Friday, September 3, 2010

Cannibal Fashion

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Best 70 Bucks You'll Ever Spend.

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.

6 comments:

Alltid varför said...

Looks like Mr Cool Ice.

Steve Williams said...

Wearing sunglasses on the back of your head is useful when your not using them for the moment. I had mine on the top of my cap while I leaned over to look down into the shaded area of the gorilla preserve at the zoo and they fell off. I learned too late they actually stay on more securely on the back of your head. The joke still works though.

Unknown said...

I read recently that the same thing you described with cows - as eating, basically, ground up cow meat - happens with chickens sometimes as well. There is a theory that this practice may have lead to the salmonella in eggs outbreak recently.

I'm not a vegan, but I think it's insane the way that some farms work. The article I read described the conditions at the farms which produced the infected eggs, and they were disgusting. Where's Upton Sinclair when you need him?

Anyway, funny comic, but I can't figure out what farmer thought it would be a good idea to feed cows ground up cows. They don't even eat meat.

Dave Wyble said...

OK, in general I totally agree on the baseball caps and sunglasses. And thank for not bringing up "wearing pants around our knees" and "deliberately cutting up a pair of perfectly good jeans."

In defense of the backwards cap, the other day riding in a canoe, heading east in the afternoon that backwards cap prevented a bunch of sunburned neck.

Anonymous said...

love the cannibal panel!

check out this trailer for a Canadian Cult Classic: Cannibal Girls! made in 1970-something...

http://vimeo.com/7942351

innerlighter said...

Um...what about fish then?