NEW BLOG SITE

I've moved this blog to a new site: http://www.bizarro.com/

It's got the entire archive and all my new posts will be there with the same smooth, chocolately goodness. Please have a visit, sign up, click the RSS for it, or whatever it is you do when you do that thing.

Thanks, see you there!
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4 for Fun

Bizarro is brought to you today by Walking Dead.

There is a change coming to this semi-daily blog, but it will be a change for the better and faithful readers will not be inconvenienced. I'm moving it over to Wordpress to be part of a corral of King Features blogs or something like that. I'm not sure why, really, but my buddies at KF convinced me to do it so it's moving soon. You'll be able to find it easily and I'll leave a link to it here, so don't worry about it. More later.

This first cartoon threw some readers for a loop, as my mother often says. "That really threw me for a loop!" she'd say about this thing or that. Lots of things threw mom for a loop over the years, but she's none the worse for wear, thanks for asking. The thing about this cartoon, of course, is that your brain sees what it expects to see instead of what's really there. The fun part is looking carefully, discovering the joke, then laughing at the trick your brain played on you. Proofreaders and editors will get this joke immediately and that's just one of the many reasons that people in those professions do not have as much fun as the rest of us. Don't hate them, pity them.

Spell "pharmacy" wrong and it conjures up a whole humorous picture. Writing cartoons is just that simple. Try it yourself, but until you're feeling comfortable with it, wear a helmet and protective padding. Can't be too careful these days what with the health care crisis in America.

I'm not a senior citizen yet, I think you have to be 65 or something, so I'm wondering if I'm a sophomore or a junior. What are the age limits? Are people in their twenties Freshman? If so, what are children? Besides a noisy nuisance that are lucky they're cute.

Everyone has had the "Would-you-like-me-to-take-that-for-you-so-you-can-be-in-it?" experience. Here's a true story that happened to me: A group of about six friends and I went to a restaurant for lunch one day to celebrate a birthday. Upon exiting, one of us said, "let's take a picture." So we lined up in front of the restaurant and were about to shoot when another person came out of the restaurant and said, "Would you like me to take that for you so you can be in it?" The photographer agreed, gave him the camera and joined the rest of us. As he was about to shoot, a woman came out of the restaurant and said to him, "Would you like me to take that for you so you can be in it?" He shrugged, agreed, handed her the camera and promptly walked off down the street.

The humor was in the look on the second Good Samaritan's face.

If you'd like to view any of these cartoons on groovy products, click the names below:
Prefectionist
Farmacy
Senior Center
Painting
Burqa Photo
Senior Moment

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Astronaut

I laughed.

Comedy Show!

Once again, you in the San Francisco Bay Area have a chance to see a comedy genius at work and help him pay his February rent!

Will Franken Announces:
"The Grand Opening Of A New Baby" (new one-man show)
Saturday, February 19th,
9pm
The Purple Onion
140 Columbus Avenue, SF
$20

Tix available here: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/154473

Be there or live a life without joy!
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Read This Book

I read a new novel recently that I highly recommend. It's the first novel by the most exciting writer I've read in a long while, Benjamin Hale. I happened to meet him at a literary event in NYC recently and he was kind enough to give me an advance copy of his first novel, the cover of which is pictured above. I won't say much about it other than that I was blown away, couldn't put it down, didn't want it to end, can't wait for his next book, and I wanted to have his children. That last impulse has subsided some but I'm still looking forward to his next book.

Check it out here.

Cat Diary

(Click the word "click" for a larger image!)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Valentine Wishes.

I don't often do sequential jokes but here is one now. Just look a couple of inches above where you are looking now. I don't have a lot to say about it, so let's talk about something else.

Did you ever get one of those emails that has been going around for ten years or so about the cat and dog diary? I've gotten it many times over the years, it's one of those email jokes that just goes around and around. Well, the fun thing is that it started with one of my cartoons.

I wrote "Finding the Cat's Diary" in 1995 and sometime shortly after, people began altering and adding to it to create the email joke. It's now become something of a meme, which I must admit I think is kind of cool. It doesn't mean fame or fortune – I don't get royalties on its use or even credited for the original idea – it just means that I created something that got into people's heads enough that it was passed virally to enough folks that it became generally well known. Creative people like that kind of thing.

If you Google "pet diary" or "cat diary," you'll come across dozens of sites that post variations of this theme, featuring diaries by a cat and a dog, most of which start with a few lines from this cartoon. A guy named Allen Roland even took credit for writing it on a Salon.com blog. Kind of lame. It has ended up on some products, too, for which I could likely sue. Hmmm.

I'm also proud of it because I think it's a particularly good cartoon. Hope you like it, too. If you don't, just keep it to yourself. Like most people outside of politics, I'm capable of both pride and hurt feelings.

Get groovy schwag with these cartoons on them here:
Cat Diary
Remote Control

Lustige Zeichnung

Bizarro is brought to you today by Inspirational Art.

If you're as big a fan of ruthless dictator emoticons as I am, you'll love this cartoon. It features a Hitler emoticon. Actually, I've never seen a Hitler emoticon before my friend and partner, Wayno, sent this gag idea to me. To hear him tell it, his wife thought up the emoticon and he figured out a way to make a joke out of it. Then I drew it. I'm the blue-collar in this equation. Here's Wayno's story about it, which, if it differs from mine at all is just him lying again.

Speaking of attempted genocide, let's take a cartoon visit to The South. Somebody wrote to me and said that in Mississippi, people don't say "y'all." I admit I've never been to Mississippi, but I was raised in The South and have traveled a bit there and have never come across a state where they didn't say it, so I'm going with my original premise. If you've ever lived in Mississippi, let me know the truth. History demands it.

I'm off to wrestle with the tedious details of my job as the greatest cartoonist currently living in my building. Aufwiedersehen, y'all.

Want these cartoons on fine products of a wide assortment? Click below...
Hitler Emoticon
Y'all Turn

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Cold Enough

Bizarro is brought to you by My Last Stop.

How's everyone holding up this winter? In most of the U.S. we're having record cold and snow. Brrrrrr! (That's the sound a human makes when it is cold.) CHNW and I almost moved to Maui last year but decided we were not quite ready to leave NYC. Now we're beginning to question that decision. We both look better in bikinis than in snowsuits.

Speaking of marriage, when CHNW and I announced to her parents we were getting married their response was, "Bad idea. Bad idea." Good thing I didn't ask in the traditional way. In fairness, I should mention that they now think it was a good enough idea.

On this cartoon about 4-D TV, I got a couple of emails from science types explaining to me that smell is not a dimension. Fair enough, but that's why I became a cartoonist instead of a science textbook author. I can just make crap up about anything I want and let the chips fall where they may. And there is quite a trail of misleading chips in my wake, cowboy, let me tell you.

Here's a cartoon about that person (or people) in your family that give you gifts that they think are perfect for you but could not be further off base. I once mentioned to my Aunt Sharon that I liked "kitsch art" and for my next birthday she sent me some ceramic tiles with food printed on them, the sort you're supposed to hang in your kitchen. True story. I wouldn't tell this story if there was any chance of hurting Aunt Sharon's feelings, but she's in solitary confinement now with no access to the Internet, so it's safe.

Hope you're warm and well-gifted today.

For these cartoons on groovy schwag, click below:
Marriage
4-D TV
Bunny

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Bowl Wrapup

(You can find this cartoon on fine products here.)


Bizarro is brought to you today by Just My Luck.

A quick Monday morning update for you before I commence to feverishly inking cartoons in an attempt to reduce the amount of time by which I am late on my deadline this week.

Last night's Super Bowl was a good game and the correct team won. Sorry to all my Pittsburgh readers, I love your city and people (honestly, I've visited many times and say nothing but nice things about PBgh) and I even like Mike Tomlin, the Steeler's coach and Terry Bradshaw, the Steeler's patron saint. But the last thing your current quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger needs is another Super Bowl ring. At least not until he stops abusing women. Some of you might say, "But Dan, Ben was acquitted. What happened to 'innocent until proven guilty?'" to which I would say, "You're thinking of the U.S. justice system. This is my personal blog and I'm pretty convinced Big Ben is scum."

So congratulations to the fine folks of Green Bay Wisconsin for getting to have a big parade for the guys who won the trophy for you even though none of them are from there or would live there if they were not being paid millions of dollars to do so. And congratulations to the fine folks of Pittsburgh for not having to put up with an expensive and messy parade. It really screws with traffic.

I think the halftime show was also worth commenting on. When I heard that something called "The Black Guy Pees" was performing, I feared another "wardrobe malfunction" catastrophe like a few years back. This country is still reeling from the moral consequences of a nipple being shown on television for .5 seconds and I'm not sure we could withstand another one. (If god had meant for people to be showing their filthy parts on television, we would have been born with TV cameras facing our pee pee place.) But as it turned out, this year's show was just four space people singing while quite a lot of batteries danced around the field. If the lights of your home flickered last night, that's likely why.

Even if you didn't watch the game and think football is dumb, I hope you enjoyed this post-game wrap up.
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Super Things

(If you are the person who wants to see this cartoon bigger, click the second cactus from the left. If you want to see the cartoon on fine products of many sorts, click these blue words!)

Bizarro is brought to you today by the Sacred Second Amendment.

Today is the day of The Super Bowl, the most watched TV event in American history, even more than the Civil War. Maybe you have a bulbous I.Q. and are not into sports, but for the rest of us, here is why you should watch it.

1. It's super, it says so right in the name. Our American legal system is the best in the world, even better than the Old Testament's, and we would not let them say "super" if it wasn't true.

2. It has "bowl" in the name, too, and good things come in bowls. Cereal, pudding, jello, chili, soup, cherries, goldfish. You never hear of anything bad coming in a bowl. Yak dung? Wrestler spit? Soiled undergarments? No.

3. Where else can you watch millionaires beat on each other? If you ever hear of a show where CEOs, politicians and stockbrokers are beating the crap out of each other in public, let me know because I'm in! Until then, I'll take the Super Bowl.

4. Ben Roethlisberger is the head guy on one of the teams and has been accused twice in one year of raping young women. Wouldn't it be fun to see him lose?
4.1. If he wins, though, it would be a serious bummer because I really hate him, even though I love the city of Pittsburgh and even the Steelers if he was not on the team.

5. People say the commercials are really great, but I think those people are mostly confusing the term "really great" for "very expensive and intentionally outrageous." Can anything be truly great now that Michael Jackson is dead? Seriously.

That's my TV recommendation for today. Pop back by tomorrow when I'll tell you why you should start watching the game show, "Wipeout".

In closing, here is another installment of Bizarro Readers' Pets. The photos have just been flooding in, if two pictures are a flood. This one features Schultzie, age 14 and was sent in by Cindy. The cartoon is from the mid-eighties, so old that I can't even find it in my archives.

More Snake!

Snakemommy wrote back and provided me with this scintillating video of Louise the Burmese Python jumping through a hoop, just like in the cartoon. If you missed the beginning of this story, check out my previous post! Thanks, Snakemommy!



She also reminded me that this was Louise's second appearance on my blog. Here is the first.

Snake

I'll be posting some new cartoons tomorrow but for today I offer you this photo which just came in from a reader who calls herself Snakesmommy. This is her pet python, Louise, and she is shown here enjoying a Bizarro cartoon about a trained snake act in the circus. The cartoon appears in "The Best of Bizarro" and "Life is Strange and So Are You, a Bizarro Sunday Treasury" is featured in the background. I have no background info on the blue ring.

If you'd like to send me photos of your pets with Bizarro cartoons, please do so. Who's going to stop you and why should they try? It's really none of their business.

To see this cartoon up bigger, click on the left breast pocket of the animal trainer.













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Crazy Couch

Bizarro is brought to you today by Dog Walker.

Have you ever been up sh*t creek without a paddle? (I cleverly added the * to that word so that it would be family friendly. Everyone knows that children are no good at Wheel of Fortune.)

Of course you have, we all have. And the message of this cartoon is to pay more attention to your paddle than to your wardrobe. Of course, if you're up sh*t creek without a paddle, this advice is useless. And if you're out canoeing in one of those smiley face shirts, you deserve whatever you get because everybody hates those things. Unless you're wearing it ironically, in which case you probably deserve to be visited by hillbillies, ala Deliverance. (Wow, that was bitter. I didn't know until I typed this how much pent up aggression I have toward ironic shirts.)

