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.


.

Holiday Gone

(click the image for LARGERNESS)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Glad It's Over.

I had a dandy holiday weekend, hope you did too. CHNW and I went up to Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary to hang out with a small group of our best friends, ate, drank, napped, hiked, watched movies, regretted having eaten and drank so much, then ate and drank more. On the way home on Sunday, we were nearly trapped in the blizzard that hit the Northeast Coast and only barely made it home.

Thinking back to Hurricane Katrina and the number of wingnuts who claimed that god hit New Orleans with that storm to punish the gays, I can't help but believe that this year god chose to hit one of the most populated areas in the world on one of the busiest travel days of the year to punish those of us who celebrate Christmas. Following that logic, I'd have to say that it is not a Christian god that is in charge of weather. Where are the wingnuts now?

The cartoon above has three puns donated by readers. If you think you've got an original pun that might work nicely in a future Bizarro Sunday Punnies, leave it in the comments section of one of my posts. I don't publish these suggestions, whether good or bad, so don't be alarmed if you don't see your suggestion in the comments section later.

Semi-interesting note about the cartoon above: I send in each cartoon in several different sizes and formats for the various uses that my various clients use variously. In one of them, the one used for the Interwebs, I mistakenly put "Lone" Ranger, instead of the punnier, "Loan". So if you saw the one that says "Lone Ranger" on the web somewhere, that's why. I told you it was only semi-interesting.

Got to get back to removing snow from my various orifices. Hope to be seen by you here tomorrow!


.

Cartoon Festivus

Bizarro is brought to you today by The True Meaning of Christmas.

In case you're at home this weekend surfing the net and ignoring the holidays, here are some cartoons to help. Or, if you're completely engrossed in the holiday jamboree, are dressed like a flying reindeer, find yourself between two rounds of caroling and decided to check your favorite blog (why, thank you!) here are some cartoons to entertain your head. Or, if you're sitting in the jungle somewhere surfing the net on some magical device that needs no electricity and have no idea what holidays I'm even talking about, here are some cartoons for whatever reason makes sense in your freakish world. Let's get on with it.

1. Larry is limber and this means nothing at all but I just think it is a very funny, deadpan joke. My wife is very limber (lechers are thinking, "lucky you! woof! woof!") and sometimes does this exact stretching move while we're watching TV at night. I don't mind that, of course, but occasionally she'll do it on a commercial flight and even though I know I shouldn't, I get embarrassed. She has other painful-looking stretching behavior as well, the strangest of which is one wherein she swallows her own foot and leg, poops it out and balances on it as it sticks out of her butt. She says it's a "great stretch."

2. Do you like odd coincidences? Well, I sure do! I wrote this cartoon as sort of a follow-up to a cartoon I did about a "Mothman" super hero back in October. In this case, the insectarian super hero will be called on to eat a sweater that is smothering the city. (When you have stopped laughing, dry your eyes and move on to the coincidental part.) Here's the coincidental part: I wrote this most recent Moth Man cartoon in mid-November, drew it and sent it in to be published on December 15, which just happened to be the next day on my schedule. No other reason that that. Around December 1st, a couple of weeks after I drew this and a couple of weeks before it appeared in papers, I saw a movie called "The Mothman Prophecies." I'd never heard of it before, but it is about a legend that has grown around a fatal bridge collapse in West Virginia back in the 1960s. It had nothing to do with my cartoon but was sort of a fun movie and I didn't think anything about it. On December 16, the day after this cartoon appeared in papers, a woman wrote to me and said her husband lived in that small town in WV when the tragedy happened and he got a kick out of my cartoon appearing in the papers on the anniversary of the bridge collapse! WHAT?! Mothman lives!

Side note, I totally missed the point that cardigan sweaters button up the front. My bad. I think I meant to say Dr. Argyle.

3. Here is another gag by my friend Cliff. He's funny. How does someone in 3 B.C. know that Jesus will be born in 3 years? And I'll bet they didn't even have cartons of milk then. The whole thing is just ridiculous.

4. But wait! Here is another cartoon about expiration dates. What in tarnation? If it were possible for you to know the date of your death, would you want that knowledge? I'm on the fence about it. It would help immensely in planning your finances and career moves and you could engage in all kinds of dangerous behavior with the confidence that it wouldn't kill you. On the other hand, it would loom over you like a damp yak dangling by a thread. No matter what you did, you would never lose sight of that date approaching and even if you could forget it from time to time, you'd still be able to smell it. Hmmm.

