The Rabbit, or Bare and Thack Again

There are quite a few rabbits in the Oz books. In The Emerald City of Oz, there's a town of rabbits called Bunnybury, set up by Glinda. It only houses white rabbits, which seems to be a bit of bigotry on the part of the so-called Good Sorceress, but I like to think they integrated at some point. Also, the Easter Bunny himself has his own kingdom in a burrow beneath the Munchkin Country. There are a few other bunnies in minor roles, but my favorite Ozian rabbit is Wag, from Kabumpo. I'm not sure why a rabbit would be named Wag, but since Bunnybury has a singing group called the Winsome Waggish Warblers, perhaps there's some early twentieth century play on words involved that doesn't hold up in the modern era.


Nowhere in the book does Ruth Plumly Thompson describe Wag as wearing blue pants, but John R. Neill consistently draws him with them. Incidentally, I originally tried searching for "Wag Oz" and didn't come up with anything relevant, but did get this as a result. So I guess it wasn't a total loss. ;)

When Wag is first introduced, he's the companion of Ruggedo, the former Nome King, who's taken up living in a cavern underneath Ozma's palace. While Wag recognizes Rug's nasty personality and scheming tendencies, he also finds the Nome amusing, and is paid by the former Metal Monarch in jewels and stolen goods. When Ruggedo comes across a box of mixed magic, he tests out an Instantaneous Expanding Extract on Wag, making him grow to an enormous size (about six feet tall on his hind paws, I believe). Thus, he joins the ranks of oversized Ozian animals like the Woggle-Bug and the Frogman, and later Percy the Personality Kid. From the beginning, Wag is kind-hearted and short-tempered, and hitting his head in the process of growth adds the new character trait of being mixed up. He often speaks in spoonerisms, or uses the opposite of the word he means ("come ashort" instead of "come along," for instance). It's kind of a cheap characterization, I'll admit, but it works. I've always liked Wag, and he has a major role in one of the manuscripts I'm working on.

So where does Wag live now? The end of Kabumpo implies that all four main characters settled on Sun Top Mountain after Prince Pompadore's marriage to Princess Peg Amy, but Lost King and Purple Prince have the two of them and Kabumpo residing in Pumperdink. There's no indication of Wag being there, though, so I take this to mean that he remained on Sun Top.

NOM NOM NOM

Yeah, I've covered the topic of fundamentalist busybodies who oppose gay marriage before, and everyone has probably seen this video anyway, but I found it too crazy NOT to repost here. This group calls itself the National Organization for Marriage, although they make it clear they only like one sort of marriage, which makes it kind of a silly name. It would be like if I founded the National Association for Pizza, but I proposed destroying every kind of pizza except pepperoni.

And here's some more fun with NOM.

I personally like this one: “Who gets harmed? The people of this state who lose our right to define marriage as the union of husband and wife, that’s who. That is just not right.”

Wait, so we have a RIGHT to define words however we want to? Humpty Dumpty would be thrilled! I also have to admit being somewhat puzzled by the idea of someone responding to the accusation of being a bigot by saying, "I think that’s pretty offensive, don’t you?" Um, isn't calling someone a bigot SUPPOSED to be offensive?

You know, I'm married to someone of the opposite sex, but we don't have any kids and don't plan to do so. So does that mean our marriage is just as invalid as a homosexual one by NOM standards? I can live with that. Also, wouldn't it be logical for these people to support polygamy? After all, if one mom and one dad is better than two parents of the same gender, wouldn't multiple moms and dads be even better? And even if you do think a kid is better off being raised by people of both genders, why do they have to be a married couple? bethje was raised primarily by her mom and her uncle. What would NOM think of that?

And, while this has nothing to do with the rest of this post, I still thought it was kind of fun.



Yeah, I couldn't remember the symbol for antimony. In fact, I'm not even sure I can recall what antimony is. Sounds kind of like a Shakespearean character. {g}