Complaining, Flying, Jumping

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The first cartoon I've posted today is one of my favorites in a long time and is my cartoon answer to the sort of folks who write scathing letters to me about something they found offensive about one of my cartoons. Regular readers of this blog have seen a few of the kookier bits of hate mail I've received, so you know what I'm talking about.

Recently I've begun receiving mail from people who are upset that I put the "K2" into my cartoons. I've been doing this for around 15 years, it represents my two daughters, whose names both begin with K (Krapuzar and Krelspeth) but apparently there is some kind of recreational drug or something that goes by K2 now and people think I'm promoting it. Like I would do that. I haven't bothered to look this thing up so I have no idea what their talking about. Is it illegal? Is it actually dangerous like chrystal meth or is the supposed danger a corporate-inspired myth as with marijuana? For all I know you can buy it at a health food store but it's cutting into pharmaceutical profits so Fox News is waging a propaganda war against it. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

This next cartoon is about the constantly growing list of things airlines are charging for. Soon there will be a two-drink minimum. Where will it end? And when will someone invent a way to get a large airplane off the ground without using fossil fuels? There could easily be a time in the near future when there are no airlines because of fuel difficulties. Weird.

From the archives, here is one of my long-time favorites that was used on the cover of one of my early books. An embarrassing first day in Heaven.

CHNW and I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane a couple of years ago. It's tons of fun and we didn't die. Unless the afterlife looks just like our normal lives.

As some of you know, I don't actually believe in any kind of afterlife but it's such an irresistible premise for cartoons that I use it a lot.

Apps n' Such

(To view this cartoon large, poke it with your pointer thing)

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I have one of these high-falutin' iPhones, but it isn't the latest one. I think it's about two versions back. Maybe the iPhone 3 or 4, I'm not sure. I like all the apps but I can't say that I really make the best use of them. I'm not much of a techno-geek, so I don't really know how much is available or have the time to fool with it. Coming up with new ones for this cartoon was a lot of fun, however.

If you have an iPhone, the most important thing to remember is that Bizarro has an app that feeds your phone a new cartoon every day, the same one that's in newspapers worldwide. It also has a year's worth of searchable archive and links to my website and this blog. All this for about $2 or $3 a year. What? A year's worth of creativity and sweat for the price of a single beer in a bar? Yes, it's absurd, I know.

I don't control the business decisions about such things but I'm told if the iPhone app does well, they'll expand to other platforms like Droid.

And now to the hip-hop. I know that a lot of you like the hip-hop but I can't tolerate it. Even a few seconds of it on a commercial drives me nuts. The problem is that I love music and by definition, hip-hop is non-musical. Sure, every now and then a singer chimes in with a nice chorus but the defining characteristic of it is that it is someone shouting angry rhymes to a simple electronic rhythm. Maybe it is supposed to be more about the lyrics than the presentation, but it strikes out with me on that front, too. I'm just not that interested in the sexual habits and desires of others.

I'm not as much of an old fogy as I sound here. I listen to new music all the time, usually the stuff I think they call "alternative rock," but there are a few entire categories that don't resonate with me. Another would be the modern popular country sound, whatever they call that. The stuff people like Kenny Chesney do. Also heavy metal is a problem for me. Never liked any of it, even when I was an angst-ridden teenage boy, which is the prime audience. And disco. And anything on those stations they usually bill as being "light rock" that play a lot of Eagles, and the romantic pop stations that play a lot of Christina Aguilera or whoever.

Come to think of it, it would be quicker to mention the genres I do like. I guess I'm pretty picky about music.

Sort of a Comedy Show!

Quick announcement:
I'm going to be appearing at the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa California on Saturday afternoon, Sept 11, 2010. I'll be joining a metric buttload of other cartoonists from 1pm to 3pm for a sketch-a-thon, which means we sit behind tables and draw stuff for free or sign books or whatever, and then at 3:30pm, I'm doing a talk in the auditorium. It'll be fun, funny and FREE. Hope to see some of youse there.

P.S. Tell them you found out about it on this blog and it will be even MORE free.

