joe

Joe Btfsplkthose of you who actually read this blog on the web may or may not have noticed the little guy in the upper left hand corner of the page (who is also posted in this entry) has replaced my incense swastika. for those of you who don’t know, this is Joe Btfsplk, the world’s worst jinx, a character from Li’l Abner, a comic strip by Al Capp. he bears a striking resemblence to myself, except that he doesn’t have a beard or glasses. he also has an unpronouncable name, rather like Abgithetz Qwrashamenkegadikeshbamratztaghaqamamamnayaglepzeqsheqiayeth or przxqgl. in spite of the fact that Mr. Capp, himself, pronounced joe’s name as a raspberry, i like to think of him as Joe But-IF-splik, sort of the same way i think that przxqgl should be pronounced pir-ZIX-quiggle. he’s depicted as the world’s worst jinx, but he also appears to know that things go wrong around him all the time, and he shows up at just the right moment to cause spectacular failure to those who may otherwise be obstacles to “good” and “right”. you can tell it’s joe, because of the little black rain cloud which follows him around. at one point, he develops the technology to capture his cloud and is no longer a jinx. he gets married and appears to be blissfully happy, but something happens that requires him to release his cloud in order to cause some sort of catastrophe to some evil-doer.

joe btfsplk has been a hero of mine for a long time, which is kind of odd, because i don’t know of anybody else who even knows who he is, much less considers him a hero.