Happy and Erect Fourth!

Bizarro is brought to you today by the Phallic Police.

I'm not a doctor, but I saw one on TV. So I feel fully qualified to say that I'll bet 90% of so-called "erectile dysfunction" is caused by poor blood circulation brought on by fat in the viens caused by a crappy diet. We eat garbage and too much of it, then complain because it ruins our bodies, then drug companies design a work-around so you can have your chili cheese fries and boner, too. Until you drop dead, of course.

So instead, let's address Independence Day. I was fortunate to grow up in a less civilized place and time when it was both legal and socially acceptable to hand a grocery bag full of explosives to a child and send him outside to play. My siblings, cousins, friends and I did this each year, blowing up our toys, the local flora, items from the trash, and occasionally each other. Sure, an occasional finger or eye was sacrificed to "independence," but what good is a democracy without some wounded veterans?

As teens we graduated to bottle rocket fights, which entailed making a "gun" by attaching a handle of some kind to a piece of plastic pipe, loading a bottle rocket into the pipe, lighting it, pointing it at your opponent, and laughing as they ducked the airborne incendiary. Large groups of us would go to an industrial park or gravel pit, divide up into two armies and shoot at each other till we ran out of ammo. Casualties were anonymously deposited on their parents' front porch and most people just chalked it up to another teen lost to the cause of freedom.

Now, thanks to the godless, homosexual girlyman liberals, there are laws against explosives inside city limits and children are not allowed to leave the house without safety helmets and proof of insurance. I wonder how we expect to defend our way of life in the future if youngsters are not accustomed to working with explosives.

I never thought I'd live to see this day (with my one good eye.)

One Man's Pants, Another Man's Pariah

Bizarro is brought to you today by Athletes in Love.

I've long been amazed by baggy pants fashion. When it first began (back in the early nineties?), I laughed and felt secure in my predictions that it would not last very long. Apparently, I'm no Nostradamus.

As open minded as I like to think I am, I cannot even pretend to understand it. First and foremost, it is uncomfortable to have one's pants falling down all the time. At the very least, you've got to constantly hold them up somehow or you'll trip over them, and god forbid you should have to take off running. It is the sole reason belts and suspenders were invented, for instance. So you could run away and have both hands free for waiving frantically in the air. I am reminded of a scene from a movie I saw once where an outhouse was set afire while a person was in mid-business. He burst out of the door at top speed but only made it a few feet before his chin hit the ground.

Apart from the inconvenience of having to monitor your pants falling off is the obvious ludicrousness of it being the "style" to show your underwear. What has for centuries been the cliche nightmare of people the night before a public speaking engagement, is suddenly the height of cool. When did this happen, exactly? Was I out of the country?

I've done a few cartoons over the years about this topic but I'm still not tired of it. Fifteen years after the trend began, guys are still hobbling around New York City like bowlegged penguins, trying to keep their gigantic pants from falling below their knees, so I'm still drawing cartoons about it. But just when I thought I'd seen the most absurd trend my cockamamie species could possibly concoct, I discovered a behavior even more ridiculous: the passing of laws against it. Apparently, some communities are actually fining and jailing people for a fashion. I won't argue that baggy pants and exposed underwear is an eyesore, but verboten by law? What part of the world do we live in again?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm not saying I'm a big fan of really tight pants, either, just so you know.

My Ass and Yours

Bizarro is brought to you today by Budget Colonoscopy.

Now that I'm 50, I'm supposed to periodically pay a stranger to probe my rectum with a garden hose. I'm referring to what the strangers in this business call a "colonoscopy," of course. Yes, it can save your life, but yes, it can also give you nightmares for years. Plus, it is expensive.

It would be hard enough to force myself to make this appointment and do all the revolting things necessary to achieve the "end" result, if it were free. (Like eating nothing the day before, drinking sludge to make you poop like a rabid camel for 24 hours, jet propulsion-strength farting and pooping after the garden hose is removed, etc.) But on top of the insult and injury involved, they also insist you pay them large quantities of money.

