things about things

1. "Achewood" once again delights with Chris Onstad's knack for verbal brilliance: the most recent cartoon usefully (and accurately) describes a Cadillac Escalade: "it has the fuel economy of an oil fire and handles like a Best Western."

2. I don't get Mickey Mouse's clothing. Like so many cartoon characters, he apparently can't be bothered to wear both a shirt and pants (thankfully, and unlike Porky Pig, he chooses pants). But what pants! First, it looks like they'd rise all the way up to his nipples (if cartoon characters had nipples, and if mice had nipples arrayed like human nipples, and if human-nipple-bearing mice wore clothes...damn but this is confusing). Second, what are those two white circles supposed to be? Enormous buttons of some sort? Are they functional, or merely decorative? Have actual pants ever been made with buttons in that position, several inches above the wings of the pelvic bone?

And I'm not entirely sure why Mickey's wearing gloves, or why they come with a peculiar rolled-up area at the wrist. Perhaps he doesn't wish to leave fingerprints. (If cartoon characters had fingerprints, and if mice had fingers, and...) But perhaps the oddest aspect of Mickey's wardrobe is his shoes. They look as if they were molded from some sort of plastic, rather like cheesehead hats, and are oddly rounded and again feature a peculiar roll at the ankles. They certainly do not look as if they could be removed. They look rather as if someone dipped Mickey's feet in molten plastic, which hardened permanently around his feet. Walt Disney: animal torturer. Now the truth can be told.

(Sorry, folks who've arrived here by Googling for "nipples": nothing for you here. And doesn't "Googling for nipples" sound sorta like "bobbing for apples"?)