First came the Calvin and Hobbes reinterpretation featuring Calvin on Ritalin, which made many readers sad. Then came the comic featuring Calvin shrugging off Ritalin’s effects.

I’ve also pointed you to an essay that postulates that Fight Club is really just Calvin and Hobbes set later in Calvin’s life:

I now present Dalvin and Holly, which features a character named “Dalvin” and his imaginary friend:

 Are you sure? Because we’ve got a giant phallic symbol in the middle of the city!

There’s a joke that used to make the rounds at my Catholic high school that went something like this:

A candidate for the priesthood had one final test to take before becoming a full initiate. He was seated in a chair in front of screen and an assistant some electrodes on his forehead.

“It’s pretty simple,” said the bishop administering the tests. “We’re going to show you some pictures, and if you’re sexually aroused by any of them, the electrodes will pick that up and a buzzer will sound.”

The test began. They showed him centerfolds from Playboy. No reaction.

The Penthouse centerfolds got shown. Still no reaction.

Finally, centerfolds from Hustler. Still no reaction.

“Very good!” the bishop said. “Why don’t you go into the next room and join the other priests?”

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! went the buzzer.

There’s an article by David Topping at Torontoist that points to a BBC story about a rehab clinic for pedophiles that reminded me of the joke. The clinic has a test in which they show patients images and measure their arousal; the difference between the device in the story and the device in the joke is where they attach the probes.

In the clinic’s test, they show different kinds of images to the patients:

• Some are of the “You’re supposed to be aroused” type, namely consenting adults engaging in sex
• Some are of the “If you’re aroused by these, you’re a deviant” variety: violent sex, children eating fruit and running around in bathing suits.
• The rest are what the article describes as “non-suggestive images to establish a baseline of non-arousal”.

What’s funny is what those non-arousing baseline images are: “Photos of the Canadian city of Toronto.”

This article was updated on May 11, 2009 in response to a request from attorneys for Edward Gorey’s estate. They were actually pretty cool; instead of a full takedown notice, they said I could keep up to 10% of the content of the book in the article and state that permission to reproduce said excerpts has been provided by the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust.

I knew that Shel Silverstein published different works aimed for “kid” and “adult” audiences, but I had no idea that Edward Gorey did the same – at least not until I saw The Recently Deflowered Girl. It’s a 1965 parody of etiquette books that seems quaint now, but must’ve seemed racy back in those days when Playboy was where you got not just the pictures of nude women, but good advice on stereos and cocktails.

Someone on LiveJournal published scans from the book this week. Since its posting, it got popular and the account – and hence the scans of the book – were deleted. I copied the images before that happened, and — with the permission of Edward Gorey’s estate’s lawyers, I’ve been allowed to publish a selection of the pages from the book for your enjoyment.

Present-day pop culture likes to portray Asian men, a category of which I am a member, as effete and unmasculine. Oddly enough, The Recently Deflowered Girl bucked this trend in that ten percent of the book’s deflowerings were carried out by Chinese men, the most-cited ethnicity in the book. I thought it only fitting that I post those two deflowerings. To my horny Asian brothers, this one’s for you, and as we like to say: Everybody Wang Chung tonight!

Click on any of the scans below to see them at full size: