WINNER of CONTEST #6!!!

After many many many submissions with incorrect answers, the fourth comment posted with the correct list of differences belonged to one Ben Buckley. Congrats, Ben, you'll be getting five packages of Bizarro Trading Cards (assuming you live in North America.) Boy, do I envy you!

BEN, YOUR EMAIL DIDN'T WORK FOR ME FOR SOME REASON. I'LL TRY AGAIN.

As many of you know, #6 was a more difficult puzzle than the previous ones. Most of the submissions were incorrect in one way or another, and although it was posted at 6pm NYC time, by 8:30pm, I still didn't have four correct lists, and thus no winner. After I posted (and Tweeted) that fact at 8:35pm, a huge wave of new submissions came in.

Anway, here are names of the first three correct contestants, an honorable mention goes to them!:
Brian Gac
Marcello
Spyra

Below is Ben's correct list of differences. The most common error people made was missing that the border had been completed in the second image, or counting the border as three differences instead of one: top border is complete, left border is complete, etc.

Click the fuzzy little words to enlarge them.









Thanks again for playing, I'll be posting another contest next week and a new cartoon blog every day between now and then. Congrats to everyone who played, whether you got the correct answers or not. At least it kept you off the streets for a few minutes.

NO WINNER YET!!!!

AS OF 8:30PM, I STILL DON'T HAVE A WINNER FOR CONTEST #6. ONLY ONE CORRECT ENTRY YET, EVERYONE ELSE HAS HAD AT LEAST ONE ANSWER WRONG.

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED, YOU STILL HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN. I'M SUPPOSED TO CHOOSE THE FOURTH CORRECT ANSWER.

GOOD LUCK AND NO BITING.

CONTEST #6!!!

As usual, one image is the original cartoon, the warped image has been changed. Your mission, if you are heroic enough to tackle it, is to find those differences.

1. There are 15 differences between the two cartoons.
2. NONE of the differences have to do with the warped nature of the second image.
3. ALL of the differences are something missing, added, or moved, not just "bent" from the distortion.
4. FOURTH PERSON to correctly list the 15 differences in the comments section of this post wins 5 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards, mailed by me personally from Bizarro International Headquarters in Brooklyn.
5. Put your email address on your comment so I can contact you if you win. I won't post it or keep it or file it or sell it or mount a Broadway musical about it.

Click on the image to make it bigger and happy puzzling, amigos!

Frank Sex Talk

Bizarro is brought to you today by Favourites.

Let's talk about my sex life, shall we? Not really my sex life, but my inability to make the sex happen with a new acquaintance, like our friend Mr. Hornybull is attempting to do in this cartoon.

It is my impression that there exist human males who can approach females unknown to them, engage them in conversation, and end up mating with them in less than 24 hours. This is a skill I cannot fathom.

As for myself, I am hopelessly shy around attractive women whom I do not know. I find it virtually impossible to speak to a woman to whom I am attracted without a proper introduction. I feel as though no matter what my opening line is, I will come off like a desperate dweeb looking for sex. Even if I'm not. (Looking for sex – I have no control over the dweeb part.)

Fortunately for me, I have a different skill and that is the ability to lure attractive women into making the first move. I have no idea how I do it, but all of the relationships I've been in have started because someone I found attractive talked to me first. Perhaps there are women who find the desperate-dweeb-too-shy-to-talk-to-women look irresistible. Whatever it is, thank the gods of physical love that I have it. Without it, I'd still be a virgin.

I'm not saying I have any control over this ability or could make it happen every weekend if I wanted. I am not the sort of person who cruises for sex, so I've never tested the limits. When in a relationship, I am loyal and not tempted to stray and I like being in a committed relationship. So there have only been a few times in my post-high school life when I was "available" and looking to meet someone.

Women, on the other hand, don't have this problem. If a woman wants sex, all she has to do is leave the house. It's a simple matter of anthropology and evolution: men will do it with any willing female, women get to choose. (Gross generalization, yes, but mostly true.)

I hope this frank discussion of the human sex act has been informative and educational. And remember guys, when a woman says "moo," she means it. Unless she winks, lifts up her blouse and shows you her udders.

CONTEST TOMORROW, Parrot Today

Bizarro is brought to you today by Great Band Names.

If I was a shape-shifter, like "Sam" on HBO's Trueblood, I would choose to be a bird every time. Imagine being able to fly under your own power. Holy cow(bird). Of course, I'd want to be a bird with my mind, not a bird's mind. Not because birds don't have good minds (they have perfect minds for life as a bird) but I would want to protect myself from cats, hunters, traffic, the pet trade, all the sort of things birds fall prey to.

But shape-shifters have that ability, at least on Trueblood. They maintain their own consciousness, but take on the shape of a different animal for however long they want, then switch back. So cool.

