Fearless Fosdick...

So the other day when we were doing our big family iChat with most everyone, my daughter was talking about her hole in her tummy and I mentioned it probably made her feel like Fearless Fosdick and she said, "Who?" and I tried to explain a little, but then there were too many people and no-one had a clue what I was talking about anyway, so I thought I'd take a minute to tell you while I was thinking about it.

Al Capp was the cartoonist who created "Lil' Abner." 

All about the hillbilly Yokum family in Dogpatch, Kentucky.

It was huge in the 1930's, 40's, 50's, and 60's. His artwork was legendary as were his characters. He filled his strip with social and political commentary long before Pogo or Doonesberry were created. 

Some of his creations made it into the lexicon. 

Dogpatch, Kickapoo Joy Juice, Sadie Hawkins Day, Shmoos, Mammy Yokum, double whammy, and skunk works. 

According to Wikipedia the word "shmoo" gets some serious scientific play:

The term shmoo has also entered the lexicon, defining highly technical concepts in no less than four separate fields of science, including the variations shmooing (a microbiological term for the "budding" process in yeast reproduction), and shmoo plot (a technical term in the field of electrical engineering). In socioeconomics, a "shmoo" refers to any generic kind of good that reproduces itself, (as opposed to "widgets" which require resources and active production.) In the field of particle physics, "shmoo" refers to a high energy survey instrument, as utilized at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to capture subatomic cosmic rayparticles emitted from the Cygnus X-3 constellation.

He resigned from the National Cartoonist Society over their refusal to permit women cartoonists to join. They capitulated.

Anyway, among his many creations were satires of other familiar and popular comic characters. One was Lil Abner's "ideel" hero, Fearless Fosdick, a hapless and mostly inept, detective, modeled after Dick Tracy and looking just like him except that he wore a bowler, had a pencil thin mustache, and when he got shot, had a huge hole through his abdomen. Hence the reference to my daughter's hole in her tummy. He was also the pitchman for Wilderoot Cream Oil for years if not still.

And that, my friends is the story of Fearless Fosdick, and, I fear, a bit more.