he wrote first). I didn't actually RTFA because I was more interested in people ripping on Dan Brown. But there was an interesting post that referred to this page, specifically these paragraphs:

Compare the facts of the Sheldon case with Musto v. Meyer. Here the plaintiff wrote an article in a medical journal titled “A Study in Cocaine: Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud.” It concerned the history of cocaine use in Europe in the 1800s. In a flight of fancy, the author speculated that Holmes was a heavy cocaine user, which led him to believe that Professor Moriarty was after him. The author also imagined that Holmes’ famous disappearance was due to his going to see Freud for treatment of his cocaine addiction.

Nicholas Myer subsequently wrote a book titled The Seven Percent Solution. It had Watson tricking Holmes into seeing Freud for treatment of cocaine addiction, Freud curing Holmes, and both of them embarking on a Holmesian adventure. Universal Pictures made a movie based on the book. Plaintiff sued, claiming the book and movie infringed on his copyrighted article. Nicholas Meyer had read Plaintiff’s article. Indeed, Meyer gave the plaintiff a credit in his book.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character, a creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose copyright to the work expired long ago. Therefore, the Sherlock Holmes character, as well as all the other material in the Arthur Conan Doyle books–including Holmes’ use of Cocaine–are in the public domain and freely available for use. Since Holmes was a fictional character, the meeting between Holmes and Freud could never have taken place. It was the product of the plaintiff’s imagination.

The court in this case found that neither the book nor the movie infringed plaintiff’s copyrighted article. Meyer prevailed because the court reasoned that Meyer had only borrowed an idea, and it is permissible to borrow ideas. If the court had characterized what was taken as more than an idea, then Meyer would have infringed the plaintiff’s copyright.

Legal stuff aside, I disctinctly remember seeing the beginning of a Holmes movie as a child where he was snorting some coke. As a child brought up in the throes of the war on drugs, this horrified me. I think it actually turned me off to Sherlock Holmes for a while. Anyway, I later had to read just about every Holmes story in collitch, and never saw a mention of his cocaine use. Granted, the few that I skipped were the ones written from Holmes's own perspective instead of Watson's, and they probably would've given the most insight to the matter, but my prof said they were terrible and didn't assign them. I had more of less put it out of my mind, but, still - good to know that Holmes was not, as the author originally conceived him, a cokehead.

Anybody else read Drummer Hoff Fired It Off as a kid? Good book. There's an interview with the author here that is really pretty terrible, but I'm pretty certain it was a bunch of five-year olds asking him questions over e-mail or something. By the way, it takes him about 120 days to complete a book. By the way, that link goes to the Tattered Cover, a beautiful independent bookstore in Denver, Colorado. I doubt I've got any readers out that way, but if I do, I'm sure you don't need me to sing the place's praises.

OK, well, I think I've done enough damage here for the moment. Big ups to Ben, the official toddler of Five Bucks to Friday, who turned two yesterday. As always, your faithful servant,

bullfrog

Special Update at 11:30

No, Burger King, let's you get a fucking editor.

bullfrog:

i hope your myxomatosis clears up soon http://m-w.com/dictionary/myxomatosis

I'm just about over it, yeah - nasty bout.

Also, more on this when I get to the office, but a kind reader has already pointed out that I somehow missed the, oh, six or seven paragraphs on the, oh, first page of a Sherlock Holmes novel spelling out his cocaine use as clear as freaking day. The lesson, as always (to quote Sports Guy), I'm an idiot.

Google book search rocks, in case anyone has yet to explore.

Holmes and cocaine (kind of disturbing): http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&vid=ISB N0486270556&id=wy78rgLJFgYC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=doyle+holmes+c ocaine&sig=ajAFcWpaeEASHBX8PJsyZlM8POc

http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&vid=ISB N0451524314&id=LB6qTEl1HWkC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=doyle+holmes +cocaine&sig=oRHFRzPz4UjZ7n6_h-2f0EX5P_k

Yeah, the first page of the Sign of Four talks about his trackmarks.

"For some little time, his eyes rested thoughtfull upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks."

Probably Holmes needed something to distract himself from Scotland Yard's constant bumbling. Anyway, I have no idea how I missed all these blatantly obvious coke references. Maybe I didn't read as many of these stories as I thought I had.

As always, a rocking Soxaholix.

http://www.soxaholix.com/tp/2006/02/ive_got_yo ur_fu.html

Best line: "Schilling is fun in the sense that Ghenghis Khan was fun."

Just inadvertantly plugged an animated .gif up there. I'd fix that, but I've got too much work to do. Just took a second to see if Clemens had killed his son with a beanball yet and didn't get past the top banner ad and it's awesome grammar.

Damn apostrophes.

Awesome, the ad banner on espn's site has been fixed. I'm keeping mine as a testament to their stupidity, though.

Google has been doing graphics throughout the Olympics - it pays to go to their site.

I know I quoted him earlier, but my divorce from Sports Guy is complete. He's a fan of Deal or No Deal.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/blog/inde x?name=simmons

Also, he and his wife man me and 2.0 look like Sid and Nancy. God, six and a half hours of television? One of them better have a broken leg.

Speaking of TV, I totally forgot the Apprentice last night. Was Pepi funny? Also, I know a few of you must watch 24 - is Sean Astin as big of a miscasting as Sports Guy keeps insisting, or is he just being a douchebag?

Pepi didn't have much of a role last night. They focused on Tarek, Summer, and Brent.