The only downside to shape-shifting is the nudity. You lose your clothes when you change into another species – you could hardly imagine a pigeon flying around New York City wearing jeans and a hoodie – so when you change back, you're still naked. And you have to be careful where you leave your stuff when you first "shift" because your wallet will still be in your pants or whatever. It would be a drag to come back from your flight to find all of your stuff missing. How do you get back into your house without your keys? Naked people trying to jimmy windows are often frowned upon by neighbors.

Back to the things birds fall prey to, few things break my heart the way the sight of a bird in a cage does. I admire people who rescue parrots from "pet owners" and try to give them the best life possible given that their natural life has been ruined by captivity already, but I am dead set against people who buy birds to keep as pets. If I were a bird, I'd rather be set free than live the rest of my life in someone's kitchen window, regardless of how long I could survive in that environment. I'm always tempted to release birds I see in hotel lobbies and pet stores. Big parrots wouldn't have much of a chance, their wings are typically clipped anyway, but little finches and songbirds would probably be fine just flitting around the city eating what they can. When winter comes, they might not make it, but I can't help but believe that's a better life than prison. Some cities do, in fact, have large populations of escaped birds. Good for them.

Before my animal rights friends come down on me for encouraging behavior that might endanger innocent birds, let me say I'm just thinking out loud. I don't really know what is best for a given species in a given climate. I just know what I'd want. I'd be the Patrick Henry of birds: Give me liberty or give me death. But not in a creepy, backwoods middle America way with stockpiles of guns and a fear of socialized medicine.









I'll post a cartoon contest tomorrow at 6pm NYC time. Watch for it, play it, enjoy it. First person to post the correct answers in the comment section wins!

Zombie Minimum Daily Dietary Requirements

Bizarro is brought to you today by King of the Brain-Eating Zombies.

Followers of this blog may know that I have had a relationship with a teenage boy for a few years now. But before you go "tweeting" that, let me say that this relationship is not illicit, illegal or inappropriate in any way. He's just a funny kid who sends me cartoon ideas from time to time. His name is Victor or Vance or something, I can never remember, and he just started college somewhere on the East Coast. Or maybe Canada.

I've posted about him before and even included some pics of him and his family visiting Bizarro International Headquarters in Brooklyn earlier this year.

That's a long-winded introduction to my next point, which is that Victor suggested to me the idea of a zombie who craved bran instead of brains and I made this cartoon out of it. Thanks, Victor (Vernon?), good luck in school. (Or was it jail?)

In other news, a reader of Bizarro saw this cartoon in the newspaper (an outdated mode of communication from the 1900s which facilitates the dissemination of facts to the public) and sent me the following haiku:

The vegan zombie
Cares not for sweet grey matter
They cry out for "grains"

It's funny because it's true. Or at least I assume it is true. I'm a vegan but not a zombie, so I can only be half sure.

Until tomorrow...live each day as though it is your last (but you don't know it is your last, otherwise you might spend all your money, punch your boss in the neck, and admit to your wife that you banged her sister in the pool house at that party that one time.)

Fashion Police Report

Bizarro is brought to you today by Martian smile.

You can tell a lot about a person by the message on their shirt. And that's the point, of course. I don't often wear shirts with pictures or words on them, but I have one that I like that has a cool cartoon image of a robot. It tells people I like cartoon robots.

Other types of shirts say even more about the wearer, however. When you see a guy with a shirt that says "Free Breast Exams," you know he's a virgin and will likely stay that way. For some, of course, a T-shirt just isn't enough to get the point across. On the other hand, a woman wearing a shirt that says, "My Eyes Are Up Here," tells you that she wants to draw attention to her breasts. This sort of shirt is frequently worn by someone who cannot even remember what virgin means.

I have a good friend in NYC who has cerebral palsy and wears a T-shirt with the handicap symbol on it along with the words, "I'm in it for the parking." As you might expect, he has a great sense of humor about his condition.

I love spotting the totally out-of-place shirts. I saw an old black guy in my neighborhood in Brooklyn wearing ratty trousers, beaten up sneakers, a dirty Oakland Raiders windbreaker and a T-shirt that said, "White Goddess." T-shirts are so easy to come by that I have to believe it wasn't the only one he could find.

Some popular shirts have gone through several stages. The "I'm With Stupid" shirt, with an arrow pointing to the person next to you was a huge hit, then shirt printers started moving the arrow. The first sequel I saw had an arrow that pointed up toward the wearer's head, which was quickly trumped by this one. They may have run out of places to point the arrow, but who can say?

There are thousands of T-shirts about being drunk, which I have always found sad somehow. I like to drink, but it isn't a political cause or a religion with me. "I'm not as think as you drunk I am" is still a big seller. As unfortunate at drinking shirts are, they do perform a valuable public service, telling the rest of us to stay away from the wearer unless you're looking for a person with a poor sense of humor and a substance problem.

There are many web pages dedicated to the importance of wearing just the right shirt when you're planning to be arrested. Here are some good examples.

If you are planning to spend some time in a holding cell, this may be a shirt you'll want to avoid.

NOTE: You may notice the dapper gentleman in the background of this cartoon wearing a fashionable Bizarro Alien shirt. Get one here!