Bizarro is brought to you today by Ghostbusters, 33 A.D.
My editors and I worried that I might get some negative feedback from the "Family Outing" cartoon, especially since it ran right before Christmas. Most of my readers enjoy this kind of irreverence but some are offended by anything that might cause them to have to explain something to their children that they find uncomfortable. (If you are one of these kinds of parents, drop me an email, I'd be happy to tell you how to deal with these things. The technique is called "The Simple Truth," and you'd be surprised how easy it is and how well it works.)
"Check/Background Check" is a dating gag. Nothing new to report about this one except that it is a good idea to run a background check on anyone you intend to date more than once. Especially my cousin Keith, who is a complete tool and will destroy your credit, ladies.
My "Gettysburg Tweet" cartoon got lots of positive response and I am grateful, for I, too, really like it. One reader told me I got the quote wrong, however. Apparently the correct verbage is "fathers," not "forefathers." Before I drew this one, I looked it up to get it right but then threw "forefathers" into it somehow. Maybe my brain was regurgitating part of one of the Tea Baggers favorite catch phrases. Or maybe I just slept through my 7th grade history classes too often. At the time, I couldn't imagine why a big famous rock star was going to need that info so I just blew it off.
Bizarro is brought to you today by The True Meaning of Christmas.
2. Do you like odd coincidences? Well, I sure do! I wrote this cartoon as sort of a follow-up to a cartoon I did about a "Mothman" super hero back in October. In this case, the insectarian super hero will be called on to eat a sweater that is smothering the city. (When you have stopped laughing, dry your eyes and move on to the coincidental part.) Here's the coincidental part: I wrote this most recent Moth Man cartoon in mid-November, drew it and sent it in to be published on December 15, which just happened to be the next day on my schedule. No other reason that that. Around December 1st, a couple of weeks after I drew this and a couple of weeks before it appeared in papers, I saw a movie called "The Mothman Prophecies." I'd never heard of it before, but it is about a legend that has grown around a fatal bridge collapse in West Virginia back in the 1960s. It had nothing to do with my cartoon but was sort of a fun movie and I didn't think anything about it. On December 16, the day after this cartoon appeared in papers, a woman wrote to me and said her husband lived in that small town in WV when the tragedy happened and he got a kick out of my cartoon appearing in the papers on the anniversary of the bridge collapse! WHAT?! Mothman lives!
3. Here is another gag by my friend Cliff. He's funny. How does someone in 3 B.C. know that Jesus will be born in 3 years? And I'll bet they didn't even have cartons of milk then. The whole thing is just ridiculous.
4. But wait! Here is another cartoon about expiration dates. What in tarnation? If it were possible for you to know the date of your death, would you want that knowledge? I'm on the fence about it. It would help immensely in planning your finances and career moves and you could engage in all kinds of dangerous behavior with the confidence that it wouldn't kill you. On the other hand, it would loom over you like a damp yak dangling by a thread. No matter what you did, you would never lose sight of that date approaching and even if you could forget it from time to time, you'd still be able to smell it. Hmmm.
. For those of you sitting in a jungle unaware of the holidays much of the world is celebrating this week (see first paragraph) the term "seats in the nosebleed section" refer to seats in a huge arena or stadium, way up near the top at the back. The idea is that you are so high up, the altitude will make your nose bleed. Well here are nosebleed seats of a different sort! Hahahahahahahahahahahahah!
CHNW and I are doing well, too, and have much to be thankful for this year. We finally stopped going to the marriage counselor and so we saved a lot of money! We have also found that we argue less and enjoy each other's company more since the majority of our marital strife in recent years seemed to be centered around the fact that that cow of a counselor always took CHNW's side on everything! Even when she was caught shoplifting. I mean, I think a man has a right to complain about the cost of bail and legal representation when his wife is arrested for attempting to steal a pregnancy test, which she could easily have afforded! Don't you? Especially when that man got a vasectomy 7 years ago, so she couldn't possibly be pregnant in the first place. Give me a break.
I also received news from afar that was quite a surprise. Apparently I have a son that I never knew about and whose mother I don't even remember. He lives in a part of far northern Canada that can only be reached by dogsled and is very dangerous to even attempt to get to, and it only costs him $500 a month to live there. That's pretty cheap considering it includes food, utilities, housing and transportation! I'm sending it to him until he gets on his feet, one of which was nearly gnawed off by a polar bear he startled late one evening while taking out the trash. I feel really blessed by this new relationship, not only because he is a terrific young man, but because he could easily have lived somewhere like Paris and needed way more money every month. I mean, when I was traveling in Paris in my early years, I got lucky WAY more often than when I was in Canada. Which, to be honest, I don't remember ever visiting.
Career-wise, Bizarro has had a terrific year, too. To date, I have made over $61 from the ads on my blog, which thousands of people read every day for free. Forget about the PayPal Donation button just to the right of this post, just knowing that my copious efforts give you an occasional smile is payment enough for me.
Speaking of "dodging a bullet," I was very lucky and blessed to have dodged the one fired out front of our building last October. It seems the instigator of that particular flying piece of hot lead was the girlfriend of the guy who works at the tattoo parlor on the corner. She suspected he was "fooling around" with her cousin, to whose buttocks he evidently had recently applied a "Tweety Bird" tattoo. I was on my way to the deli across the street when I heard the whole story, or her side of it at least, and the bullets began flying. One narrowly missed my left ear by the sound of the air being cleaved by it. The tattoo guy was not as blessed as I was that day, however, as she managed to blow holes through several brightly-colored carp on his chest. Now we'll never know his side of the story.
Bizarro is brought to you today by Duct Tape.
This next cartoon was drawn from personal experience. I am inordinately tall – 7' 5" – and have always had a terrible time finding clothes that fit in those Big and Tall men's shops. It could be that even at that height I am still too far out of the norm to be catered to by mass production. Or, it could be that I still have a touch of dyslexia from time to time, I am actually 5' 7", and I have no business in a Big and Tall shop in the first place. That would explain why the clothes in those shops are so baggy, come to think of it.
Bizarro is brought to you today by Snow.
Our next cartoon features the growing trend among snowpeople toward cosmetic surgery. Though exact statistics are impossible to gather, experts estimate that nearly one quarter of all snowpeople in the U.S. are using elective surgery to make themselves more attractive. Snow cones are a cheap method of breast augmentation and sales of "baby carrots" are up 130% in the past ten years, presumably to achieve a more attractive nose than the traditional full size, adult carrot. Snowmen have been known to use parsnips for penis enlargement, though their proximity to the ground have led to some thefts.
Our last cartoon documents a mystery upon a mystery. Archeologists are still uncertain as to the origins of the large stone heads on Easter Island, and even more mystified by their replacement each winter with big whopping snowman heads. Government officials have declared the island off limits to tourism during these months fearing vandalism of the heads, which are notably more fragile than the stone ones. Samples of the snow are gathered by scientists each year and guarded carefully as they look for clues to its provenance. Theories of the origin of the frozen craniums range from intervention by extraterrestrials with a juvenile sense of humor to ghosts of the children of the indigenous inhabitants who erected the stone heads visible throughout the rest of the year.
