Eating and Partying

CHNW and I went to a fun event in NYC the other night. It was a meet-and-greet sort of thing at Moo Shoes, a very cool vegan shoe and accessories store in the East Village.

The point of the thing was to meet Sarah Kramer, a world-renowned vegan cook who puts out killer cool cookbooks.

A lot of readers have emailed and asked me how they can find out what to eat if they become vegan. Sarah's books are a really fun way to learn to exclude products derived from torture from your diet.

Fishy

Bizarro is made possible today by a grant from Daryl Hannah's ugly brother.

Mermaids are perhaps the strangest sex symbol in our culture. Even though the top half may be a beautiful woman with exposed breasts, the bottom half is a smelly, scaly fish without a vagina. How much fun could you actually have with a mermaid beyond a little high school pinch-and-tickle?

And forget about a long-term relationship. Even if she could survive on land, you'd have to carry her everywhere from the bathroom to the grocery store, which would get old faster than a fruit fly.

We always depict the mermaid as having a graceful fish body and tail, but would we find them as attractive if they had one of the bodies depicted above? Would little girls want to dress as The Little Mermaid if she looked like this?

On a related shameless-name-dropping note, Daryl Hannah once called my house and left a voice mail. I've met her a few times at animal rights/environmental events and we were conversing about some project or other via email for a while, then she called. It was really cool to have such a sexy, recognizable voice on my VM and I kept it for ages. Events like this are not particularly common in my life, so I thought I'd share it with you. She's a very friendly, natural, and cool person and spends a ton of her own time and money on these kinds of causes.

Here we are together at a fundraiser event. This pic is from back before I was vegan and looked just like John Lovitz.

Understanding Marriage

Bizarro is brought to you today by Dual Purpose Household Appliances Corporation.
This cartoon is a personal favorite of mine of late. It's simple, it's a new twist on a cartoon cliche, and it makes me smile.

I've been thinking a lot about relationships lately. Way WAY more than I've wanted to, actually. CHNW and I had a very rough year which required a good deal of counseling and self-help-book reading to survive. (Avid readers might notice I haven't mentioned her here in many months.)

We've finally turned the corner and are doing fine now, thanks, but in the process of dancing on the edge of the precipice of divorce I learned a lot more about relationships than I previously knew. Having been through a divorce in the nineties, and many subsequent months of counseling, support groups and self-help books, I thought I knew a lot. But there's always more. (For instance, I learned that modern wallboard does not stand up very well to heavy objects thrown with fair velocity from across the room.)

I've long believed that the only path to a healthy relationship is to be healthy yourself. If you're screwy in the head, you attract (and are attracted to) screwy people, and there go your chances for a sane relationship. Emotional health isn't easy to achieve, of course, it takes a lot of work on an ongoing basis and because no one is perfect (especially if you were raised by humans), mistakes will inevitably be made. Our couples counselor calls those mistakes "AFGOs". (Another F*cking Growth Opportunity)

We've all had the experience of watching friends and acquaintances struggling with their relationships. One hard and fast rule of romance that I've seen over and over again is that if the person you are in a relationship with is an irredeemable jerk that your friends can't stand, you're probably not going to succeed. At this point you should give up, do a lot of work on yourself, and head into the marketplace again with a renewed self image. I know I've said this of some of my own friends, so now that CHNW and I were the couple under the microscope, I can't help but wonder if any of our friends or acquaintances have said similar things about us.

"I always thought he was a dick, she's well rid of him."

"I've never liked the way she laughs, I don't know how he lasted this long."

"What's with that stupid hat and cigar? Does he think he's Jimmy Durante? Who is she kidding with that phony smile? It's obvious she's miserable inside. I hate both of them and hope they perish in a fight to the death." (Okay, that last set of comments came from one of her ex-boyfriends who never got over her.)

Sorry to those of you who think I'm a dick, she's not rid of me yet. And sorry to you laugh-hating hypocrites who pretended all these years to accept us as we are, you'll have to deal with it or get lost. And sorry bitter ex-boyfriend who needs to admit that he's got a serious drinking problem and is very likely bisexual, you need to put down the bottle, come out of the closet, and get on with your life.

(The "friends" mentioned in this email are fictional and are in no way meant to represent anyone that CHNW and I actually know or have dated. Any similarity between the descriptions and comments in this posting and our actual friends and acquaintances and the things they might have said, are strictly coincidental.)

Shameless Self Promotion: Video Game Archive

In case you've been wondering what's been keeping me so busy these last few months...

There's an article in yesterday's Michigan Daily (the U-M student newspaper) about our Computer & Video Game Archive: "Archive brings games old and new to students"

I've been posting about the goings-on at the archive over at my other blog, Eaten by a Grue.

Edit: Also, this interview with me just went up over at The Video Game Librarian blog.

Animation

Here is an animated video by my friend and fellow cartoonist, Ted Rall. I didn't see this until after the election, but it's still relevant and fun. According to Ted, whose editorial cartoons I like a lot, this is his first effort at animation and he'll be doing more in days to come.



And here is Ted's daily blog. He's never at a loss for controversial opinions, not all of which I agree with, but that's what Ted does best.

Name By Any Other Rose...

Bizarro is brought to you today by Heavy Objects You Don't Need on Your Foot.

I always wonder where nicknames come from. I tend to think that most nicknames are chosen by the person to whom they refer, in spite of their elaborate stories to the contrary. Did Ivan the Terrible choose his own name to make himself sound cool? Like Sting? Time for you history buffs to weigh in on the comments section.

About a year ago, I adopted a nickname for myself, but nobody uses it. It's hard to get these things to catch on. I decided to go by "Jimmy Whatagain." I don't have any special reason for it, I just like the sound of it. It makes me smile every time I say it. And the Abbott-and-Costello potential is obvious:
"Last name?"
"Whatagain."
"LAST NAME?"
"I heard you the first time, I'm not deaf. Whatagain."

One of my favorite films of all time contains a character who has chosen his own nickname and is relentless in his efforts to assure it's exclusive use. "The Dude," of The Big Lebowski is the epitome of lame characters enforcing their own cool monikers. This past Halloween, one of my daughters and her significant utter dressed as The Dude (Jeff Bridges' character) and The Jesus (John Turturro's character). You've got to love a movie wherein a hispanic character named "Jesus" pronounces it the way English speakers do and adds the prefix "The".

A friend of mine chose a really cool nickname for himself, which he uses as more of an alias than anything. Rather than picking a name that makes him sound cool, he went the self-depricating-humor route, which I admire. So here's a shout out to Richard Cabeza. As you may know, "cabeza" is Spanish for "head." Add the usual nickname associated with the name "Richard," and you're there. One of the best ever.

A Funny Film

I found humor here.