5. For those of you sitting in a jungle unaware of the holidays much of the world is celebrating this week (see first paragraph) the term "seats in the nosebleed section" refer to seats in a huge arena or stadium, way up near the top at the back. The idea is that you are so high up, the altitude will make your nose bleed. Well here are nosebleed seats of a different sort! Hahahahahahahahahahahahah!

Hope everyone has a smooth and salubrious holiday weekend. I'm off to Woodstock Sanctuary to hang with my peeps.

NY Giants

I'm a sports fan, though not fanatically so. I was writing to a friend of mine about the hideous loss by the NY Giants yesterday, a game which they led by a score of 21-3 at halftime. I thought some of you might enjoy it. You will find it funnier if you have a good understanding of football, but others might enjoy it, too. Let's begin.

Eric,
I watched the Giants/Eagles game yesterday and was severely injured. The onslaught of utter idiocy by several members of the NY Giants football club in the second half was more than I could bear. I closed my eyes, covered my head, crawled underneath a heavy piece of furniture, held my nose. But still, the tempest was too great and my entire body was crushed by the debris that was their 2nd half performance. Even with my nose pinched closed, it filled my lungs. Now I have Stupid Lung Disease.

When I watch pro football, I often find myself exclaiming, "How can you be so stupid as to jump offsides on 4th and four? Shouldn't you KNOW by now that that's what the other team is counting on? They are NOT going to hike the ball. They're going to wait until time runs out, take the penalty and punt. Just relax, wait for 15 seconds, doze off if you like, the whistles will wake you. Or, if these concepts are too abstract for you, look at that ball that is right in front of you. Don't move unless it does."

Or sometimes I say, "How did you get this far in the NFL and not know that the people wearing costumes different than yours are going to try to take that ball out of your hand? They aren't chasing you because they like your cologne, it's the ball you're holding loosely, away from your body. If you want to save your body a lot of wear and tear, just hand it to them. But if you, like them, want to keep the ball, you should consider holding it snugly, perhaps with both hands."

And I frequently say something like, "The whole reason those big numbers are on the front and back of everyone's blouse is so participants can be identified. See that number? That belongs to their best receiver. You, or someone dressed like you, will want to stay close to that person in case the ball comes near them. It's the ball you're after, remember?"

And when the Giants play the Philadelphia Eagles I often find myself exclaiming to the people in blue on my screen, "See that guy who gets the ball first thing on every play? He can run real fast. May I suggest you put someone who can run real fast up close so they can stop him? Those huge, fat guys don't seem to be able to touch him unless he stands stock still. I doubt they could catch me either, and I'm 5', 7" and 52 years old."

So during yesterday's ass-raping defeat, I wondered why the coaches have so much trouble drilling these simple principles into their players' heads, concepts that are the sort of thing that anyone should be able to manage, athletic ability notwithstanding: Hold it tight, don't move until the ball does, don't let that one guy run around by himself. It seems so simple, but then I remember that it is professional football players they are talking to. Some of them are smart enough to understand deeper concepts than "hit anyone wearing different clothing than yours real hard," but there are always plenty on any team who couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for the coaches. Like trying to teach a dog not to bark when someone knocks on the door, or teaching a cat to purchase her own cat food online. Some of these guys are only using a small, primitive part of their brain that the rest of us have abandoned for all uses except illicit sex in an airplane toilet.

I can't help but feel sorry for the smart people on a team, but then I remember that that is why I dropped out of football in Junior High, even though I was still pretty good at it. Success depends on a team effort and there were just too many drooling idiots on the team. So I suppose smart NFL players got what they asked for by sticking with it.

I won't get started on how much money some of these neanderthal primates make. Anyone who thinks life on earth is a meritocracy is a big enough boob to play pro football.

Thanks, I feel better.
d

"This is why I don't carry a gun to games." –– Tom Coughlin, NY Giants head coach

Holiday Message

For those of you who care about this sort of thing, here is a link to an essay by comedian, Ricky Gervais, about his reasons for being atheist and how he deals with it in a world that is predominately hostile towards his lack of belief. His views also happen to be mine.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/19/a-holiday-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-atheist/

Bizarro Family Holiday Newletter

The Bizarro Family Holiday Newsletter, 2010, is brought to you by Holiday Gift Ideas.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Crazy Quanza, and Happy New Year to you all! Well, it is hard to believe that another year has passed here at Bizarro Headquarters, it certainly was a full one and brought many blessings!

Going all the way back to last spring, we received the wonderful news that my eldest daughter, Krapuzar, was getting married even though she was neither pregnant nor getting ugly. Having long ago become convinced that she was a lesbian, this was a shock to the entire family. And the best news of all was that the young man she married is not an asshole in any way, shape, or form. I don't think he even has an asshole, that's how special he is! We couldn't love him more, unless he were rich.

My youngest daughter, Krelspeth, had a very blessed year, too, as she did not add a single letter or piece of punctuation to her police record. Yes, 2010 will go down in Piraro family lore as the year that her police file remained in the file drawer throughout! Great job, honey! We all love you! (If you're reading this, call us. We won't try to find you or judge anything you've done. We just want to know you're all right.)

CHNW and I are doing well, too, and have much to be thankful for this year. We finally stopped going to the marriage counselor and so we saved a lot of money! We have also found that we argue less and enjoy each other's company more since the majority of our marital strife in recent years seemed to be centered around the fact that that cow of a counselor always took CHNW's side on everything! Even when she was caught shoplifting. I mean, I think a man has a right to complain about the cost of bail and legal representation when his wife is arrested for attempting to steal a pregnancy test, which she could easily have afforded! Don't you? Especially when that man got a vasectomy 7 years ago, so she couldn't possibly be pregnant in the first place. Give me a break.

I also received news from afar that was quite a surprise. Apparently I have a son that I never knew about and whose mother I don't even remember. He lives in a part of far northern Canada that can only be reached by dogsled and is very dangerous to even attempt to get to, and it only costs him $500 a month to live there. That's pretty cheap considering it includes food, utilities, housing and transportation! I'm sending it to him until he gets on his feet, one of which was nearly gnawed off by a polar bear he startled late one evening while taking out the trash. I feel really blessed by this new relationship, not only because he is a terrific young man, but because he could easily have lived somewhere like Paris and needed way more money every month. I mean, when I was traveling in Paris in my early years, I got lucky WAY more often than when I was in Canada. Which, to be honest, I don't remember ever visiting.

Career-wise, Bizarro has had a terrific year, too. To date, I have made over $61 from the ads on my blog, which thousands of people read every day for free. Forget about the PayPal Donation button just to the right of this post, just knowing that my copious efforts give you an occasional smile is payment enough for me.

Another great feather in my cartoonist cap is that another year has passed without some big, lumbering corporate movie studio making some glitzy, multimillion dollar 3-D animated abomination of my cartoons. What could be worse than having some Hollywood blockbuster with your name all over it and then watch it in the theaters and say, "Hey, that's not what I had in mind at all. That's kind of stupid." So, I've dodged that bullet for another year, thanks for asking.

Speaking of "dodging a bullet," I was very lucky and blessed to have dodged the one fired out front of our building last October. It seems the instigator of that particular flying piece of hot lead was the girlfriend of the guy who works at the tattoo parlor on the corner. She suspected he was "fooling around" with her cousin, to whose buttocks he evidently had recently applied a "Tweety Bird" tattoo. I was on my way to the deli across the street when I heard the whole story, or her side of it at least, and the bullets began flying. One narrowly missed my left ear by the sound of the air being cleaved by it. The tattoo guy was not as blessed as I was that day, however, as she managed to blow holes through several brightly-colored carp on his chest. Now we'll never know his side of the story.

That's the update from Bizarro Headquarters this year, hope your year was as special as ours. From all of us to all of you, may the invisible super hero in the sky of your faith bless us all in the coming year!


.

Rust

Bizarro is brought to you today by Ironing Man.

A reader wrote to me and suggested a cartoon involving Iron Man's difficulty with water and this is what came of it. I'm particularly proud of the art on this one so click on the image and blow it up right big like to fully peruse it. The only thing I used reference for was Iron Man himself, the rest of it was pulled out of the gooey gray gelatin in my noggin. I get excited by being able to draw something particularly convincing right out of my head. Such is the simple life of the simple-minded artist.

It's the weekend, so this is short and sweet.

Huge Duct

Bizarro is brought to you today by Duct Tape.

I'll be honest with, I'm really fond of "Duct Tap Night." Not as an institution, but as a cartoon. I'm not fond of bars in general, the liquor is far more expensive than what I have at home, the music is typically too loud to have a conversation, and I'm not looking for a new sexual experience. It would be fun to meet a friend in a bar and catch up, but quiet bars are increasingly difficult to find and I have no desire to scream at my friends. So I tend to stay home where the drinks are cheap, the music and volume is of my own choosing, and the hot women (wife) will actually go to bed with me.

Although the idea of this comic is funny to me –– women enjoying a bar where the men can't hit on them –– it has been my experience that women usually don't go to bars except to look for mating possibilities, so the whole concept is probably erroneous. Note that I said "usually." As I typed that sentence, I had a premonition of torrents of comments from angry women saying they like to meet their girlfriends in bars and have no thoughts toward being "picked up." Okay, fine, my bad. If that's you, you'll love Duct Tape Night.

This next cartoon was drawn from personal experience. I am inordinately tall – 7' 5" – and have always had a terrible time finding clothes that fit in those Big and Tall men's shops. It could be that even at that height I am still too far out of the norm to be catered to by mass production. Or, it could be that I still have a touch of dyslexia from time to time, I am actually 5' 7", and I have no business in a Big and Tall shop in the first place. That would explain why the clothes in those shops are so baggy, come to think of it.

I'll be posting again tomorrow, but I want to be sure to remind you to check in next week when I'll be posting my holiday family newsletter; a complete rundown of all the precious and adorable moments of my family for the past 12 months. I don't send out cards or letters of any kind this time of year, so this is the only place to get it.

Snow Mysteries

Bizarro is brought to you today by Snow.

It's cold in NYC this week and we had a slight dusting of snow, so I thought I'd drag a few old Bizarros out of the cartoon freezer today. There is something irresistible about snowman gags to cartoonists, and these are some of my favorite gags of any kind.

We begin with this cartoon based on a true story that happened in Cheboygan, Michigan in 1983. It seems that a small group of 9-year-old boys built four snowmen on Thursday, December 15th. When they returned to the site the following day, exactly 27 years ago today, one of the snowmen had been murdered by the other three, their carrot-nose murder weapons still sticking out of the gaping wounds in his chest. By the time the police arrived, an unidentified rabbit had eaten all three of the carrots and left the scene. Authorities arrested the three suspects but they disappeared from lockup over night and have not been seen since. The rabbit, a suspected accomplice, remains at large. Snowman-on-snowman crime, however, is not uncommon and most cases go unsolved.

Our next cartoon features the growing trend among snowpeople toward cosmetic surgery. Though exact statistics are impossible to gather, experts estimate that nearly one quarter of all snowpeople in the U.S. are using elective surgery to make themselves more attractive. Snow cones are a cheap method of breast augmentation and sales of "baby carrots" are up 130% in the past ten years, presumably to achieve a more attractive nose than the traditional full size, adult carrot. Snowmen have been known to use parsnips for penis enlargement, though their proximity to the ground have led to some thefts.

Our last cartoon documents a mystery upon a mystery. Archeologists are still uncertain as to the origins of the large stone heads on Easter Island, and even more mystified by their replacement each winter with big whopping snowman heads. Government officials have declared the island off limits to tourism during these months fearing vandalism of the heads, which are notably more fragile than the stone ones. Samples of the snow are gathered by scientists each year and guarded carefully as they look for clues to its provenance. Theories of the origin of the frozen craniums range from intervention by extraterrestrials with a juvenile sense of humor to ghosts of the children of the indigenous inhabitants who erected the stone heads visible throughout the rest of the year.

If you have a strange winter mystery that you think would make an interesting cartoon, write it on a 3"x5" note card in 200 words or less and mail it to:
Santa Claus
1 North Pole
The Arctic 00001

Stay warm and thirsty, my friends.





.

Prophetic Comedy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Xmas Celebrity Sightings.

Since we humans are so prone to superstition and mysticism, I could easily attribute the harrowing accident involving my wife and a taxi cab on December 10th to my cartoon that ran in newspapers on December 7th. It was undoubtedly an unwitting premonition, perhaps even a prophecy. I'll think twice before I use terms like "prescription for disaster" in Bizarro again. Whew!

Or, I could use the other 99.99999% of my brain and admit that not all coincidences have spiritual meaning. In fact, there's pretty much no evidence whatsoever that any of them do. Unless you choose to apply one, which I recommend you do at your own risk. History teaches us that superstition can lead to some pretty idiotic life choices. Like war.

T Rex has no superstitions, he just needs help in his cafe because he is short-handed. Get it? Short handed? What kind of damn fool dinosaur starts a cafe if he cannot even carry a tray without dropping it? And what does he do with the tables of patrons he knocks over with is mighty tail? Perhaps he just eats them. T Rexs can be like that.

My fanny pack riff got a few emails from readers with a better knowledge of anatomy than mine who informed me that the "liver pack" is on the wrong side of the man's body. What we actually have here is a "spleen pack." My bad, as surgeons up on malpractice charges frequently say.

Of course, if you want to get really picky, the "belly pack" is actually an "intestine pack." The stomach is much higher. Unless you want to be extremely liberal in your interpretation of "belly," but don't even get me started on that kind of irresponsible artistic license. Cartoons should be as factual as possible. If you can't trust the information in a cartoon, what can you trust?, I always say.

Don't forget all the life-changing Bizarro products that can be found somewhere around here. Perfect for holiday gift-giving!



.

Catasrophe Update

For those of you who have not read the account of my beloved wife, CHNW, getting hit by an anonymous Taxi last Friday night in NYC, click here to catch up on the story.

Now that you're caught up, I just wanted to say thanks to all the quadrillions of you who have left nice comments, sent Facebook messages or emails, or used the pathetically old-fashioned telephone system to wish her well. She appreciates it and is doing great.

Here now are a few pics of the healing process. Photo number one is of us in the hospital. CHNW loves to take pictures of herself looking at all ridiculous, be it from bad hair, a funny wig or hat, silly sunglasses, or after she has bounced her head off the street. So this first picture is taken by her camera and her own hands, at the height of the festival of medical bills. I popped into the pic with my extra-big-deluxe-executive lip, which I pull out of storage any time there is a worthy "poor baby" situation, for which this certainly qualified.

Picture two was taken at home the following day as she lay in her luxurious four-poster bed, ringing a tiny bell every few minutes to summon me to help her because she was "dizzy" or "weak." What a big baby. Sometimes I had to get her a glass of water, sometimes a cup of soup, which entailed my peeling the paper lid off of a cardboard container and pouring hot water into it. You can't believe how hard it is to walk into the next room with one of those things without spilling it. Meanwhile, I had to make my own breakfast, lunch and dinner for two solid days! Now I know how Civil War nurses must have felt. No thank you, Clara Barton!*

She took this picture partly because she thought that the purple of the "boxer's eye" really set off the blue of the unmolested one. I couldn't agree more, that one side of her face has never looked lovlier.

Finally, here she is as she looks today, up and around and getting her own damn soup. It's great to have her back. The cool thing about CHNW's bruising is that because she has a mechanical heart valve (from a past medical problem, not the cab), she takes a blood thinner every day. This does weird things to her bruises and the resulting kaleidoscope of colors and shapes is breathtaking. It will change many times over the next few weeks, like an over-decorated house in the suburbs of Wichita, perfect for the holiday season.

What you may not be able to fully appreciate from this picture, though, is that her eye has a distinct oval of black and purple around it, the sort you might expect a first-year movie makeup student to do on their first attempt. If I were the instructor, I'd recommend a little less makeup and a little more blending. But what's really horrific is that just today she is beginning to develop a large circle of chartreuse around it, reaching all the way down to her jaw line. In the coming days it will get even more pronounced and promises to be positively Halloweeny. I'll keep you updated.

For those of you who have recommended litigation, rest assured that we have a close friend who is a very successful personal injury lawyer and he will be leading the charge against the ironically named, TLC. (Taxi and Limousine Commission) We don't want to retire to South America, just get the med bills paid and around $80,000 for my own pain and suffering while having to play nursemaid.

















*Note to those of you who do not know me personally: I'm not as big a jackass as I portray myself here. I've been taking good care of her and have not said a peep about being put out. I'm sure being a Civil War nurse was more difficult than what I've been dealing with. The amputations without anesthesia alone were probably a major buzzkill.


.

Quintuple Tragedy

(click the pic to make it big)

Bizarro is brought to you today by A Leisurely Drive.

Hey, I went to a holiday party last night and they had a very fun live band. But it turned out that was not the most exciting part of the evening.

Nor was the most exciting part when we left the place at midnight, hailed a cab out front of our friends' building, and my formerly lovely wife, Ashley, stuck her head into the passenger-side door window and said to the driver, "Will you take us to Brooklyn?"

The most exciting part was when the cabbie suddenly stepped on the gas (fear of Brooklyn? involuntary leg spasm?), throwing my formerly lovely wife to the street, conking her head on the pavement and knocking her unconscious.

Not being a trained crime fighter, instead of drawing my gun and shooting at the cab or simply getting the car's number, I fell to my knees and began shouting to her, asking if she was okay. She was not okay, as her bloodied and sleeping face quickly told me.

I called 911, they came quickly, tossed us into an ambulance and brought us to an emergency room at the other end of the bumpiest street in the tri-state area. With what it costs to ride in an ambulance, you'd assume that included some sort of suspension system, but you'd be wrong.

Upon entering the ER, the first thing I learned was that all of the employees are superstitious. They forced me to put my camera phone away, presumably fearing I would steal their souls. I told them I had all I could handle with my own soul and had no interest in theirs, but that reassurance seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Now in the trauma room, at first there was a lot of clothes-cutting, shouting of inane questions to get a brief test of Ashley's I.Q. –– What's your name? What day is this? Do you realize we're ruining your fancy party clothes by cutting them off because it is so much more dramatic than removing them the normal way? –– and bandying-about of medical terms like "stat", "cc", "saline," and, "Sir, put that camera away, we're not going to ask again!"

One interesting thing I found out was that you don't really have to leave the trauma room if you don't want to. I learned this after they asked me several times, rather sternly, to step outside and I simply said, "no." Instead of calling security or producing a taser, they just sort of looked disappointed and went on about their business. In their defense, however, they were being forced to ask me and this caused them fear; "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to wait outside," they said over and over. "No," I blandly stated each time and this seemed to allay their fears for a few more minutes. I was, after all, standing calmly off to the side, not scrubbing up and offering to help.

After seven hours of poking, prodding, testing, and mostly waiting on gunshot and knifing victims to be treated, they gave her a couple of stitches in her eyebrow where previously there were none and sent us home, warning her to keep her head away from speeding taxis and the pavement until it healed.

They further admonished her not to get the wound wet for 24 hours, which is a real drag because she has quite a lot of dried blood in her hair. I'm sure it will be uncomfortable for her to sleep with dried blood in her hair and I'm not downplaying that at all, but what about me? I have to sleep with a woman with a face like Rocky Balboa and dried blood in her hair. That's not something I thought I'd ever say.

CHNW is a real trooper and was happy to allow me to publish these pics of her and make a humorous post out of this otherwise unfun event.

I would like to offer two bits of advice to you, dear reader:
1. If you are in NYC, do not ask a cab driver if he will take you somewhere. Get in the cab, close the door, and tell him where he is taking you. By law, they have to do it, but if your destination is not as profitable as they'd like, they will often get away before you can get in.
2. Avoid the holidays. You're safer at home where nothing moves quickly enough to knock you down.


.

Piglet Pokey

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Magic of Ham.

Today's post features two old cartoons from the late 1900s, which I came across while searching for something else. I really like both of these cartoons because they take well-known topics and combine them in new, thought-provoking ways. Neither of them really mean anything, although they kind of seem like they might.

This is also the trick to great song lyrics. Take a song like "Losing My Religion" (or almost anything by REM) and try to figure out exactly what it means. It's relative nonsense, but you relate to it somehow and twist it into a personal meaning, almost subconsciously.

I'm not saying these cartoons take on a personal meaning for anybody, most people don't dwell on cartoons long enough, but it's fun to play with that edge. For me, that's what creativity is all about.

Even now, I'm not entirely sure what I mean by what I've just written, but it seems like it means something. I should also say that I don't eat animals anymore, I've been vegan since 2002, but at the time I wrote this Piglet cartoon the vegetarian message was not on my radar at all. It can have a hidden animal rights message if you want to apply one, but I was actually still a corpse eater when I drew it.

Regarding the Hokey Pokey Stew cartoon, I was not vegan when I wrote this cartoon, either, but was still not in the habit of eating human feet. So, no, this was not intended as an anti-cannibalism message, although you can turn it into one now if you wish. Whatever that means.

I hope you have enjoyed reading these rambling paragraphs eight times more than I have enjoyed typing them. Until tomorrow, my friend...

.

Not My Leak

WTF? First, I am accused of throwing a cable guy off my roof (see yesterday's post) now the WikiLeaking thing. The spelling is different, though.

(click pic to enlarge)


.

Law of Cable

Bizarro is brought to you today by New York Living.

The weather here in Brooklyn today is less than what one would hope for if one wanted to sunbathe nude on the roof of one's building. Which I do not, but it's still nice to know I have that option if the whim should hit me. But I do not have that option today, at least not unless I want to lose extremities I may want to use again later. The locals call it "winter," but I call it "way-too-ass-biting-cold-and-it-gets-dark-too-early-why-haven't-I-moved-to-the-tropics-yet?"

Speaking of the roof of my building, CHNW (wife) and I recently received a letter from a lawyer informing us that we are being sued because a cable TV worker tripped over some debris on our roof, fell into our backyard, crashed through our patio furniture and broke his back. This struck us as odd since we both work at home, our patio furniture is still in tact, and neither of us can recall any ambulance workers rushing through our house – which is the only way into our backyard. Was he airlifted out by a silent helicopter? we asked. Did he replace the patio furniture before taking off? If so, we certainly do owe him some money because that was just damned considerate.

As it turns out, he fell off of a different building which stands behind ours and over a fence. We rarely keep our patio furniture (or legal liability) in our neighbor's yard, which explained why we were unaware of the episode. The address of the offending building sports a different number and street name, so it is unclear why they addressed their complaint to us, but such are the mysteries of Time Warner. Perhaps our neighbor doesn't have cable and the cable guy got the wrong building in the first place.

We were relieved to hear it was not our building, but disappointed that we could not respond by telling them we would appear in court between the hours of 9am and 7pm on the date specified, but only if someone over 18 took the day off work to wait.

This story has nothing to do with these two cartoons, of course, but then neither does anything else. Hope you enjoyed them and it all the same.

Apple Knocker

Bizarro is brought to you today by Those Darn Kids.

Our first cartoon today is another collaboration with my good buddy, Wayno. We're both fans of Magritte and although I've done a couple of takes on his famous "This is Not a Pipe" painting, I thought this one was original enough to use the theme again. I might get a small version of this tattoo myself, someday. Here's Wayno's description of the experience.

My caveman cartoon was dreamed up by a good friend Cliff's son, Emilio, so he got a byline. He and his dad were talking about knock knock jokes and surmised that cavemen wouldn't be good at it since they didn't have doors and would not know what a "knock" was. An odd idea and odd enough to inspire me to do a cartoon about it. Emilo's younger brother, Nicco, wrote a cartoon for me a while back, too.




Know a goth couple who just had a kid? This is the perfect gift for them! You can find it and tons of other useful products with jillions of Bizarro cartoons on them by clicking this.

Comes in other colors, too! Wow!

.

Off With...

Bizarro is brought to you today by Signage.

After this published, I got a few emails from people asking if I knew I had misspelled "pumpkin." Even if I hadn't know it, my editor would have caught it, which she did and checked with me to make sure it was intentional. I told her what I'm telling you now – yes, it was intentional. I wanted to make it look like one of those hand-made signs in the country which you often see along American highways which, in my experience, are frequently misspelled, so I did this to add a touch of realixm.

Nonetheless, the actual joke is in the other sign so let's just drop it.

Got big deadlines today, so I'm cutting this short. Anyone see HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" last night night? It's getting gooooood.

.

Bizarro Merch!

If you're on of those peoples who buys stuff during this time of year and gives it away, why not consider buying some nifty shwag with Bizarro cartoons on it? Oh yes you can! It happens here, each year listed has a variety of cartoons to choose from and about a moziglion products you can put them on.

http://www.cafepress.com/bizarrostuff/4171562


.

Ape Love

(click on these cartoons for the biggest view you can get!)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Sexy Vegetables.

Today I offer you a couple of Sunday cartoons, one from last week and one from 2000. "Dave's Auto Repair" is one that my buddy Cliff and I dreamed up while we were tripping on Yak dung in the Himalayas. Once each year, Cliff and I pick some spot on the planet at random, buy a one-way ticket there, bring no money or luggage, then try to figure out a way to earn enough money to get home. We find that it is a real character-building experience. This year's trip involved eating Yak dung, but that's a story for another time.