Since I'm self employed, I have no discount health insurance plan through work, so I'm forced to pay these things out of my own pocket at insurance-company prices, or pay the equivalent of a luxury car payment to an insurance company every month just in case I one day need it. It's legalized extortion.

I'm rooting for Obama's universal health care thingy, but I'm not holding my breath over it. That activity is reserved for hoping I don't have butt cancer. Lifelong vegans virtually never get colon cancer, but I've only been eating that way since 2002. Apparently all the carcasses I consumed for the previous 40+ years can have a residual effect and literally come back to bite me on the ass.

Since this was a fairly dark posting, here is a funny picture to pick you up.

Pedestrians of Note

(For the making of a larger cartoon with the easier reading, click the third toe of the fourth foot from the left.)

Today's Bizarro cartoon is sponsored by Baby Man.

This cartoon was inspired by the ugly building that is going up across the street from Bizarro International Headquarters here in Brooklyn. There used to be a charming, old, three-story red brick warehouse from the late 19th century, but the owner tore it down and is erecting a hideous condo building. If the architecture were at least interesting or tasteful I would not mind so much, but the monstrosity he is erecting will be twice as tall as the old building and utterly odious. A couple of floors are finished, and now that I can see the "style" of the building, I pray for the 50-foot woman to stomp it into dust. Or Godzilla, though he does not have a skirt up which I could look from my vantage point across the street. (Of course, a 50-foot woman probably has an 8-foot "schnootzer," and that might be even more frightening than Godzilla.)

I know the man who owns the land and he is a nice enough guy. But he's one of these people who hasn't an ounce of interest in asthetics. To him, "a building's a building." When a person doesn't even recognize the difference between an ugly building and a beautiful one when it is pointed out and explained, as I once did for him, you don't have much of a chance.

Of course, at this very moment, he may be writing on his blog that he knows a guy who doesn't recognize a huge profit margin even when it is pointed out and explained, and that my investment portfolio is odious.

The obvious difference is that I am not erecting a six-story reminder of my lack of financial skills across the street from his home.

Pursuit of Paradise

Bizarro is brought to you today by Parenting Made Simple.

Yes, it is a political cartoon I have posted here.
No, I do not feel like getting all political today.

Instead, let's talk about the weather. Here at Bizarro International Headquarters in New York City, it has been raining most of the time for weeks. The entire month of June was shot to hell by rain and colder-than-average temperatures. I feel like I'm trapped in Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. I really must move to the tropics somewhere. Problem is, they don't have a New York City anywhere down there.

I have tried wishing that the Dutch had built NYC somewhere in the Caribbean, but it doesn't change history and I'm still stuck in colder climes. In the end, it comes down to my deciding what is more important to me: culture or climate?

I lived and traveled in the south for several decades before I moved to NYC, so I have plenty of experience from which to make my decision. Even with the hot, sunny weather I crave, the general cultural and political attitudes of the southern U.S. do not suit me. In fact, at times they depress me as much as the weather in NY, especially now that I have known what it is like to live here, in a liberal, creative, open-minded, international community. And though I adore more exotic places like Central America and the Caribbean, they are too small and rural to quench my desire for the big city.

This makes it an easy decision. Culture is more important than weather, the way personality is more important than looks when choosing a spouse. Though both must be in the right ballpark, a great personality and average looks go much further in a relationship than a beautiful exterior wrapped around a sock puppet. If you can find both, as I have in CHNW, you are doubly blessed. (Just checking to see if she is reading my blogs. I'll let you know in a few days.)

There are two answers to my pathetic, meaningless, spoiled white-collar dilemma: become wealthy enough to have another home in a warmer place where I can spend the winters, find a way to embrace the weather in NYC and stop being a whiny brat.

I think we all know which of those choices is available to me.

