My kind of discussion.

I got a kick out of this vignette in Salon about the The Burning Man festival.

"There was, however, one form of nudity that everyone seemed to agree had no place within the Burning Man community. This is the type of nudity known as "shirtcocking." Shirtcocking is when a man wears a top but is naked from the waist down. I have also heard this look referred to as "the toddler," or "Porky Pigging."

Owning a comic shop, I've actually had conversations about this very subject --about Porky Pig and Donald Duck, and all the other half naked denizens of the cartoon world.

I had a good friend who was a cartoonist, named Brad Lesher, (where did you go Brad?) who used to say it was perfecting fine as long as they were wearing gloves.

According to him, in cartoonland not wearing gloves: THAT was disgusting.

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Here's the kind of discussion I like. Have a new customer who has just moved to town to work for the Bulletin who is a tech geek. (He proudly proclaims his geekiness.) He also has an English accent, which somehow makes him sound even more nerdy.

So we were trying to out nerd each other. "Hey, I'm King Nerd around here! I own a comic shop!"

He started telling me about a cartoonist, circa WWII, who had a series of books about a girls' school where the girls were in charge, and the teachers and administrators at their mercy.
"St. Trinians," he said. "They also made a bunch of movies."

O.K. I hate not knowing something. I wiki it, and find out the cartoonist is Ronald Searle,
who is among the cartoonists that I keep in stock at my store, along with the likes of Charles Addams, Edward Gorey, Gahan Wilson, and James Thurber.

Turns out, there is a St. Trinians book available through my distributor, which isn't currently in stock. I made the order, but I know from experience my chances aren't particularly good that I'll ever get it.

Which is too bad, because it sounds interesting. Here's a description from the Wiki:

St. Trinian's: "...its pupils are wicked and often well armed, and mayhem is rife. The mistresses (as female teachers in Britain were known at the time) are also disreputable. Cartoons often showed dead bodies of girls who had been murdered with pitchforks or succumbed to violent team sports, sometimes with vultures circling; girls drank, gambled and smoked. It is reputed that the gymslip style of dress worn by the girls was closely modeled on the uniform of the school that Searle's daughter Kate attended... The films implied that the girls were the daughters of gangsters, crooks, shady bookmakers and other low-lifes..."

Got to say, sounds like wicked fun.