Lessons for 2011

Bizarro is brought to you today by Save The Date.

This is my first post of the new year, 2011, unless you count the two posts I did on January 2nd, which could technically qualify as posts in the new year if you want to get all literal about it. One of those, entitled "Plans for 2011" was one of my better efforts, I think, so if you haven't read that yet, please do. I hope, with all humility, that it makes you smile. Or at least twitch in a positive way, no worse off than you were before you began.

Today's offerings are lessons for us all in the new year. In the first cartoon, we see a gentlemen mistaking a dog which has been trained to assist the disabled for a common waiter. Shame on him. The day after this cartoon appeared in papers, I received an email from a person whose living is assisted by a service dog, wishing to place shame on me for drawing this cartoon. Let this be a lesson to us all in the new year: never do anything that might be misinterpreted by anyone on earth.

Our next cartoon is about smart rodents and smart phones. Because of the size relationship between the two, a mouse or rat could use a smart phone as a big screen TV. Like the one your brother-in-law has so he can watch those crappy reality shows he and his ugly wife are hooked on. Like you really need to see Kim Kardashian's butt LARGER than actual size. But our clever little rats have chosen a classic Mickey Mouse cartoon. Good for them. Let this be a lesson to us all: I hate the fact that I even know who Kim Kardashian is. What is wrong with America?

This doctor cartoon is silly. It is a play off the expression, "Money doesn't grow on trees." If you are reading this and saying to yourself, "I have never heard this term, wtf does it mean?" you are likely from another country. That's fine, we like foreign readers here at Bizarro Headquarters. The term is used for situations in which a person is wasting something. If your stupid brother-in-law with the ugly wife buys a new pair of shoes every week and throws the old ones in the trash, his wife might say, "Hey, Rick. Money doesn't grow on trees." Let this be a lesson to us all: Don't say this to your husband if he is a foreigner.

If you would like to see the cartoon I published on New Year's Eve, just look to your left right now. I have used a bit of an Escher-like trick here in turning the pub sideways, to indicate that the gentleman on the street has had too much to drink. Like all teenagers (and anyone of any age who enjoys marijuana), I really love M.C. Escher's work. I have done a number of cartoons based on him and have found that while publishing a cartoon about Escher is considered legal satire, the Escher family is really tight-fisted about letting you use them for anything else. Like if you put one on a T-shirt for sale, they'll sue you.

This last cartoon is one I did in 1997, which I believe would make M.C. himself twitch appreciatively. But don't expect to get it on a T-shirt. The Escher family doesn't want to share even a few hundred of the millions of dollars they have made on their relative's talent. Let this be a lesson to us all: Be born with a talented relative who will leave you his estate so you never have to do any work other than stopping other people from using their talents to comment on him.

That's all the lessons for today. I hope your 2011 is full of rapturous and indescribable joy and prosperity the likes of which no mere mortal has every experienced and lived to tell the tale.

And don't forget to save the date, of course. You'd hate to be out of town at some boring seminar for work on a day like this.

.