Bob the Howler

This post by Betty Cracker at Rumproast gave me a chance to use this picture of Bob the Howler Somerby in his Howler hidey-hole.

I don't read Bob the Howler's peevish croakings very often mainly because I have better things to do with my time and because someone who refers to himself in multiples - as if he were some kind of small legion - makes me uneasy.


For some reason Bob consistrently insists on denoting himself a "we". For example:

We were struck again and again last night by the things we heard on MSNBC.

It’s hard to keep current when computers are down. We regret that, because we’ve been fascinated by Rachel Maddow’s recent coverage of senate candidate Sharron Angle, who won the GOP senate nomination in Nevada last Tuesday.

For that reason, we get nervous when we see the way Maddow has instinctively approached this candidate.

A bit of background: We’ve been struck, in the past few weeks, by what we now call “the two Rachels.

[emphasis above mine] A guy who refers to himself as "we" is worried about "two Rachels" - ?

Is it possible that old Bob may have undergone some kind of Kafkaesque metamorphasis some time ago which turned him into some kind of half man half compound apposition eyed howler fly? Or something.

That might at least explain his tendency to perceive himself and others in multiples. And when Bob rolls out of bed each morning and stomps off to the bathroom to shave or pee in the sink - or whatever it is a half man half fly does each morning - what he sees staring back at him in the medicine cabinet mirror looks something like this:

Which might also too possibly explain (for some Kafkaesque reason or another) why he spends so much of his time there these days conducting weird remote trials and hurling seething imprecations at the television set or buzzing around the room swatting at the lampshades and with an old yellowing rolled up copy of the Miami Herald.


If i were Bob Somerby I'd steer clear of bullfrogs and spider webs and carnivorous house plants.

*