FURTHER: I left the West Coast out of this mix because although I like San Francisco as much as NYC, it tends not to be any hotter or sunnier in most ways. I love the weather in L.A., but not the city. San Diego is too conservative, and that's pretty much all the big cities to choose from. Seattle and Vancouver seem cool, but the same weather problems. Such a whiner.

A Lot of Bull

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Skaters In Love.

The basic concept for this cartoon came from my young protege, Victor, who has been sending me ideas since he was about 14. He's got some great ideas, especially for his age, and I've drawn a dozen-or-so of them in the past five years or whatever. I forgot how old Victor is now.

I like cartoons that lead you to think through the punch line and this is one of those. Of course, you have to have heard the expression, "like a bull in a china shop," to get the joke, but I think people still say that, don't they?

I often wonder where expressions like this come from. Who first thought of placing a bull in a china shop to illustrate destructive clumsiness? Did someone say it in a pub in Llanidloes, Wales in the 17th century and it spread slowly by word of mouth from there? Or was the expression published somewhere and catch on more quickly? There's probably a web site that explains it, but who's got the time to dig that up right now? Not I.

For the record, I think bullfighting is the most heinous and barbaric of sports still being practiced in the civilized world. Parts of Spain are finally outlawing it, and it's about time. Others are decrying the loss of a "tradition." Slavery, rape, pillaging, and throwing virgins into volcanoes are traditional human activities, too, but I'm not shedding any tears over their loss. Not that they are completely gone, but at least we're not still televising them or featuring these activities in the travel section of the Sunday paper.

As you might surmise, I root for the bull.

Chase Me Out to the Ballgame

Bizarro is made possible by a grant from the Tossing Dirt on the Reaper Foundation.

Since I'm a groovy hip artsy type, people are often surprised to hear I'm a sports fan. Sorry if you are disappointed, not all sports fans are numskull beerbelly boobs like Joe the Plumber. In fact, the dude who lives across the street from me here at Bizarro International Headquarters is a college professor of some high-minded socialogical something-or-other, and he's an even bigger sports fan than am I.

I have always been athletic, I have good genes for that in all ways but size. So I played a lot of sports as a kid and learned to love it, but as I got into middle and high school, I was not behemoth enough to leave the bench in my various coaches' opinions, so I stopped trying out for the school teams. Additionally, I began to come into my own as a groovy hip artsy type and many of the other athletes began to come into their own as frankensteinian meatheads who cared about little more than sports. So we parted ways.

Though I love to watch sports, hockey is my favorite with American football a firm second, I loathe to watch a single athlete or coach being interviewed. I love the entertainment value of watching physically skilled humans exhibit amazing feats of athletic prowess, but when it comes to what's between their ears, I am always bored stiff. I have no doubt that some professional athletes are bright and creative, I just don't have the patience to wade through all of the "Joe Sixpack" simpletons to find them.

It is remarkeable how far we've come as a society, however. Just a couple of hundred years ago mobs of torch-bearing villagers hunted down mutants and murdered them out of fear. Now we dress them up in flashy jerseys and award them with multi-million dollar paychecks for slamming into others of their kind. It makes a human proud.

DISCLAIMER: Not all athletes or sports fans are idiots, maybe not even most. I said that above, so let it go. But let's face it, a lot of them are.
My pride in how far our society has come is largely facetious, as we still hunt down women's healthcare providers, homosexuals, atheists, etc. We have replaced torch-bearing mobs with Fox News, but you can't really call that progress.

Mythology Humorolgy

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Men's Hats.

One of the many things I wondered about the Bible as a youth was why god is always referred to as a "he." The pronoun denotes gender specificity, which means god has a penis. Why does "He" need a penis if he neither urinates nor reproduces biologically?

Could it be "He" is not literally male, but just representing himself as such so we may relate to "Him" better? If that is the case, the whole "trinity" issue seems ill advised. How can three men (or two men and a ghost) be one man simultaneously? Whether they have penises or not, that's not very easy to relate to.

