Click the above image for the full cartoon.

Fear not. The cliché is deliberately invoked.

Oh, and: Happy belated New Year. I spent most of New Year's Day sleep-deprived and caffeinated, because I had to take my mom to the airport at 4am after partying until 11pm the night before. I got maybe an hour's sleep. So I read Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment, a sweet satire of war, geopolitics and gender roles. This is the third Pratchett novel I have devoured since the recently made announcement of his diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's disease.

Also in my reading pile: Neal DeGrasse Tyson's Death by Black Hole and Karen Armstrong's The History of God. This is following on the heels of reading Michael Shermer's excellent Why Darwin Matters, a gift from my pal Patrick who shares with me a deep, abiding concern for the poor quality of scientific knowledge in the world.

The following is NSFW - Not Safe For Work.

An ad for an inflatable love doll designed to look like Jesus Christ.

Great for outside displays.

Click image to enlarge

While watching CNN's breathless coverage of the returns from the Iowa caucuses, my daughter Katie cheered on both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. At nine years old she thought it would be a great thing if a woman or a black man became President. For an adult, such thinking seems superficial; you vote on the issues, you vote for the candidate who offers the best hope (or on my more cynical days, who will do the least damage), all in the context of competing interests, corporate influence, existential crises in the environment and geopolitical theater. Yet for a young biracial girl, these matters are not superficial. They are a pretty big deal.

I cheered on Obama, too, as well as the white man with the Southern drawl who knocked Clinton to a close third place. Of the three speeches delivered by the Democratic "frontrunners" I think John Edwards delivered the most passionate critique of America's class system with a clear eye towards how to level the playing field — or at least make it less tilted. Obama invoked the Civil Rights era, evoking a whoop from my daughter, who has been reading up on her Black history. Meanwhile, Clinton sounded like she couldn't get out of Iowa fast enough. If we end up with Edwards or Obama getting the Democratic nom, I'll be happy.

As for the Republicans, Huckabee is probably a flash in the pan. He has no organization, despite his charm and Ed Rollins. But I could be wrong. I am more interested in seeing Romney go down in flames, taking Giuliani and Thompson with him.