Pale Prez

The creators of this site have done something really fun. It's a pic with invisible clickable links and voices that imagine a Sarah Palin presidency. Worth a quick visit, don't forget to move your cursor around the photo and find the hidden links.And turn your sound on. http://palinaspresident.com/

Fantasy and Science Fiction/Theory Reading Group

Last night was the annual book selection meeting for the Fantasy and Science Fiction/Theory Reading Group to which I belong. Once a year we meet to decide what the books will be for the coming year; basically everyone brings a few recommendations, makes pitches, and then we vote. It's kind of like a cage match; no one can leave until we've selected the books for the year.

It's become a tradition to use one selection for a graphic novel; four years ago we did The Dark Knight Returns; three years ago we did Seaguy & We3; two years ago we read Charles Burns's Black Hole; and this past year we read Bone.

Our graphic novel selection for next year was my recommendation, Zot!: The Complete Black and White Collection: 1987-1991.

I also got two of my prose recommendations on the slate: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett; and The San Veneficio Canon by Michael Cisco.

Our other prose selections are: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell; Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow; The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares; The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland; The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas; The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex; and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.


Our other book club, the Graphic Narrative Discussion Group, continues to meet as well. Tomorrow we meet to discuss Joe Sacco's Palestine. The selection meeting for that group will be in January.

Shootin' Thangs

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Arrogant A--hole Fashions of Beverly Hills.

I usually feature the comic that ran in papers one week previous to a given date, but I'm not that fond of the one I ran last week on this day, so I'm posting this one instead.

This was not published in Bizarro, but will be published in a Swedish comic book doing an issue about biodiversity. They asked me to do a full-page comic on the theme of endangered species and this is what I submitted.

If you're very young or extremely poorly educated, you may not recognize the literary conceit. It is from old Agatha Christie-style crime novels (Perhaps Christie invented this motiff, I dunno) where the British constable or inspector calls all the suspects from the book (or movie) into a lavish Victorian drawing room and announces he knows who the killer is and that he is in this room. Everyone in attendance gasps, the camera pans around the room as each face looks suspiciously at the others (unless it's a book, in which case there are no cameras or faces, you just have to imagine it, which is a lot of brain effort and could account for why books are less popular than movies in some areas of our country, especially the ones with large Palin rallies) then the inspector recounts the crime step-by-step and eventually exposes the killer.

At this point, everyone grabs the killer and subdues him, or he darts for a door and a bobby (British for "cop") is waiting on the other side to arrest him. This is the polite and bloodless (British for "non-American") way the British catch criminals.

If this method were tried in modern-day America, the detective would call everyone into a bleak white, flourescent-lit room full of folding chairs and lock the doors. He would shout for all the motherf-ckers to shut the f-ck up because he knows who the killer is and he's going to pop a cap in his a--. At this point, the killer would produce two large handguns and, rotating his wrists 90º so that the guns were laying over on their sides, cross his arms, jump high into the air, and shoot wildly as he summersaulted over the small group of unsavory street scum. People would scatter, guns would be drawn, flashes of gunpowder would fill the room, and a car would crash through a wall. The killer would jump onto the hood and, while hanging onto the windshield wipers with the toes of his shoes, spray the room with bullets, causing an explosion, as the car continued through the next wall, down the hall and into the street for his getaway.

If I were a cop in America, I'd start by keeping an eye on young people with unusual gymnastic skills.

Youth Burglar

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Ravages of Time. "Soon to be in a mirror near you."

This cartoon confused a few readers, though I would not have anticipated that. Part of it is my fault. By hiding the dynamite under the old geezer's chair, people assumed it meant something about death or suicide. My bad, as the kids say. For the unknowing: I put a few icons in each cartoon – pie, dynamite, eyeball, alien, K2, bunny head – and it has nothing to do with the joke. See here for deeper meanings.

Instead, the cartoon is just meant to be a simple before/after visual of what time does to us. Nothing more philosophical than that, sorry.

I recently turned older on my birthday, something that I have been doing once every year or so for most of my life. I may discontinue that practice soon, however, as I am not happy with some of the side effects.

I enjoy every aspect of aging except for the effect it seems to be having on my body. I still look much younger than I am, which is good, but I don't feel much younger, which is bad. I can now pull a muscle in my back just by sneezing. The pain lasts for days. My knees sound like gravel in a cardboard box when I climb stairs. Mysterious pains pop up in my joints for no reason and hang around for weeks.

On the brighter side, everything else about my life is better. Sex is better because I know what I'm doing. (Finally!) Relationships are better because I don't let erroneous fears and needless anxieties rule my emotions. I'm better at my job, think more clearly, am able to ignore the bullsh*t minutiae in life and see the big picture more readily. I am much more confident overall and my creative abilities and hand skills continue to improve with practice. I have also given up the hope that I may one day be able to move objects with my mind or fly without mechanical assitance.

I expect I may live to be 100, many of us in this generation will if we don't render the planet uninhabitable for humans or blow each other up first. But in the end, I don't really care how long I live, as long as the quality is good.

Of course, all bets are off if McCain steals the upcoming election.

