Contest Today!!

Today, at 6pm, NYC time, another of the now infamous Bizarro Cartoon Scramble Puzzle Game Contests will be posted. To get a jump on the competition, read the rules below and get your brain hats out of storage ahead of time.

FIRST PERSON TO SOLVE THE SCRAMBLE PUZZLE GAME CONTEST WINS FIVE PACKS OF BIZARRO TRADING CARDS. DANG!!! Second and third persons to solve it get TWO PACKS EACH!! Dang!

RULES, ETC:
As usual, two images are posted below, one is the original cartoon, the warped image beneath it has been changed in subtle ways. Your mission, if you are a groovy dude, chick, both, or undecided is to find those differences.

1. There are 15 differences between the two cartoons.
2. NONE of the differences have to do with the warped nature of the second image.
3. ALL of the differences are something missing, added, or moved, not just "bent" from the distortion. The differences will not be too subtle, so once you spot one you should be relatively certain you've found it. (As opposed to something like, "I think that guy has one extra whisker. Hmmm.")
4. FIRST PERSON to correctly list the 15 differences in the comments section of the contest post wins 5 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards, mailed by me personally from Bizarro International Headquarters in Brooklyn. I'll even lick the stamp, unless it's self adhesive. SECOND AND THIRD persons with correct answers will each get 2 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards!
5. Put your email address on your comment so I can contact you if you win. I won't post it or keep it or file it or sell it or mount a Broadway musical about it.

Enjoy, good luck, and may dog bless!

Death Controversy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Ways To Get Arrested in the Park.

When this cartoon published a week ago, I got a flood of emails from angry readers. What I thought was an innocent albeit surreal take on an old expression – death with dignity – was seen by many to be a jab at the political movement to secure a person's right to physician-assisted suicide. Unbeknownst to me, (because I don't pay much attention to life outside of my own tiny world, I suppose) there is a law in Oregon about this called the Death with Dignity Act.

This topic doesn't get much press here in NYC, at least not that I've noticed, so I didn't actually think about this when doing this cartoon. I don't mind offending people with whom I disagree if I feel strongly enough about a topic, but I hate offending people by accident, especially when I agree with them in the first place.

I've long supported any person's right to end their life when they wish to, especially in situations of chronic pain and illness. I think that denying this fundamental right of self determination is superstitious, archaic, and cruel. The sad truth is that even if a person is in excruciating pain, has no chance of survival and decides completely of their own sound mind that they want to end their life, anyone who aids them in any way can go to jail. As I understand it (and correct me if I'm wrong) in most states even if a person attains the means to do this on their own, anyone present while they do it can go to jail. So a person who somehow gets hold of enough pills to kill themself wants to go peacefully, surrounded by family and loved ones, they can't unless everyone in the room is willing to head to the slammer. Instead, their only option is to die alone, climb out of a window, hang themselves, blow their brains out, whatever they can manage in their condition. Of course, most people just choose to waste away slowly in agony because it is their only legal option. This is the law's idea of "respect" for human life.

So I spent a couple of days writing apologies to various readers and making statements to various groups and I think I've straightened it all out. I certainly hope that if the time comes that I want to check out of this life with some dignity, the law allows me the freedom to do so.

Glory To The Internets

A reader pointed me to this extraordinary page. I pass it along to you without comment, for now.

Placing the cursor over a person will provide a description of that character on the right. Be sure not to miss the group of people in the lower right corner.

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.
Enjoy... http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom/?artpiece_id=353

Redemption of a Movie Star

I'm not a big fan of Nicholas Cage in the movies but after seeing this compilation of Japanese Pachinko commercials, he is maybe my favorite person in the world.

Choose Your Weapon

Bizarro is brought to you today by Kitchen Accessories.

I think knives are scary looking. Every time I pick up a giant kitchen knife, I shudder a bit at the thought of it cutting me or what it could potentially do to someone. If I had to defend myself against an intruder, I'd much rather use a gun than have to use a knife. Even if I was under attack and afraid for my life, I think it would disgust me to have to stab my assailant. Yuck.

