Today's a "nothing serious" day (since in the last week, I've written about paedophile priests, organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, shit-eating train company regulations and homophobic evangelical dipshits and if I continue journalling their absurdity, I'll go mad). Instead, let's look at Tintin - one of the better creations of the Belgians. 
So, the first link? Tintin cars. A gallery of cars from the Tintin comics matched up with photos of the real cars. (Via Link Machine Go).
This article picks up on this: "Herge was a great fan of the National Geographic magazine. His exquisite closed-line renderings of scenes are often derived from photos in that magazine: a temple in Kathmandu, a street scene in Shanghai, near the Great Pyramids in Egypt or atop the white cliffs of Dover. These drawings show great skill and attention to detail; if one sees a car in Tintin, one can be sure that, right down to the very tall lights and chrome details, it is some particular make, year and model"
Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article entitled "List of exclamations used by Captain Haddock" was deemed too politically incorrect for Wikipedia - instead, check one of these lists - or a list of original French insults is also available, as is a Captain Haddock insult generator script. (Thanks to Boing Boing for the link).
Every adventurer occasionally needs to change in to a disguise or special outfit - usually to fool someone. Tintin did so more than a handful of times, and here is an index of those disguises.
Continuing the 'list' theme - the operatic diva Bianca Castafiore has a list of her own, detailing the many times she can't say Captain Haddock's name.
My favourite link has to be this review of a book by Tom McCarthy called 'Tintin and the Secret of Literature' - which attempts to use Barthesian and other literary theory ideas to uncover Tintin's real nature. Apparently, Captain Haddock is a counterfeit aristocrat and Situationist prankster. And as for Bianca Castafiore - well, in the interest of family values, you'll have to read that for yourself. If you are under the illusion that literary theory is in any way meaningful, the above link may prove useful.
