The Argyle Sweater by Scott Hilburn for January 12, 2013

Hilburn’s offering today has a common theme that many cartoonists have used. It calls to mind the following from “literature”:. Some of my favorite quotations come from Don Marquis in his “archy and mehitabel” series of poems (archy is a cockroach that had once been human. He used Marquis’s manual typewriter to leave messages, and can’t use capitalizations). In “the cockroach who had been to hell,” 1927, an “old simp cockroach” has a group of young cockroaches circled around him as he tells of his alleged visit. As archy mocks him, he rails about the injustice of his transmigration from a vers libre poet into his current existence as a roach —.listen i says to himold man youve never been to hellat all there isn t any helltransmigration is the game iused to be a human vers librepoet and i died and wentinto a cockroach s body ifthere was a hell id knowit wouldn t i .And in another rant by archy, he curses,.damned be this transmigrationdoubledamned be the boob pythagorasthe gink that went and invented iti hope that his soul for a thousandturns of the wheel of existencebides in the shell of a lousedodging a fine toothed comb.In “the wisdom of archy” he proclaims:.as a representativeof the insect worldi have often wonderedon what man bases his claimsto superiorityeverything he knows he has hadto learn whereas we insects are bornknowing everything we need to knowa louse iused to knowtold me thatmillionaires andbums tastedabout aliketo him.There’s a lot to be learned from a transmigrated roach. I wonder in what form he is incarnated now?