WORD TO YOUR MOTHER

Cannibal Fashion

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So what's the deal with people who wear their sunglasses on the back of their head? Is this the logical extension of the backwards baseball cap? For me, both of these trends show a small glimpse of the the sort of utterly nonsensical behavior humans are uniquely known for. Baseball caps have bills on them to block the sun, so let's wear them backwards. Sunglasses were invented to protect our eyes, so let's put them on the back of our heads. Shoes exist to protect our feet, let's wear them on our hands. Or better yet, tie them to our belt and let them dangle from our waist. Non-human animals don't engage in this kind of behavior. Having a mutant, complex brain is a mixed bag, often leading us to do things we can't logically explain.

From the archives today we have a cannibal joke from 1999. There have been lots of puns about cannibals, my favorite being the clown in the giant cooking pot and a cannibal commenting that he "tastes funny." No idea who first did that, but it still makes me smile.

I've done other cannibal and primitive tribe cartoons and I've learned over the years that you have to be careful not to make them look African. This draws complaints from people who think you're advancing the racist stereotypes that black folks are more primitive than white. The best-known cannibals were mostly from the South Pacific, although it's been practiced from time to time by all kinds of cultures across the globe. The characters in my cartoon look pretty nondescript so I didn't get any angry letters.

A word of warning to any readers thinking of taking up the practice, cannibalism by any species leads to terminal dementia. Mad Cow Disease is the direct result of feeding ground-up cattle to cattle, for instance, which has been a money-saving practice of meat producers for some time. Some scientists believe that Alzheimer's Disease may be an offshoot from eating meat that has been raised that way, but it hasn't been proved.

The bottom line is, eating other people is probably okay on an occasional basis, but you wouldn't want to make a habit of it. Eating other species who ate their own is probably not a good idea, either.

Cheesus Loves Me

A reader of yesterday's blog post pointed me to this inspirational news story about "Cheesus". I hope your life is enriched by it as much as mine was.



And people ask me where I get my ideas for Bizarro.



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Cheeses Saves

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Holy Family.

Today's theme is religion as all but the too-dense-to-be-reading-this-blog can easily see. As a vegan, I hate to promote any good news about cheese, but this pun was too much fun to pass up so I made an exception. If this were the shape of the folks who pester you at home you could answer the door with a giant cracker and scare the hell out of them.

Speaking of Hell, here's a ditty from the archives, from December of '96. This cartoon was requested by a friend who claims it as her favorite. She found it in my book, "Life is Strange and So Are You." It's out of print, as all my books are because you people don't buy enough books, but you can likely still find copies of it if you search online. Amazon may even have some.

This cartoon was from the time before I had learned to color my own work on computer, so I was doing it the old-fashioned way, which was to send the black and white version to the printer with elaborate numbers all over it telling them where to put various percentages of blue, red, yellow, and black. Coloring these things with numbers was an art form all it's own and you never knew what you were going to get until it came out in the paper. This one is ugly as hell, which is apropos. If I were doing it today, it would look so much better.

By the way, this depiction of "heck" is based on a visit to my grandparents' house. They suffered every day of their lives sitting on plastic-covered furniture, but when they died, it was as beautiful and new as the day it was bought. Praise Cheeses.

Self-Loathing Baboon Photo

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Here are three jokes I really like; two new ones and one from 1998.

The basic idea for the baboon joke was sent to me by a reader. I really wish I'd thought of it. So perfect. My wife, CHNW, had heart surgery when she was 20 because one of her valves had been eaten away by a random infection. She needed to have the valve replaced and was offered either a mechanical one or a pig's valve. As regular readers know, she's an avid animal rights activist so you can imagine her response to the pig valve. She got a mechanical one, of course, and now ticks like a clock. When it's really quiet, you can actually hear it.

"Whack-A-Mirror" is based on the popular "Whack-A-Mole" arcade game. I love the self-loathing aspect. Not sure why, I guess because I hate myself sometimes. Don't we all? Please tell me you hate yourself sometimes, I don't want to be the only one. That would give me more reason to hate myself.

This final gag from the archives of Bizarro International Headquaters is a longtime fave of mine. I've seen a few takes on the "I can take that for you if you'd like to be in it" phenomenon, but this is among my favorites. In those days, I used to draw TONS of background on almost every cartoon. I do less of that now because I already work too many hours and the joke is the same either way. Even still, I draw more backgrounds than 99% of cartoonists, so I don't feel so bad. No mirror-whacking for me today.