Reading this this Guardian article on Tintin, and browsing this anarchist pastiche, in which Tintin morphs into a revolutionary leader, makes me want to go sharpen my pencils and start drawing a Tintin pastiche myself.

It shall be called "Tintin in Rampur", and in it Tintin will travel to Rampur gaaon, located in Taluk Bollywood, in order to rescue a yummylicious actress called Basanti from the clutches of a real life Chambal ka dakoo (i.e., dacoit) called Gabbar Singh. The climax will involve Snowy snipping at Gabbar's, um, sensitive geography, saying "ye ... mujhe de de, Gabbar!" in Snowy-auge, while Tintin will end up exploring Basanti's choli to discover the answer to that age old puzzle 'Choli Ke Peeche Kaya Hai?". Also in the course of such adventures, Captian Haddock will most definitively get drunk on bhaang, add pungent desi gaalis to his rather tame repertoire of curse words, dance Bhangra (he can easily pass for a Sardar given his thick beard) all the while crooning "Mehbooba Mehbooba". As for Thomson and Thompson or Bianca Castafiore, you tell me, kind reader, what we should make them do in course of this great comic strip, soon coming to a theater near you?

We were very tired, we were very merry– We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable– But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry– We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head, And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Note: I am very tired but not so merry (as I was this past Saturday) but I thought I should post this poem before it slips from my mind. I found this poem after I chanced upon a phrase from it - "...all night on the ferry" - as I was getting off the Staten Island Ferry (swinging hands with N), written in large letters on the inside of the Whitehall Terminal, located at the southern tip of Manhattan, after a pleasurable (and free - yes, I am, um, chea-intelligent) sunset cruise, back and forth, across the gold speckled Upper New York Bay.