Another PR conundrum is that the Old Testament says Jews are the "chosen people." If "He" created all of the myriad types, groups, ethnicities, and nationalities of people on earth, why choose any one specific group to be your favorite? Seems unfair and a bit contradictory.

So the god of the Bible is male and likes Jews best – let's think about this. Maybe the answer is right under our noses. Maybe it is because male Jews wrote the Old Testament. Hmmm.


DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against Jews, this post is simply making a point about believing the Bible literally. I have many Jewish friends and neighbors and regard them on an individual basis, just like anyone else I meet. Bigotry against any group is deplorable.
DISCLAIMER 2: I have nothing against the Bible or any of the thousands of other religious texts around the world. I think interpreting any of them as the literal word of god is unwise at best, dangerous at worst. (See Jihad, Crusades, Fred Phelps)
DISCLAIMER 3: I have nothing against men or penises. Mine has long been my favorite organ.

Must See TV

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by the New GM.

I've complained about reality programs here before, but I guess I'm not finished. I simply cannot believe the sort of drivel people will waste their precious time on this planet watching.

I recently found out about a show called Jon & Kate Plus Eight. It's a reality show about some people with eight kids. And?

I can think of few things worse than having eight children in my house at one time, even for an afternoon. The idea that they have nowhere else to go until they are 18 makes me want to kill myself. Why would I want to watch other people suffer in this way? Are there enough people with chronic schadenfreude to make this show so popular?

If a film crew were living with an old woman with unabating depression and painfully swollen feet, and followed her as she struggled to the store once a week to buy cat food for her 8 tabbies, would these same people watch it? Now she's watching Wheel of Fortune. Now she's making a chicken salad sandwich. Now she's struggling to the bathroom. Will the rewards never end?

And now a cartoon by a good friend of mine, Ruben Bolling, about Jon & Kate Plus 8. And here is Ruben's blog. And here is a page of previous "Tom the Dancing Bug" strips for you to enjoy. And here are his socks.

The Horror

Today's Bizarro is brought to you buy Tough Money.

Don't get me started about airlines. Too late, I'm started.

I used to love to travel, but between the absurd pricing structures of airlines and the idiotic ritualistic voodoo practices of the T.S.A., I can barely stand it.

This cartoon got a good amount of mail from people who so closely resemble one side of the cartoon or the other that they were sure I was behind them in line at the airport. The simple reason is that this happens all the time.

Tiny people pay extra for a bag weighing two pounds more than a gigantic person's bag, because the airlines need to charge for "extra weight."

I've never bought jet fuel, but I'm sure it is very expensive and the airlines would like to charge more for extra weight. Fine. Can't blame them. But if they attack the problem where it really exists – in the seats of coach, not the luggage compartment – there would be discrimination lawsuits-a-plenty. Some people can't help being heavy (some), no argument here. But does it give them the right to be charged the same when they are consuming more services?

What if they charged per pound for luggage and passengers alike? It takes more fuel to fly a 300 lb man across the country than it does to fly me at less than half the weight, so he'd paying the same amount for goods and services, but since he consumes more, the price is higher. He pays the same for food as I do, but he consumes more. We aren't charged the same per meal in a restaurant, even though I am ordering 1/3 as much as he, so why the airfare inequity? There is no logic to elven folk (like my wife and I) being charged $25 or more for a bag that weighs five pounds more than King Kong's.

But the air travel shenanigans don't end there.

Once you've been fleeced by at the baggage counter, it's off to the security line where you're forced to take off your shoes even if they are flip-flops (because security employees can't be trusted to discern between a thin piece of foam rubber and platform boots full of nuclear weapons), you're only allowed to bring the amount of liquid that will fit into a 3 oz. bottle and only as many of those as will fit into a magic-sized bag (because no one would ever think to team up with someone else and combine their explosive liquids on board), you can't bring a 3 oz. bottle of alcohol on the plane because that's a "security" violation, (but wait, they sell that stuff on board! Does the T.S.A. know this?!), and you can have four 3 oz. bottles of liquid in your magic bag but not one 12 oz. bottle (you can't expect all T.S.A. employees to carry calculators to do the math, right?), and if you're wearing a T-shirt with a long-sleeved garment over it and that garment has buttons it's a "shirt" and can be worn through the metal detector, but if it has a zipper (even a plastic one), it's a "jacket" and must be taken off. Sure, makes perfect sense.