Big Furry Feet

Today's Bizarro cartoon is brought to you by Unexplained Phenomena.

I got the idea for this gag a month-or-so ago when those two backwater Einsteins from Georgia claimed to have found the body of a "Bigfoot". It later turned out to be a ratty old monkey costume. I'll be darned.

I looked at these guys two ways: if they did it as a joke, knowing they'd get caught and just seeing how far down the road to Wonderland they could take the media and Bigfoot Believers, they were geniuses – if they did it thinking they could get away with it and be famous, they were barely smarter than their ratty monkey-suit partner.

I'm not sure why people are so fascinated with the idea of a big hairy thing running around in the woods. It must fill some common psychological need or so many people worldwide wouldn't be trying so hard to believe it, especially in the face of overwhelming odds against it.

Let's say for the sake of argument that creatures the size of RuPaul are scampering through the woods all over this planet. And not just one or two, but enough to keep the species going for centuries. And even though they are huge, hairy, slow-moving and all over the place, they've never been caught or photographed. And they have gigantic feet making them all that much easier to track and impossible to sneak around in terrain which is mostly covered with crackly dead leaves. Even if we believe all of that, to make this creature plausible we further have to believe that it is also smart enough to bury itself before it dies, so its remains are never found, in spite of the throngs of rednecks crawling through the underbrush looking.

I'm going to guess the whole thing is a myth. (If only RuPaul were.)

Invaders from another planet is another story, however. Far more possibilities, far more evidence, far more liklihood. I am convinced many have assimilated into our society and some may even be trying to make their way into our government.

On November 4, won't you help me stop them?

Global Apes

Bizarro is brought to you today by Insatiable Mutant Apes. "What can we f*ck up next?"

This is an odd cartoon that came seemingly from nowhere. In writing this blog, I began to analyze it, and myself, and have come to some conclusions about why I thought of it and why it appeals to me so much.

On the surface, I particularly like the disdainful you're-such-an-idiot look of the woman's face and body language. Okay, I admit it, I've seen that look before, and here begins my self analysis.

Some women have a way of looking at something a man does in a superior sort of "you are so immature" way that those of us with a noticeably immature side are all too familiar with. In response, we men often react with indifference or, some might say, childish impudence.

So if you're a an amateur shrink like me (or even a professional one), you'd say this cartoon is about the boyish nature of some men, and the objections some women have with it. I have occasionally had relationships with women like this, but have since learned to choose women with an equally strong inner child, so as not to be called out on it.

A side joke in this cartoon is the newspaper headline, "Global Village To Lose Idiot." This was submitted by a friend of mine from Saskatoon (which is up north somewhere), Brian Graham, whom I met during an extended stay in Costa Rica a couple years back. He and his lovely wife were in the cabin next to ours, a couple hundred feet through the jungle, and we happened to meet on the trail one day.We got to talking, he asked me what I did, I said cartoonist, he said I like cartoons what kind do you do, I said Bizarro, he said oh my holy god that's my favorite cartoon in the whole world even while I'm on vacation here I pull it up on the Internet each day because I can't live without it will you have sex with me?

So began our friendship, still sex-free after two and a half years, I'm happy to say.

But we correspond regularly and Brian throws ideas at me now and again. This headline was terrific, I thought, and it seems even more fitting to have it on a paper held by a chimp.

Ball-slinging Oafs

Bizarro is brought to you today by Firehouse Beast Adult Novelties and Gifts.

When I was a kid I loved sports, games, and just about everything about recess. Except dodgeball. I felt compelled to play because not doing so would have singled me out, but the game made me as nervous as an Arab in Alabama.

My virtues as an athlete were dexterity, agility and speed, so in activities like footraces, baseball, soccer, football, jungle gym, etc., I excelled. But even though I had a full beard at the age of 9, strength was not my forte as a grade-schooler so I was no good at slinging that giant rubber ball at high speed, the way some of my bigger, more oafish classmates were. The speed thing helped me get out of the way, but when Todd Wesley (6 ft. tall, 185 lbs in the sixth grade) would take that ball into his frying-pan hand and hurl it at the line of terrified children squirming against the wall, if my name was on it, there was little I could do to get out of the way.

Apart from the tattoo-inducing sting of Todd's missile (I think I read that line in a porn novel), once hit, you stayed "it" until you hit someone else. And there was my problem. To Todd, the ball was the size of a cantaloupe. To my much more age-appropriately-sized body, it was the size and weight of a beachball made of solid clay, so getting any velocity on it or aiming it accurately was virtually impossible. I stayed "it" longer than the bigger kids and nearly dislocated my shoulder trying to sling a winner.

As an adult, I'm still on the smaller side of average here in the U.S. Which is one of the many reasons I love visiting Central America. The average height of adults in Guatemala, for instance, is about 5 feet, so I tower over them like a Swahili in Japan. I love it. I've even managed to talk a few of them into playing dodgeball with me and it's awesome. I've tattooed many a Guatemalan with my stunning strength and accuracy. In some neighborhoods of Antigua, I am known as "El Gringo Grande."

Yeah, baby.