This cartoon about light reading is a bit of nonsense with no particular message. Unless it would be that if you find yourself bored enough to read the ends of light bulbs over and over, it's probably time to quit your job, leave your wife, and go on a violent odyssey of some sort, ala Going Native, by Stephen Wright. (One of my favorite books, but not written by the Steven Wright who is a stand-up comedian and not funny.)

As long as we're discussing my damaged psyche, let's take a quick visit to Sigmund's Couch. I quite like this old cartoon from 1997, written and drawn two years after my divorce and the most therapy-intensive period of my life. Notice you can read "ID" on the sign above the door to rhyme with "bid," which is a Freudian term! Hahahahahahah! Also notice that back then I was often drawing the cartoon outside the borders. I did it because I liked it, I stopped doing it for reasons unknown. Probably laziness.

Let's hear it from all those readers who have enjoyed psychotherapy at some point in their lives. I only go when I'm really troubled, but I have to admit I love it. Something so soothing about talking about myself for 45 minutes without fear of interruption.

If you'd like to see these cartoons on various fine tidbits of merchandise, just click the 'toon. It's fun and painless!

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Hate Humor?

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Elephant Boy.

It's been hate mail week here at Bizarro International Headquarters. I got a few letters on each of the first two comics posted here.

Several people thought that the Elephant Snowman cartoon was insensitive to people suffering from deformities and found it incomprehensible that I made fun of them in this way. I politely explained that I was not making fun of deformities, but simply finding a funny way to lampoon a famous line from a movie, David Lynch's The Elephant Man. It was suggested in strong terms that I apologize to all of the people who suffer from so-called "Elephantitis" (Proteus syndrome) and after a little research I found that there are about 100 such people living in the world today. If any of them are readers of Bizarro, I hope they understood the cartoon the way it was intended. I'm kind of guessing there aren't any but you can never be too careful.

A side note: I did not receive complaints on either of these two cartoons on the same subject. One. The other.

I thought the hate mail fest was over, but then I got a couple of letters about this spoof of the La-Z-Boy recliner. Apparently people who are related to people suffering from mental disorders, like schizophrenia, object to the term "crazy." That makes sense, I suppose, but I would contend that this is not a joke that perpetuates the poor treatment of those with mental illnesses, it's just a silly pun on "lazy". As with the PC language movement in general, I don't believe changing what people call people does much to change the way they react to them. I think it's a chicken-or-the-egg situation: the term "negro" was polite until bigots used it with enough frequency that it became a slur. "Black" wasn't derogatory when African-Americans chose it for themselves in the 1960s, it became derogatory because it has been standard for decades and bigotry is still common. Eventually, "African-American" will be thought of as derogatory as well. Etc., etc., and on and on. A large percentage of us are jerks, no matter what language we are taught to use.

For the record, I'm not a jerk. I don't knowingly discriminate against people for things that are beyond their control like appearance, ethnicity, mental or physical disabilities, sexual orientation, height, etc. I often discriminate against people for their beliefs and behavior, however. I'm a discriminating discriminator.

Looking for a smooth segue? How could you ask for a smoother one than from that last discussion to this cartoon about gay horses? I'm so glad that our government has finally joined the 21st century and repealed the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. If someone is willing to wield a gun to defend me I don't give a damn what turns them on. Of course, it won't end discrimination, but it's a baby step in the right direction.

In summary:
I apologize to victims of Proteus syndrome if my joke bothered you.
I apologize to the mentally impaired and their loved ones if my joke bothered them.
I'm a bigot toward bigots and I don't apologize.
And while I'm at it, it occurs to me that this post wasn't very funny so I apologize for that, too.

So very, very sorry for so, so much.

If you'd like to peruse many fine products with the above cartoons emblazoned thereupon, click the cartoon.

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San Fran Comedy

A good friend of mine and a damn funny/smart comedian, Brian Malow, is doing a show at the San Francisco Punch Line next week, you should go see it if you're in the area. He kills, as they say in the business.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Punch Line Comedy Club, San Francisco
Tickets can be got here for less than the cost of a cheap Halloween wig.