THE SNAKE CHARMER’S POCKET COMPANION (APRIL 2015)
growing up, i was in the boy scouts, and there were always lots of pamphlets and handbooks around with titles like “THE RIFLEMAN’S CODE”. the boy scout handbook itself is actually a very interesting document, sort of a mini-survival guide for 12-year-olds combined with baking instructions and lore about cartoon wolf spirits (see Akela). these things feel like more than books to me – they’re entire subcultures distilled into a set of instructions, like a DIY manifesto or a mail-order identity. often, they are charmingly innocent. while the boy scouts as an institution has become enormously problematic, my personal childhood experience was actually a lot of fun, and i miss that ‘secret club’ feeling that was so prevalent in the pre-internet days.
i don’t remember where the snake charming theme came from. i do worry that this one comes off as mocking of Hinduism or something, which is absolutely not the intent – snake charming is actually illegal in india and you can go to jail for even owning a snake.
also, the song at the end is a parody of if i had a hammer, if you were curious.