Dead Death

Bizarro is brought to you today by Exciting Discoveries!

I spent all of my blogging time today on the previous post about Ash Wednesday, so this one is short.

I don't know how good this cartoon is (I'm sure the commentators will tell me in no uncertain terms) but I was thinking one day what conclusion you could draw after finding the Grim Reaper's dead body. If you can think of a better line for the cop to use, I'm all ears.

Ash Wednesday

Since today is Ash Wednesday, I thought I'd post a short, special tribute to my ex-girlfriend and wife, Ashley, a.k.a. CHNW, whom I commonly call, "Ash."

Here she is wearing a coat that has bunny ears on the hood. She has related to non-human animals in a special way since early childhood and cannot seem to break the habit. (Anyone who makes a bestiality comment gets voted off the island.)

Here she is with a rescued fawn at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. The momma doe was killed by a car so we took in the fawn for a few days until we could find a wildlife rehabilitator. The fawn was fond of sucking on Ash's earlobe for comfort, which Ashley enjoyed, too. What a nice lady.

Here, she is very excited about a rescued calf at Woodstock, whom we named Dylan. He was found tied up inside a dark barn and was destined to be veal. That was a few years ago, now he is all grown up and the size of a Cadillac Escalade. He still comes to the fence when Ash calls him, and clearly has affection for her. She can no longer get inside the pasture with him, however, for he could accidentally crush her skull with a twitch of his upper lip. Did I mention he is large?

Here is the obligatory Ashley with chicken and donkey shot. This kind of thing tends to happen to her a lot, this time it was at Leilani Farm Sanctuary in Maui. Keen observers will notice there are two donkeys in this picture, one is pushing his nose into Ashley's butt. Who can blame him?

Here she is sharing a guava with said butt-muncher.

Speaking of butts, in this photo, Ash cleverly displays the world's largest nut, which comes from a palm tree of some sort. Since it is somewhat difficult to discern the nut from Ashley's own booty, I have included a picture of myself with said nut for proportion.















To conclude this special Ash Wednesday edition I offer this picture of Ash in a medieval helmet. This took place a couple of years ago in an Italian museum which does not employ enough guards to prevent this sort of thing.






(Special thanks to my buddy, Richard Cabeza, who's also married to an "Ash" and who reminded me of this special day.)

Sad Stereotypes

Bizarro is brought to you today by Real Live Indians.

Me: "My name is Dan Piraro and I suffer from depression."
All: "Hello, Dan."
Group member: "You're not supposed to use your last name, this is Depression Anonymous."
Me: "You're not supposed to use quotation marks in a script format, either, so sue me."

Yes, I'm a long time taker of "crazy pills," thus called because they keep me from being crazy. As such, I know full well that anti-depressants do not make a person feel the way Melancholy Wolf appears to feel in this cartoon. In truth, they just make you feel normal. Normally happy, sad, or somewhere in between, depending on the circumstance.

I was quite the melancholy wolf for many years, with unpredictable bouts of utter hopelessness and despair, as well as unbridled anger, that would last from a few days to a few weeks. I went to shrinks, I read books, I exercised, I changed my diet, I changed my life – nothing worked. It was inexplicable.

Until one of my therapists bothered to "explic" it to me and asked me to try anti-depressants. I was very hesitant, being one of those tough guys who doesn't want a chemical solution to my problems. But I was so desperate I finally agreed and within a couple of weeks, I felt normal for the first time in my adult life. Melancholy Wolf's exuberance is representative of how I felt when the cloud first lifted. I just wish I hadn't waited until my late thirties to take the plunge.

Speaking of the Injuns in the cartoon above, I was in Indianapolis recently with some Native American comic artist colleagues and learned a lot about what sort of pop culture stereotypes bother them. I suspect this cartoon might fit into a few of those categories because I didn't bother to research it.

Not all American Indians wore braids, bone breastplates, feathers in their hair, fringe on their shirts and lived in teepees, yet that is commonly how they are depicted. Sorry, guys, didn't have time to look it up, deadlines loomed. I just went straight for the easy cliche, I hope I didn't get it completely wrong.

