TinTin and me

The first TinTin book I remember reading was "TinTin in America." I didn't like it. I found it disturbing. A major theme in TinTin is running around with guns and facing the danger of being shot. I don't think that I was quite used to that yet at the time I read the book. Another problem was that I had absorbed the concept of Native Americans as kind, gentle, caring people. The American Indians in the book were bloodthirsty, evil, savages. I now know that's not an impossible thing, but back then it bothered me because it wasn't what I had expected.



I believe that the next TinTin I read was "The Crab with the Golden Claws." The sea captain has a weakness for the bottle, which is treated as dangerous yet amusing. This is the first time I encountered the theme of drunkenness. My parents repeatedly drummed into me that there was nothing funny about it. I came to resent the drunken captain. It was also the first time I encountered an attempt to render dialect (the captain's). "Dad," I said, "These words are spelled wrong." He said that the spelling was intended to convey the character's accent.



The last, and certainly the worst, TinTin I read was "Destination Moon." I was already a big fan of the space program, and my reaction to seeing the rocket was "Cool!" Most TinTin books contain the entire plot in one volume, but not this one. It's a two-parter. And we didn't own the second volume. You keep seeing the rocket, and they keep getting just about ready to blast off. That happened over and over -- and I kept getting my hopes up only to have them dashed -- until, as I neared the end of the book and they still hadn't blasted off, I hated stupid TinTin.

Still do.

Interesting links from Scott on a high-fat diet shown to help ALS mice:

1, 2, 3.

I'm not planning on doing it.

Left grip is 25 pounds (24, 20, 25), right grip is 66 pounds (63, 65, 66).