But at least we're "safe."

Once you get to the plane and take your seat, you find you're sitting next to the gigantic guy with the "free" luggage and his girth is hanging over the armrest, so your personal space has been diminished by 10%, even though you paid more to fly.

Then the plane is late to Atlanta (always avoid Atlanta!) and you miss your connecting flight and have to stay overnight, but it was because of "weather," so the airline doesn't have to pay for your motel room.

Then you wake up at 5 a.m. to catch the first flight of the day, put on the clothes you were wearing the day before because you have no luggage, and rush off to the airport in the dark.

You make the flight, it crashes on landing, you're the only survivor and you spend a fortune on therapists for the rest of your life.

And your cat peed on your bed because you were late getting home.

I may never leave the house again.

Captain Canada

Today's Bizarro cartoon has been brought to you by Samurai Hitler.

To my surprise, this cartoon attracted some of the most vehement hate mail I've received in a long time. I suppose I should have seen it coming, but to me the joke is an innocuous take on the feeling so many Americans have had in the past eight years of being anywhere from embarrassed about our government, to afraid of retribution from others while traveling abroad. We progressives joked regularly about disguising our citizenship while out of the country and some actually did so with Canadian patches on their backpacks, etc.

To be brutally honest, I think that people who find this cartoon to be offensive have a very childish view of patriotism. I can't find the exact quote, but Al Franken said in one of his books that conservatives love their country the way a toddler loves his mother: she is always right, she can do no wrong, and god help anyone who speaks against her. A liberal loves his country the way adults love each other: you support them and want the best for them so you are not averse to offering constructive criticism, putting your foot down when they misbehave, and refusing to be abused by them. (Al said it much better but you get the idea.)

Some of my favorite quotes on the subject:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. – Edward R. Murrow

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. –George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. –George Jean Nathan

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. –James Baldwin

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross. – Sinclair Lewis


As for me, when America is contributing to the welfare of its citizens and the world, and upholding the principles on which it was founded, I am patriotic. When it is invading sovereign nations on false premises, torturing its captives, and robbing its poor to feed the rich, I'm ashamed of it. Your results may vary.

I promise tomorrow's post will be funny instead of serious.

More is Never Enough

Bizarro is brought to you today by Art Cruelty.

I think this cartoon is funny. I don't shop at places like Costco because I have no need for enormous quantities of products at low prices. If I were responsible for feeding a penitentiary full of inmates or a didn't know where babies came from and just kept reproducing, I suppose I would. I won't say I've never been to one of these monstrous markets, but I will say it wouldn't bother me if I never was again.

I'm uncomfortable with this kind of consumerism and what it is doing to our planet, but that's just me. As a reader of this blog told me recently, "you can always tell a liberal, but you can't tell him much." I could describe her the same way, of course, but whatever.

Even without the political sermon, I like this cartoon. Big chaw and a 4000-foot lariat make me smile.

Deer John

(Click image for a larger, clearer, more satisfying view.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Cool Cops.

I used to go hunting with my dad when I was a kid and I admit that I really loved it. It wasn't the killing of animals that I enjoyed, it was the "man time" with my father that made it great. And, of course, the challenge of hitting a target appeals to a kid the same way a video game does.

As an adult, I have no tolerance for hunting for reasons other than immediate survival. Hunting in modern society is simply killing for fun. I can think of few things more reprehensible, with the possible exception of being a reality show producer.

From my current perspective, however, buying dead animals at the market is no better and arguably even worse. At least wild animals have a decent life before they get snuffed. The corpses in the deli case at the market were miserable from birth to slaughter. Since we don't need to eat flesh for health or survival, our only excuse is that it tastes good. It is difficult to argue that killing for flavor is any better than hunting for fun. We're just paying someone else to do the dirty work.