On a slightly different note, I'm a fan of Native American names. Not all of them are bucolic monikers about nature – like Soaring Eagle and Whispering Beaver – some are more expository. My favorite name, which was in a book of photos of Native Americans from around the turn of the 19th century, is Stabs By Mistake.

Following this method of naming, when CHNW and I were first married, I dubbed her grandmother, Stares At New Guy Like She Hates Him.

Impossible World

Bizarro is brought to you today by Eat My Friends!

Here's a simple visual gag that has no deeper meaning and nothing to do with anything. Sometimes a bit of simple surrealism is good for you. It's not brilliant, but it's a smile.

What's fun about cartoons like this is that as often as not, someone will write to me in all seriousness and say something like, "I love Bizarro but I don't get today's cartoon. Is there something I'm missing? How could the prisoners dig their way to another planet?"

I never mind people asking for clarification on a cartoon and their confusion is often warranted because my cartoon was nebulous. So I'm nice to anyone who writes (unless they are being an a**hole). When someone asks a question like my hypothetical one above, I still respond politely but I admit that I laugh before I type.
And sometimes I call CHNW in from the other room to laugh with me.
And sometimes a few friends from the neighborhood.
Only on rare occasions have I posted the letter on YouTube in a video in which I appear with phony buck teeth and a fright wig, pretending to be the person who wrote the letter.

Usually I just politely explain that it's supposed to be impossible, and therein lies the humor. Or what I mistook for humor when I wrote it.

Other sorts of letters I sometimes get will be from somebody like a meteorologist who feels it his duty to point out that the earth I have drawn in the background has no clouds on the entire hemisphere shown, which is statistically impossible. For readers like this, I send my special Bizarro Anthrax Gift Basket.

Oscar Picks

My sure-to-be-wrong Oscar picks:

Picture: Slumdog Millionaire
Actress: Kate Winslet
Actor: Mickey Rourke
Sup Actress: Penelope Cruz
Sup Actor: Heath Ledger
Director: Gus Van Sant
Adapt Screenplay: Frost/Nixon
Orig Screenplay: Milk
Animated: WALL-E
Art Direction: Benjamin Button
Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire
Costume Design: Milk
Editing: Slumdog Millionaire
Foreign Film: The Class
Makeup: Benjamin Button
Score: Slumdog Millionaire
Song: "Down to Earth"
Sound Mixing: Slumdog Millionaire
Sound Editing: Slumdog Millionaire
Visual Effects: Benjamin Button
Animated Short: Presto
Live Short: Manon on the Asphalt
Doc Feature: Man on Wire
Doc Short: The Conscience of Nhem En

These picks of course reflect who I think will win, not necessarily who I think should win...

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover!

It's gorilla vs. mini van on the cover of Journal de Tintin #851 (1965?).

(Standard disclaimer about motor vehicle-hating gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)


Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

Greek Freaks

(Jonesin' for a bigger picture? Click it like a red-headed stepchild.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Zeus, King of the Gods.

What man wouldn't want to be a centaur? You'd have all of the benefits of a human upper body – dexterity, human intelligence, a good place to hang a nice shirt – plus all the benefits of a horse's entire body: speed, strength, majesty, great kicking, hung like a...

You'd have an advantage in almost any sport (exceptions: skiing, snowboarding, cycling, auto racing [not really a 'sport', per se, in my opinion] skydiving [not a 'sport' either], hockey, soccer, pole vault, diving, swimming, bowling [not a sport], tennis, racquetball.) Okay, you'd have an advantage in a few sports like football, basketball, kickboxing, baseball [maybe], and all running events. But even without sports, it would still be so cool to be able to gallop like a horse, tower above crowds, and kick the crap out of anyone who made "horse's ass comments."

Being a satyr would not be as much fun, maybe no fun at all. I can't think of many advantages of being part goat. I like goats, I just don't want to be one. Yes, satyrs have a tremendous sexual appetite and sex is often considered fun, but how many women are willing to throw down with a goat?

And pretty much nobody would want to be the third brother. No advantages there whatsoever, unless you're just really into pecking. I think that guy would need a centaur brother just to keep him from getting the stuffings beaten out of him.