Marsupial Interpretations

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Steroids.

I've never reached into a kangaroo's pouch and I don't recommend it to others. In doing so without invitation, you run the risk of offending the pouch's owner, thus inclining her to use her formidable legs or tail to remove your appendage from her hidey hole. I feel certain that the youngster in this amusing sketch escaped with nothing short of a dislocated shoulder.

Still, who can blame the child? She is an average, curious lass of the 21st century First World and as such, has not seen a slot such as this in anything other than a hand puppet. She only wanted to make the funny puppet dance.

But perhaps we are missing the point. It could be that the young lady is, in fact, manipulating a giant puppet and using her ventriloquistic acumen to make it appear to ask her to stop. This is a sophisticated child indeed, with an impressively eccentric sense of humor.

Or perhaps the child only perceived this scene while visiting a petting zoo after sampling wild mushrooms in the park. Who among us can say we have not thrust our arm into places it did not belong under similar circumstances?

Curmudgeon Cartoonist

Bizarro is brought to you by Classic Messiah Pranks.

I think I've ranted about GPSs on this blog before, so I'll skip it today except to say that I like the GPS on my iPhone precisely because it has no voice. I find noises very distracting. With a talking GPS, I am habitually telling it to shut up.

I have a lot of bugaboos like that, mostly to do with sound. I love music, but I can't stand to hear music from a source other than my own doing. Like if I can hear a neighbor's stereo, or a car is parked outside with the radio blasting. (In Brooklyn this happens a LOT. Loud car stereos are the mating call of the local species.) Even if it is a song I like, which is virtually never because I'm really picky about the music I like (surprise), I still find it irritating and drift toward thoughts of violence or at least a water cannon.

I think I am unable to ignore sound. For instance, I cannot read in public unless it is quiet. If people around me are talking, I can't NOT hear them, no matter how riveting the book is. Even if I'm not reading, I can't stand to hear other people's conversations. It drives me nuts. I want to tell them to shut up, nobody cares where Robert went on his vacation last year and whether or not he would recommend the hotel he stayed in. In NYC this happens a lot, usually on a bus or the subway. You're right, I should probably live in a suburb or out in the country somewhere, but it's just too boring.

Car alarms make me want to learn to use explosives. People are so used to ignoring car alarms, how could they possibly thwart a theft under any circumstances? So you hear a car alarm and see a guy fumbling with a car door: you root for him to succeed and disable the alarm, or at least drive the car away.

These irritants are becoming worse lately, perhaps it is age. I prefer the term "curmudgeon," but I think I may just be an a**hole.

SPECIAL COMMENT: Thanks for all the caption submissions on yesterday's post. Many of them were funnier than the one I had originally written. Now I'm reticent to divulge it. Suffice to say that many of you have my silent respect.

Saggy Ink

Bizarro is brought to you today by an Awesome Rock Show.

Simple word play again today, seems to be the week for it. Nothing much to say about this one other than that Cliff is a friend of mine, with whom I am working on a book project. His fiance did not break up with him, however. He's happily married.

In other news, Parade Magazine continues to publish my cartoons from time to time and below is one they've featured as a caption contest. If you consider yourself a captioneer you can still enter their contest and win whatever it is they are awarding.

A lot of people really enjoy caption contests and I'd have one on this blog except that I've found two things to be true of them:
1. it is a tedious task to sift through all of the entries, many of which are uncannily identical
2. if 800 people enter, you make one person happy and piss off 799

Seems a losing proposition to me so I'll not be offering any caption contests here, but if you want to submit your idea for this cartoon in the comments section, I'll read it. I won't choose a winner and all you stand to win is my silent respect. Obscene captions will be deleted as I continue to attempt to keep this blog relatively family friendly so I can continue to list the URL in my client newspapers.

Thanks for understanding, you're a sweetheart.

After the Parade contest is over, I'll tell you my original caption for this cartoon. Which I meant to use in Bizarro and maybe did. I can't remember just now and can't find my archives. If I didn't use it, I will later this year. The joke was inspired by CHNW's grandmother, who has numerous tattoos, most of which she got after the age of 60.

Victoria's Puck

Bizarro is made possible today by Eternal Honeymoon Lingerie.

Yes, this joke is a bit adolescent, but at least I didn't use a basketball. I do have some restraint. Nor did I use a baseball, which, come to think of it, might have been funnier. A golf ball would have been too small to read legibly, as would a hockey puck, which is not "cup shaped" even when cut in half. If her husband were hooked on watching sumo wrestling, I'd have no idea how to illustrate a sports bra for that.

Still, lots of people like visual puns, that's how Carrot Top got rich, and I like to cater to my entire readership, not just the sophisticated humor connoisseurs who frequent this blog.

Monkey Covers

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

Bob should know better than to play cards with a gorilla on the cover of The Adventures of Bob Hope #33 (1955).

(Standard disclaimer about poker-playing gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)


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

Detective M. Richard Tracy

Bizarro is brang to you today by Gooder Grammar.

This kind of simple word play where you combine the names of two things and create a third thing is very common, I know. Maybe there's even a name for this process, if anyone knows of one, please leave it in the comments section. Or make one up.

What made this one appealing to me was the deadpan humor of a whale with a two-way wrist TV that he can't possibly see from his vantage point. Plus the tiny hat. I also like to render underwater scenes, so all that added together made for a green light.

As I look at this thing this morning, I can't find the 5 symbols that the number by the signature says there are supposed to be. I only found four. So here's another version with one added. If someone finds all five in the original, let me know.

Non-Gay Rainbow Rankings

Bizarro is brought to you today by Hideous Monsters.

The most funnest part of this comic was the drawing. Even though drawings like this are tedious and time consuming, both to research and to draw, I always really enjoy the final product. (For you technique buffs, I should mention that the entire drawing is done with a small brush, even the lettering, and I use no straightedge of any kind.)

I like this gag and its soft parody of the stupendously transparent propaganda tool of the Bushies. As any scientist will tell you, a human's ability to reason is seriously compromised by fear. Ergo, if you keep the people frightened, it takes them longer to figure out you're screwing them. It's an age-old political trick but still works like a charm. Most recently, it worked on Americans for 8 years. Some are still trying it.

I've included the strip version of this one, too, since it required a lot of extra art and fenagling. My favorite part of the strip version is the anatomical heart on the sign in the back. What is that company selling? I have no idea what the Japanese type on all these signs says, I just borrowed stuff from signs I found on the Internets. For all I know, they could say (insert your own joke here.)
(As always, click the image to colossalize it.)

Finally, I got this email from a reader:

How dare you !?!?!

Rodan is easily a higher priority than Mothra. He's older ( released after Godzilla and before Mothra to terrorize us in our movie theaters ), leatherier and gnarleyier.

My sincere apologies to this or any other reader who was offended by my rankings. I was rating them by how often I'd heard their name. I hope that I have not offended Rodan or his followers.

DISCLAIMER: The writer of the above email was not serious, he was actually taking a self-deprecating jab at his own obsession with Japanese movie monsters. Taken out of context, though, it's much funnier. Saying the Security Alert System is a tool of propaganda does not mean I don't there is any danger of another terrorist attack, it is only to say that there isn't anything the average person or society can gain from this rainbow bogeyman thermometer. My apology to followers of Rodan was tongue-in-cheek, if you really were offended by this you need professional help, possibly medication, definitely a girlfriend.