Sermons aside, I wrote this gag because I am a fan of cartoons that look like one thing but are revealed to be something different upon reading. I write those kinds of jokes every chance I get. The art on this one was fun to produce, too. Achieving the colors of twilight in the woods and the beam of the car's headlights was a kick. I like the way it looks on computer, but newspaper printing processes are not nearly as bright so this cartoon looked darker and murky in print. With something like this, it's impossible to get both to look good.

I hope you have enjoyed the few seconds you have spent reading my little blog. If you would like to read other entries, please do so now.

American Genius

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Peace of Mind.

I got an email about this cartoon from a reader who wanted to inform me that "just because something is a conspiracy theory does not mean their aren't real conspiracies." Even though this person went on to identify himself as one of those meatheads who believes Obama was not born in the U.S. and is turning the country socialist, you can't argue with logic like that.

Along the same line of thinking, just because a TV network tells you it is a "news" channel, does not mean it is reporting facts. And just because that network claims to be "fair and balanced," does not mean it isn't demonstrably controlled by a political party attempting to control your behavior, take your money, and poison your environment. And just because that network's comical tag line is "we report, you decide," does not mean that you have much choice in what you decide based on their reporting. Sort of like the magician who says "pick any card," but always manages to get you to pick the card he wants you to have.

So thanks to the reader for alerting me to the existence of "real" conspiracies and for reminding me that there are always a handful of angry, uneducated, bigoted nitwits you can convince to waves signs and throw teabags while complaining about rising taxes when their own rates have been untouched for 16 years and are about to go down.

Fortunately for the rest of us, their numbers are lower at the moment and relatively few people showed up for the comical Fox-Network-GOP-instigated-and-promoted "grass roots" tax revolt last Wednesday. I have little faith that their numbers will continue to dwindle, but for the time being, the desperation of the GOP and its "news" network is humorous to watch, anyway.


DISCLAIMER: This blog is not intended to insult educated conservatives who mourn the loss of their party to the neo-cons.

Apptitude for Driving

Bizarro is brought to you today by Future Serial Killers.

One of my business partners and closest friends habitually texts while he drives. He sends long paragraphs of information – some of it business related, some of it random musings – disjointed, short, sentences full of misspellings, all sorts of things. I have admonished him on numerous occasions and even refused to answer his texts when I know he is driving, but the habit is one he cannot seem to break.

I have tried to mentally prepare myself for the call I know will eventually come… "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Dan, but Buzz has had an accident." (No, his name isn't really "Buzz," but I call him that to tease him about his other strange [but less dangerous] habit of shaving his entire body daily. At least he doesn't do it while he drives. That I know of.)

Buzz is also hooked on iPhone apps, so this joke is entirely aimed at him. The only thing I didn't do was make the character resemble him. Buzz is so disturbing looking that it would have distracted from the joke and confused readers. Meet Buzz (unshaven).

So please – if you're a good person who contributes positively to the world, don't text and drive. The rest of you can do what you want, but please keep your car off my balcony.

Curmudgeon Cartoonist

Bizarro is brought to you by Classic Messiah Pranks.

I think I've ranted about GPSs on this blog before, so I'll skip it today except to say that I like the GPS on my iPhone precisely because it has no voice. I find noises very distracting. With a talking GPS, I am habitually telling it to shut up.

I have a lot of bugaboos like that, mostly to do with sound. I love music, but I can't stand to hear music from a source other than my own doing. Like if I can hear a neighbor's stereo, or a car is parked outside with the radio blasting. (In Brooklyn this happens a LOT. Loud car stereos are the mating call of the local species.) Even if it is a song I like, which is virtually never because I'm really picky about the music I like (surprise), I still find it irritating and drift toward thoughts of violence or at least a water cannon.

