Christmas in July

Wherein we witness the many ways the once-exalted brand of shawn turner illustration®™ — this flounder-eyed man-child, this innocent updated Opie — has been corrupted for nefarious and questionable gain.

Just this half of 2015 alone!

Against his will, Poor li'l Logo©® (as we like to call him around the office) has been twisted and manipulated, sliced and diced, discolored and stained, all to make some ephemeral point, now lost to time.

Everything the mark has stood for — whatever the heck that was — has been washed down the gutter.

The shame!

On the up side, I get to trot him out, trussed and polka-dotted, for your amusement, like little gifts you weren't expecting.

You're welcome.

 First, he was shorn and torn of spectacles,
to reflect the real me. He lost the handsome too,

if you ask me.

 He was made to reflect the state of his creator's
constant confusion over the Interwebs …

And its intrusion. 

By the way, my email is now 96 percent junk,
and the weirdest kind of junk now. The spambots and phishers
have decided I'm old. The sex peddlers have withered away, so to speak,
and in their place are advertisements for all the various drugs to
combat old-guy diseases; for the lawyers I can get to sue
people for my becoming old; for the arctic secret that frees me from crow's feet;
for the products I can use to sealmy garage floor, since I'm old
and have nothing better to do; for enticing travel packages that would enable me
to go to Ireland and Puerto Ricoonce I'm done sealing the garage floor;
for on-line college degrees as I open the second chapter of life;
and for warnings about the end of days ushered in by Obama
the Antichrist, since I'm old and scared and more likely
to buy that particular brand of snake oil.

I have to click carefully through the morass lest I delete actual,
real emails from real people, with important stuff to say to me.

Of course, the first half of the year has signaled the return of the Giants,
full of hope and bluster and street cred. They won three
World Series titles in five years, and all the marketing blathered about four.

I didn't bite. Just bring on the games, I decided.

I'm not greedy for another championship.

Just bring on the games, I said.

Oh, my! I know I said I wasn't expecting the Giants to
win another championship, I also wasn't expecting them
to lose all their existing rings in a fire sale.

They limped into the season.

Then they got better. Hot. Best-in-the-League hot for a while.

 This is my mood now. The Giants have limped along the last month,
having lost eight of the last nine games. Key players got hurt (a malady
that absolutely no other team in Major League Baseball has had to suffer)
and remaining players got worn out from covering the slack.

I'm trying to enjoy the season for enjoyment's sake.

Just win a few more, Giants. Boy, the

All-Star®™ break couldn't be coming at a better time.

Poor li'l Logo©™ has become the poster child for
my angst, from childhood fears and how man-children
like the creators of MAD®™ Magazine saved me
from those fears.

 And adult angst over the mad, mad, mad, mad, maddening world,
wherein ideas and beliefs, no matter how puerile, like the cartoonists
of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, become some madman's justification to kill you.

Angst over political discourse, and the realization that someone in a suit,
with a U.S. flag lapel pin, can declare the sky is falling,
without any care for facts, and many, many others will believe that
so-called leader.

By the way, the sky is falling. Can't you feel it?!

It hasn't been all bad, of course. PlL™® (our nickname for the
nickname of Poor li'l Logo®™, when we become too tired to say
"Poor li'l Logo™®©") got to swim, like me.

And have fun, like me, when I got to read stories to students.

And celebrate, if half-heartedly, slow advances in the human endeavor:
Progressive thinking in the Boy Scouts, realistic thinking among
drought-stricken Californians, and the inevitable heartbreak of baseball.
(PlL™® worked hard that day!)

 

Poor li'l Logo©®™!

What's next?!