I chose this old cartoon from the archives because I thought it was kooky and fun. If you know anything about "imprinting," you'll agree that if a human child was raised exclusively by apes in an environment devoid of humans, as Tarzan supposedly was, he would likely be sexually attracted to apes instead of humans. Mrrrow!

I enjoyed drawing these characters and the family photos on the wall, too. It's also worth noting that this cartoon is rife with "secret symbols." There are about 18 or 19 in this one, if you don't count the incomplete ones, like the bunny ears on the carpet that don't really make an entire bunny. I may have been tripping on Yak dung the day I drew this one, too. I can't remember. That's one of the regrettable side effects of Yak dung consumption.*

*Legal disclaimer: This post is in no way meant to encourage anyone to consume the dung of any animal. Or flesh or mammary secretions (dairy), either, for that matter.

.

Watching

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Sudsy Feet.

After I published my previous post about the sort of TV shows I truly hate, many readers asked what shows I like. Some people are always trying to look on the bright side of things, declare the glass half full, pointing out the silver lining, filling the shoes with chocolate feet. (I made that last one up but I think it works.)

So here follows a list of shows I am addicted to, in no particular order. I watch TV every night, I fully admit. Some may say I watch TV too much, but I also read every night and exercise every day, so it all evens out. (If lifting a bottle of scotch can be considered exercise, and I am pretty certain it can. Especially when it's full.)

Comedy:
East Bound and Down (HBO) Kenny and Stevie rule!
Weeds (Showtime) Rent the first season, watch it from the beginning. So great.
Californication (Showtime) Great writing, acerbic humor.
Bored to Death (HBO) Not brilliant, but funny and anything with Zach Galifianakis is worth watching. Ted Danson is great in this, too. (Met Zach once and he was already a fan of Bizarro. I peed my pants a little.)
Community (NBC) Major network sit-com, but give it a chance from the first episode. Great comedy writing and characters. Senor Chang is classic.
Raising Hope (FOX) very strange characters, Cloris Leachman is brilliant, as is Garret Dillahunt as Burt.
Children's Hospital (Cartoon Network, Adult Swim) Rob Corddry created it and stars. So weird.
Louie (FX) Louie C.K.'s avant-garde sit-com.
Modern Family (ABC) One of the funniest sit-coms to come out of a major network in ages. Ty Burrell is brilliant.
30 Rock (NBC) Entire cast is brilliant, the writing is top notch.

Drama:
Dexter (Showtime) See the first season.
Mad Men (AMC) Watch from the beginning, truly top notch. (CHNW and I ran into John Hamm in a restaurant once, got to talking and had dinner with him. Super sweet guy. This was years before he was famous. Weird coincidence.)
Breaking Bad (AMC) Possibly the best drama on TV in ten years or more. My opinion, of course. Definitely watch it from the beginning, don't just drop in on it.
True Blood (HBO) A complete lark, a guilty pleasure. Not brilliant, but tons o' fun. Could be considered a comedy, too.
Damages (FX) First season is brilliant.
Rubicon (AMC) Fairly new show, I'm really digging it. Watch from beginning, very complex plot.
Boardwalk Empire (HBO) Terrific show with the sort of long term appeal of Sopranos.
Terriers (FX) A new show that I've really fallen in love with. Great characters and acting.
FlashForward (ABC) I was really hooked on this show but I'm told it got canceled. Damn.

I used to be hooked on Keith Oberman every night, but politics sicken me and I find that I'm much less agitated if I ignore them altogether. So many crazy, frightened people in the world. I can't look any more.

There are a few others I watch but those above make up my "must see" list. Of course, it goes without saying (then why am I saying it?) that anything with Ricky Gervais is a must see. Extras on HBO (I'm not sure if they're making that anymore), the original "The Office" from BBC or whoever (the America version is good, too, but I've never gotten hooked on it because I think it pales in comparison to the British one), any talk show, awards show, or guest appearance. No one funnier in the world. Russell Brand is always worth my time, too, as is Zach Galifianakis and a few others.

Feel free to suggest your favorites. Not that I have any room in my schedule, but you never know when something might get canceled.

This post is too long. It's verging on the stupidity of all those millions of Tweets that document utterly unimportant and self indulgent information. Ick.

Oh yeah, hope you enjoyed today's cartoons.