I think I am unable to ignore sound. For instance, I cannot read in public unless it is quiet. If people around me are talking, I can't NOT hear them, no matter how riveting the book is. Even if I'm not reading, I can't stand to hear other people's conversations. It drives me nuts. I want to tell them to shut up, nobody cares where Robert went on his vacation last year and whether or not he would recommend the hotel he stayed in. In NYC this happens a lot, usually on a bus or the subway. You're right, I should probably live in a suburb or out in the country somewhere, but it's just too boring.

Car alarms make me want to learn to use explosives. People are so used to ignoring car alarms, how could they possibly thwart a theft under any circumstances? So you hear a car alarm and see a guy fumbling with a car door: you root for him to succeed and disable the alarm, or at least drive the car away.

These irritants are becoming worse lately, perhaps it is age. I prefer the term "curmudgeon," but I think I may just be an a**hole.

SPECIAL COMMENT: Thanks for all the caption submissions on yesterday's post. Many of them were funnier than the one I had originally written. Now I'm reticent to divulge it. Suffice to say that many of you have my silent respect.

Nature's Candy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Fair Warning.

Simply put, some people care about their health, some don't. You can preach till you're blue in the face about health and nutrition to some folks and it just doesn't matter. That's fine, I don't really care if other people are healthy or not. I figure diet is just another type of natural selection.

If you happen to care about your health, however, what you eat is the single most important area of focus. Fill a Lamborghini with high quality fuel and you've got a race car. Fill it with corn syrup, it's up on blocks.

Most people know by now that corn syrup is bad for you. It's not because it's full of cancer-causing chemicals (like grilled chicken) as much as that it is incredibly fattening and it is in virtually all processed foods. Even stuff you might think is good for you.

Other things to eliminate from your diet or eat in moderation: nails, glass, burning coals, explosives, plastics, battery acid, batteries, animal protein, lead, mercury, urine, cyanide, turpentine, anything Rush Limbaugh eats, road signs, scissors.

I'm a vegan but I'm not a huge health nut. I enjoy the health benefits of a vegan diet, which are numerous, but I am vegan for ethical reasons (animal compassion, environment), not for my own health. I stay away from products with corn syrup because I like being thin, but it does not contain animal products, so it is technically vegan. Some people assume veganism is a starvation diet and we're all thin. Not true. I know plenty of vegans and they come in all sizes from shoestring to blimp. Soda pop, french fries, peanut butter – all vegan, all fattening.

True, vegans are less likely to be overweight than the average American who eats anything that tastes good, but that is more because they are already paying close attention to what they eat so they tend to eat healthier. Animal products are inherently more fattening than plant products, so you're already halfway there just by cutting those out.

A blog reader brought to my attention a commercial about corn syrup that has been parodied to humorous effect. Here is the original:



Here is one of the many spoofs (there are other good ones, too, check them all out):


Here is a boring but true video about corn syrup's actual health benefits and dangers:


DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against corn in it's natural state–it is good for you, in spite of what some carb-o-phobics will tell you. I am not making fun of Rush Limbaugh because he is fat–there are so many things wrong with him that I cannot possibly list them all here. I am not making fun of fat people in general, unless they are fans of Rush Limbaugh. If the videos above don't work, go to YouTube and search "corn syrup commercial." I eat french fries and peanut butter in moderation, they are two of my favorite things to put in my mouth.

Thou Shalt Not Teal

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Ghostbusters.

This is a simple visual pun switch-a-roony gag that refers to the NFL team from Jacksonville. For the unsporty, they're called the Jacksonville Jaguars and their colors are teal and something.

This is one of the only times you'll see the color teal featured so prominently in Bizarro as it is one of my least favorite colors in the world. This is distinct from the color I call turquoise, which has more blue in it and is a terrific color. The color I hate is the one with more green, the one that appeared on tons of new cars back in the late 80s or 90s, and is still used for clothing and such. Blech.