A gun is so much cleaner, in the sense that you only have to point it and twitch one finger. Clearly, the cleanup afterward is not much different, but the act itself is less disgusting. Of course, having to kill anyone for any reason would be psychologically difficult and disgusting in its own way, but if you're fighting for your life, whatyagonnado?

Here's hoping that neither I, nor any of you readers ever have to defend ourselves against an attacker of any kind, and if we do, we are armed with a Taser so we can just point, click, and call the police.

Monsters Ink

(Click this image to make it big, clear and magically delicious)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Oh Migosh.

The thing I like most about this cartoon is the illustration of the monster. I think that frame makes the cartoon worthwhile – if I'd "phoned in" some crappy, average-looking monster behind a bush it would have fallen flat. Sometimes a gag stands on its own no matter how it is drawn, sometimes the drawing makes the gag.

I'm not big on monster movies, but when I do watch one, nothing takes me out of the moment faster than a bad monster. But sometimes the monster is so bad it becomes good again. You're no longer enjoying the movie for the reasons it was made, but you're still enjoying it.

The film for which the following trailer was made looks stellar.



And this film would be priceless even if the monster were not a mutant from Sesame Street.

Thanks for Giving

Bizarro is brought to you today by Super-Sized Heroes.
If you're reading this blog, you've made it through another American Thanksgiving. Since many of my readers are outside of the U.S., however, I thought I'd explain what yesterday was all about.

We call the holiday "Thanksgiving" because it is based on a myth about early European settlers in America wherein the punch line is that they "give thanks." The story goes that a boatload of religious freaks who were run out of their homeland for pestering people with their intense self-loathing and superstitious nonsense, landed on this continent and built some cabins or whatever. The local inhabitants were all like, "Whatever, it's cool, there's plenty of space and resources for everyone. Just don't be douches about it."

When winter came, they all nearly froze and starved and the local natives felt sorry for them and helped them out. Then, when spring came, they decided to celebrate their survival with a modest meal with their kind benefactors, but it took them all the way until the next autumn to get around to doing it for some reason.

But then later the religious freaks did, in fact, become douches, as religious freaks almost always most certainly will, and they killed off almost all of the natives on the continent so they could steal their land and get rich and celebrate their "good fortune" each and every year for centuries to come. And what better way to celebrate such a humble story of survival and compassion than with a gut-gorging, bacchanalian orgy of fat- and cholesterol-injecting, artery-clogging, cardiac-inducing, gluttony? Millions of innocent birds are genetically modified, incarcerated, and brutally butchered to celebrate a handful of oatmeal salesman's good fortune 400 years ago. Sure. Of course.

For my foreign readers, the typical American Thanksgiving Day goes something like this:
Kids awaken and watch a parade on TV with gigantic balloon characters (representing products you can buy) floating above an alarmingly overweight crowd of Americans. Females are in the kitchen preparing far more food than their family and guests can possibly eat safely, males are watching football on TV. Food is served, large table full of already overweight people eat enough food to embarrass Henry VIII, family members argue, men nap, women clean and wrap leftovers, America increases its lead as fattest nation in the world.

You would think this would be scheduled for a Friday, to give people two days to heave, medicate, and sober up before having to go back to work, but instead, it is on a Thursday, forcing many uncomfortably flatulent and hungover Americans to suffer through another day of work before the weekend. Historians believe this is a remnant of the "self-loathing" part of the original oatmeal salesmen who started all of this.

Those who do not have to work on Friday, go to stores to make the gluttony and conspicuous consumption of Thanksgiving look like child's play compared to the supernatural uber-consumerism that will take place for the next solid month in honor of the birth of a Jewish magician two millennia ago.

I hope you found this brief historical account both entertaining and enlightening. Please direct your complaints to the comments section below. Happy holidays. : )