Stranger In A Strange Land
By Larry Fyffe
What a drag it gets to be writing for the chosen few you, daisy mae, who are not even of the masses (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Singer/songwriter/musician Bob Dylan, a member of God’s “chosen people”, as is Al Capp, finds himself born in the United States, supposedly the new Promised Land.
According to the Holy Bible, Mose flees from Egypt to the country of Midian; he is intimate with Zippoah, daughter of a priest:
And she bare him a son and he called his name Gershom for he said, I have been born a stranger in a strange land (Exodus 2:22)
As a consequence, the Hebrew God punishes Moses; he does not get to cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land of Canaan, and dies in Moab, a bordering country.
In Al Capp’s cynical but humorous newspaper cartoon, Daisy Mae loves the lazy hayseed L’il Abner. They get married. She does all the domestic chores in an effort to solidify a relationship that she dreamt of, that she desires.
Having a Weird Drink with the Long Tall Stranger
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
In the western movie “Rachel And The Stranger”, David Harvey (William Holden)pays more attention to his wife after his friend Jim Fairways (Robert Mitchum)shows interest in David’s faithful wife.
Jim sings:
Along came a tall dark stranger Once was a man, a hateful man Had a wife but didn't see the danger (Robert Mitchum: Along Came A Tall Dark Stranger)
In the newspaper cartoon by Walt Kelly, archetypical everyman Pogo ‘Possum directs a smile at the insincerity of everybody including himself (but to a lesser degree of course) due what he considers the selfish nature of human beings.
Below, a rather clearer rendition of “swamp-speech” than usual. Turns a naval commander’s note to the US President into a strange one:
We have met the enemy and he is us
Oliver Perry’s note:
We have met the enemy and they are ours
In a Batman movie, Friedrich Nietzsche’s adage – “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – gets the same treatment by the Joker who says ‘stranger’ instead of
‘stronger’.
The blood of Bob Dylan becomes filled more and more with black humour as he finds corruption is increasing all around him.
Below, Dylan’s persona couldn’t care less that he felt sorry (in a song) that he was among the ones who killed Augustine because the Saint believed Jesus contained the wind-like Holy Spirit, not just God:
People are crazy and times are strange I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range I used to care, but things have changed (Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)
Dylan’s ‘strange’ rhymes with ‘range’; Mitchum’s ‘stranger’ rhymes with ‘danger’.
In the song beneath, women are depicted as the daughters of devil-deceived Eve:
Not a word of goodbye, not even a note She gone with the man in the long black coat (Bob Dylan: Man InThe Long Black Coat)