Thursday, December 30, 2010

Four for Fun

Bizarro is brought to you today by Ghostbusters, 33 A.D.

What are your plans for New Year's Eve? My plans include food, drink and my sofa. Leaving the house on NYE in NYC is as attractive to me as trying to tie a bonnet on the head of a wild gorilla. It might make for some good pictures but it isn't worth the risk.

Here are four cartoons from last week's Bizarros as they appeared in newspapers. I got a few emails from readers who enjoyed the "outside the box" gag, but none from anyone who objected to it. When I do funeral gags, I often get mail from someone who had recently attended a funeral and that consequently found my cartoon a painful reminder. I sympathize, but dark humor always carries that risk and I believe that laughing at tragedy is a valuable part of the human psyche, so I soldier on.

My editors and I worried that I might get some negative feedback from the "Family Outing" cartoon, especially since it ran right before Christmas. Most of my readers enjoy this kind of irreverence but some are offended by anything that might cause them to have to explain something to their children that they find uncomfortable. (If you are one of these kinds of parents, drop me an email, I'd be happy to tell you how to deal with these things. The technique is called "The Simple Truth," and you'd be surprised how easy it is and how well it works.)

Still others are only sensitive about controversial issues during holidays, which mystifies me beyond my comprehension. I could go crazy trying to predict all of those points of view so I just print the ones I think are funny when I think of them and put on my comedy helmet to deflect the potential poo storm.

"Check/Background Check" is a dating gag. Nothing new to report about this one except that it is a good idea to run a background check on anyone you intend to date more than once. Especially my cousin Keith, who is a complete tool and will destroy your credit, ladies.

My "Gettysburg Tweet" cartoon got lots of positive response and I am grateful, for I, too, really like it. One reader told me I got the quote wrong, however. Apparently the correct verbage is "fathers," not "forefathers." Before I drew this one, I looked it up to get it right but then threw "forefathers" into it somehow. Maybe my brain was regurgitating part of one of the Tea Baggers favorite catch phrases. Or maybe I just slept through my 7th grade history classes too often. At the time, I couldn't imagine why a big famous rock star was going to need that info so I just blew it off.

Let this be a lesson to you kids in school: you'll probably never succeed at anything, certainly not at what you think you will, so study hard in school so you won't be both a failure and an idiot. You'll thank me later for this advice.

Until next time, enjoy your day, study hard, and if you learn nothing else in this life, learn to recognize sarcasm.


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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

i laughed so hard at all of these. i was feeling sick, but now i'm feeling like sending everyone i kbnow theses cartoons.

p.s. i was just wondering if you read hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com
its not my blog, but i think the humor is something you'd enjoy

Neil J Murphy said...

Being Irish, the only way I'm offended by funeral gags is when you don't do enough of them.

hugger-mugger said...

I think a lot of people get so upset around christmas time that they just take it out on other people. I noticed drivers seem slightly more aggressive lately...

i think most people are not self-aware enough to realize that the people on which they often take out their frustration are not the ones responsible for it.

and the excess of food and drinking certainly doesn't help us think clearly.

sad but true.

Tegin said...

Does the book "Heather has two mommies" include pictures?

Anonymous said...

I suppose you haven't seen this: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-december-2-2010/america-s-tweetheart
(watch until the very end) or else you would have mentioned it. As they say, great minds think alike.

Hermite said...

"Family outing" totally cracked me up. Wishing you and the family all the best in the new year. And some for me, too. See ya there.

Anonymous said...

Hey Mr. Piraro,

2010's gone, picked up a few bad habits, gave up quite some good ones, but I always read your blog pretty regularly cuz it always made me smile.

So thanks for that, and wish you and CHNW and every other reader a very very Happy New Year 2011!

Your Fan,
Dee Sh

Pamela said...

These were all good for a laugh - I am a real fan of dark humour and sarcasm. I'm also a Christian, but I appreciate the humour in religious jokes for what it is...humour. People who can't see the humour just weird me out.

Dan, I've really enjoyed following your blog this past year. Keep up the good work and I hope 2011 is good to you and your CHNW (whom I hope is completely recovered from her run in with the taxi)

Happy New Year.