The 1960s Jaguar XKE, however, are one of my favorite sports cars ever, not that I'm some kind of a sports car junky who drives around in a $100K car. I ride a 1980 Vespa scooter and don't own a car (nor can I afford a classic Jaguar) but I'm not unable to appreciate beautiful design.

I thought I might hear from some football fans when this was published, but instead I got a number of emails from Jaguar clubs who wanted to share this cartoon with their membership in newsletters and web sites and such.

What are your favorite sports cars and least favorite colors?

Pied Piper, Paid Paper

Bizarro is brought to you today by Bizarro Tributes From Around the World.

The cartoon at left is what I originally wrote and wish I had published. But when I sat down to ink the idea, I decided for some lame reason that it would be better to have both the therapist and the patient sobbing because we're all up this creek without a paddle together (Paddles stolen by W, boat built by Haliburton, leaking profusely), so I drew and published the version below.

As soon as I saw it in print, however, I wished I had gone with my original instinct, which is a quieter, drier joke. Bummer.

As for the idea itself, I am a great admirer of BaRockStar Obama and think he is exactly the right person at the right time. (Although 8 years ago would have been an even better time.) One of the things I admire most about him is his courage under fire. The guy stays cool against unimaginable odds, when everyone else around him is pointing fingers and screaming like children. No matter how much petty political nonsense his opponents throw at him, he takes the high road and sticks to the issues. In the long run, I hope that the juvenile culture of Washington politics will grow up a bit and take a couple of steps toward his end of the spectrum. I don't expect it, I just hope.

Meanwhile, I thought it might be funny to depict him breaking down and sobbing under a couch in the privacy of a therapy session. I know I would.

Impaired Humor

(You can click the picture and it will become un-small.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Shark Week.

From where I sit inside my own head, there is almost no article of clothing more unappealing than the track suit. What is even stranger than the thought of someone thinking they looked good in this kind of color-coordinated baggywear, is the connection, or lack thereof, of the primary groups who wear them.

The fashion track suit is mostly the domain of three distinct groups: the tacky suburban house frau, goombas like "Paulie" from The Sopranos, and hip-hop-happy urban blacks. How did these three groups become members of the same fashion trend?

I don't know when urban blacks began wearing these eyesores en masse, but my guess is that some iconic fadster like Sean "P. Duddy" Combs (Piff Daddy? Pap Doodly? P. Poopy?) decided he could manufacture a lot of them very cheaply in Asia, slapped his name on it, then wore one in public. Once the hoards saw him in one, they had to have one, too. A simple sheep/shepherd equation. Pup Dabby gets rich(er); millions look like walking laundry bags.

The habit among suburban soccer moms grew from a more utilitarian seed, I suspect . They're chasing their crotch fruit around 24/7 and have given up caring about the way they look. Their bodies aren't what they once were and these baggy rainbow parachutes hide that (sort of.) They need something that won't wrinkle when they pass out on the couch from gin and pain pills at the end of the day. It also doesn't hurt that these velour body bags have a built-in contraceptive effect–their husband has to be in a very bad way before he'll come on to woman dressed like Puff Dippy.

Jersey gangster types are perhaps the most puzzling. These are middle-aged, white, often Italian men who are not slaves to hip hop fashion by any means, and not worried about contraception or the shape of their bodies. They are, however, overweight and lacking even a shred of aesthetic aptitude. Perhaps that is where the secret lies. A man in this position is looking for clothing that will both adjust to his constantly morphing waistline and give him plenty of freedom of movement in his daily activities: threatening, extorting, wacking, eating sausage.

Regardless of the reasons, it is odd that one could accurately structure a Jeopardy! question thusly:
"Soccer moms, gangstas, and hit men."
"What are three groups that dress alike?"

In other news, I made another mistake that I would like to share with you. In the title panel for this cartoon, I looked up the sign language alphabet to spell out "Bizarro." Evidently, I looked at the wrong sign for "R" and used the one for "S" instead, a mistake brought to my attention by several readers, so my original title panel spelled out "Bizasso". The original and the corrected version (for future use) are below.