My new coffee mug's art on the side is a thing of retro-futuristic beauty -- part steampunk, part Bradbury, maybe.  There is an art deco scene of a mad scientist's lab, including a robot and assorted glowing objects and tools and scattered projects -- shelves filled with curious and intriguing things.

Above that widescreen-band of art, above:  "Certifiable Mad Genius."  Below the art, in a smaller font:  "I have a death ray, and I know how to use it."

• (There is nothing to define just what "MAD" may be - it could mean angry.  It might mean mentally disturbed.  It could be the acronym for Mutual Assured Destruction.  It could mean all three.)

The mug is good as a standalone item.  The mug also makes me think of a cartoon I have pinned on a battered cork board.  It's an old, yellowing, dog-earred clipping, from a New Yorker magazine, as I remember, a cartoon by Charles Addams -- yes, that Charles Addams.  The setting is in an office building, in a patent attorney's office, in perhaps the 1890s.  Out the window, we see other buildings -- enough to realize the office is on the third floor, say.

Lies are marketing's best friends, just as Desire is the single best pal consumption ever had.  Combine Lies and Desire, along with a hurried, staggering set of lunges and lurches to pick up any dangling or loose minutes or seconds in the evaporating days of our lives, and you've got a toxic cocktail -- one we call American Life.

We are about to have more American Life on Thursday, during a gathering not of eagles, but of turkeys, vultures, and turkey vultures.  (It used to be a dog-eat-dog world in politics.  Now, it is about rabid dogs biting one another, and themselves, and chewing their feet, chasing their tails, then springing out into the audience in search of unguarded jugulars.)

Yes, the Toxic Ten will be on Faux News, the four-letter channel, and they will be marketed to us like soap suds and light beer and 30-day steak pads, and eternal tire straighteners, and every other useless and tasteless invention from The Department of Citizenry and Voter Maintenance, Heavy-Duty Consuming Division.

Sometimes, when I remember, and when I am trying to be polite (despite being mightily peeved at something or other), I will exclaim "Bolshoi!" instead of shouting the name of the food that comes out of bulls, after the bulls are all done with it.

It's a few semi-tasteful steps removed from the more obvious "Oh, bullcrap!"  Plus, I'd like to think that this small effort on my part helps the people around me keep some calming distance between that particular nitrogen-fixer and their own finer sensibilities.

Which is to say, my silly, sly substitution hopes to introduce some room to maneuver and to squeeze in an ability to have sidesteps kept handy for the squeamish.  For some people, keeping bull manure far apart from sensitive olfactory equipment, is a must. It's an aural-oral sort of thing.

No matter how organic people say they are, for example, I've discovered very few of them really want to contemplate bull manure while they are just starting to tuck into their beefsteak entrees.

Go figure.

OK, I know I'm all done here, but I was just passing through, and I have a visual I simply have to share with you.

It's a tale of all the ugly Presidential ducklings fielded by the GOP -- one of them, anyway.  (There's not enough space for all their many misadventures, as the GOP has so darned many handbaskets, and duckings, all headed straight to Hell, and none of those ducks are all in a row.)

Anyway:  It was a recent photograph in the hopefully-terminal coverage of that quack, The Donald.  His picture was taken with him behind a podium of some sort, up on a dais.  The photographer was apparently below, aiming the lens upward, in order to have gotten that shot.

It was a great Mussolini-style snap:  The Great Man, elevated, looking sternly flippant, as if overfilled with a combination of helium and laughing gas -- or injected with too much whipped cream, maybe, before they could cut the nozzle -- with his Powerful Jowls of Thoroughly Agitated Princely Patience in motion, demonstrating his severe strength of character yet again, keeping those wobbling jowls attached to his neck and face, and not having them depart on their own volition... if not actually released on their own recognizance.

The best part?  The best part of the picture was the framing of the shot.