Saturday Night's for Fightin'

Saturday Night Live's political stuff has been stellar lately, this is one of the best of the best.

Don't Vote on November 4

Here's a terrifically clever video about what might happen if I forget to vote this year.



You can customize this video for your own friends and send it to them here.

http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/index.html?nid=Tci7HwbAbRxO.Gra4G_nrjg0NjY4NQ--&referred_by=11339408-kBYl.Px

Fun Criminals

Bizarro is brought to you today by Improper Ways to Perform the Heimlich Maneuver.

This cartoon is not from one week ago today, as is my usual habit. It is, instead, from my new book of pirate cartoons called, "Bizarro Buchaneers – Nuttin' But Pirate Cartoons."

It's the perfect gift for Xmas, Christmas, Hanukkah, Chanukah, Kwanza, Quiznos, Boxing Day, Schmoxing Day, and I'm Sorry Your Candidate Lost the Election Day.

It's cheap for a hardcover book, too, only $10. Even in this hideous economy, $10 for a gift that will keep on giving is gypsy cheap. My suggestion is to buy one for everyone on your holiday list and black out the price on the back cover. They'll think you spent a fortune. Every cartoon is in color, too.

It's available now at better books stores everywhere and lots of crappy book stores, too. Here's what the cover looks like:

Massage Message

Bizarro is brought to you today by Imported Australian Massage Oil.

As super heroes go, I could use one with mad massage skills more often as just about any other power. If someone flew through my window once a day and gave me acupuncture and massage, I'd be as happy as Lois Lane.

For those of you planning to attend that big annual Bizarro Fan Convention at which people dress like my characters or me, stand in line for hours to get an autograph, exchange meaningless minutiae about my work and get aroused at rumors of a Bizarro movie directed by Peter Jackson, here's a bit of Bizarro trivia: The b/w image below has one fundamental difference from the color one at top, besides the lack of color. Can you find it?

Yes, it is the letter on the super hero's shirt. (Unless you guessed wrong, in which case, no, it is not the [whatever you guessed])

I originally intended this guy to be named "Captain Tension," so in my pencil version, there was a "T" on his chest and the copy at bottom said Captain Tension. As I was inking it, however, I decided to change the name of the character to "Captain Neck Rub," but forgot to change the letter on his chest. I turn in my black and white cartoons on Monday and they get sent through the system and mailed out to all the client papers. I don't send the color versions in until the subsequent Friday and by that time, I had noticed my error and changed it.

Mystery solved, Bizarro officianados. Sleep well.

Jilted Lover

(Click pic to big it)
There are some fun images on this site, this one is my favorite by far.

Aliens' Life Form

Bizarro is brought to you today by Big Orange Jumpsuits. "They're free, they're mandatory, you'll wear it and like it!"

I got an email last week from someone who really loved this cartoon. She said she laughed and laughed. Common wisdom in the newspaper world is that for every letter you get, there are x number of other people who feel the same way. I'm going to pretend that number is 6 billion. That means that virtually every person on the planet thought this cartoon was funny as hell. That's a good feeling, my friends.

Does anyone out there know at what point Americans began describing all UFO drivers as looking like this guy at left? I'm guessing there was some pop culture event that depicted them this way and it caught on. The first time I ever saw this face was on this book cover, so perhaps that was it. Or, maybe the ones that began visiting in the mid-to-late 20th century actually looked like this and the notion came from truth.

What if extraterrestrials of sufficient intelligence to travel light years across the universe really did visit out planet and turned out to be one inch tall and no stronger than a cockroach? (Do we have any good reason for assuming they would be about our size?) Would we still respect them? Would our government show them around the White House and serve tiny plates to them at a state dinner?

Or would we dominate and breed them, cook and eat them, grind them up to make aphrodisiacs, keep them as pets? If, on the other hand, each creature turned out to be the size of the moon, perhaps we'd be dinner. It would be interesting to see how fundamentalists would explain this.

Luckily, as we know from the ones hiding among us, they are about our size and mean us no harm.

Drug Talk

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Maskital.

I like this cartoon for what it says about pharmaceuticals and western medicine. I'm not against all prescription drugs, I take a crazy pill to keep me level (antidepressant) and in spite of my several attempts to switch to natural alternatives and live without it, I've had to resign myself to the synthetic.

But the biggest downfall of western medicine is that it tends to treat symptoms more than root causes. This reflects human nature in general, of course – most people would rather take drugs to deal with their cholesterol than change their diet and get some exercise. (One of the popular cholesterol-reducing drugs says on their ads: "When diet and exercise aren't enough." That would account for such a small fraction of the public that I can't help but believe the slogan is there just to give people the excuse to take the drug instead of changing their diet.) Same with erectile dsyfunction, diabetes, heart disease etc. In fact, tens of thousands of Americans each year opt for heart surgery over changing their lifestyle. Wow.

I've said many times here before, veganism (as opposed to vegetarianism) cures so many of these ills that if everyone ate that way it would put big pharm nearly out of business. But to suggest such a radical, "fringe" diet to the public would be absurd! It's much less extreme to ask people to fill their bodies with chemicals than with plants. Makes perfect sense.

As for myself, I try my best to keep the root causes at bay and take as few drugs as possible. I haven't taken an antibiotic for more than ten years, I think, and the only Rx I've taken in that amount of time has been my crazy pills. Part of that is luck, of course, but a lot is lifestyle. Still, I'm not immune to the concept of masking the symptom rather than attacking the cause. I suffer from allergies and opt to take over-the-counter drugs rather than clear the city of the offending plants, for instance. I also suffer from an occasional lack of whooziness, so I sniff glue. But it's prescription glue, so it's totally safe.

Note to readers, especially kids: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SAFE GLUE TO SNIFF. DO NOT SNIFF GLUE. SNIFFING GLUE WITH KILL YOU. WHAT YOU SAW ABOVE WAS HUMOR BY A PROFESSIONAL HUMORIST. DO NOT ATTEMPT WITHOUT CONSULTING YOUR PHYSICIAN.