contest winners...

Congratulations to this week's winners:

1st...Marcello
2nd...Megan
3...Monsterzero
















What does it mean that the top three finishers' names all start with "M"? Let's hear it from the rest of the alphabet? Are you going to take this lying down?

More hijinks tomorrow, do drop in.

Contest #20 is NOW!

FIRST PERSON TO SOLVE THE PUZZLE BELOW AND POST THE ANSWERS IN THIS POST'S COMMENTS SECTION WINS! HURRY!

RULES, ETC:
As usual, two images are posted below, one is the original cartoon, the warped image beneath it has been changed in 15 ways. Your mission, if you are the disco royalty that I think you are, is to find those differences.

1. There are 15 differences between the two cartoons.
2. NONE of the differences have to do with the warped nature of the second image.
3. ALL of the differences are something missing, added, or moved, not just "bent" from the distortion. The differences will not be too subtle, so once you spot one you should be relatively certain you've found it. (As opposed to something like, "Is the hat on this one is a shade lighter than the other one? Hmmm.")
4. FIRST PERSON to correctly list the 15 differences in the comments section of the post wins 4 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards, mailed by me personally from Bizarro International Headquarters in Brooklyn. I'll even lick the stamp, unless it's self adhesive. SECOND AND THIRD persons with correct answers will each get 2 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards!
5. Put your email address on your comment so I can contact you if you win. I won't post it or keep it or file it or sell it or mount a Broadway musical about it.
6. If you live outside the U.S., I may not be able to send you a prize. Depends. Canada is probably fine, Saudia Arabia, probably not.

Click on the image below to ENLARGE and PLAY!

Graphic Novels Panel: March 16

CONTEST #20 LATER TODAY

A new seek-n-find-puzzler-brain-teaser-contest-game will be posted today at 6pm NYC time. First person to solve it will win a prize. Not sure what yet, maybe a little cartoon drawing by my own hand, made especially for the winner. For a glimpse of a past contest, click this, daddio.

Regular daily cartoon post to come shortly.

Probing for Pasta

Bizarro is brought to you today by Chick Magnets.
I got a lot of positive mail about this cartoon, all of it from men saying they found this cartoon especially meaningful because the primary female in their life routinely behaves this way.

It's not politically correct to suggest differences in the behavior of men verses women, but I don't follow those rules because I think there are plenty of innate differences in the behavior of men and women and it isn't about superiority or inferiority, it's about evolutionary advantage. That said, it has been my experience that women are much more guilty of this kind of ordering than are men. That's not backed up by a scientific study or a national poll, I'm just citing several decades of personal experience. I can't think of an evolutionary advantage to it just now, but given enough time, I might be able to make something up.

My own CHNW does not do this very often but many of our female friends do. Three that I can think of off the top of my head are so bad about this that they seem dangerously close to invading the kitchen and supervising their meal. I have no doubt that they have consumed significantly more cook's saliva than those of us who can stick to a menu. As a vegan, I often will say "without cheese," but that's usually the extent of it. I'm hoping that isn't enough to raise the chef's ire.

On a different note, I Tweeted the picture below last week and a lot of people liked it, so I'll share it here with you. I took this shot off of my TV screen, it is of a man who was weighing in about the U.S.A. vs. Canada, gold medal men's hockey match. I think he's the pope of Canada.

Anorexia Pride?

Bizarro appears before you today courtesy of Contraceptive Lingerie.

When this cartoon appeared in the paper I got an email from a reader asking me why I don't like fat people. I get this kind of mail every time I do a joke about weight, usually from a person who claims that they eat right and exercise but are simply genetically predisposed to be large.

I am well aware that this kind of person exists and on the rare occasion when I make a fat joke, I am not poking fun at those kinds of people. In this case, however, I am not poking fun at fat people of any sort. This is simply a bit of word play: What kind of food would they serve in Heaven? Soul food, of course. If a soul eats too much of it...

So my sincere apologies to any readers who thought this was a cheap shot at large people. It was not, but I can see how it could be interpreted that way.

One objection I have to the "I eat right and exercise but I'm genetically disadvantaged" position is that obesity, especially among children, is epidemic in the U.S. and the "genetic defense" is far too often used completely erroneously. For the vast majority of people, eating right and exercising are plenty enough to keep them within the realm of what was a normal-sized American 40 years ago. But these days, a "normal-sized" person in the U.S. is someone who is under six feet tall and for whom anything smaller than an XL T-shirt is too tight. It's very difficult to even find a Medium T-shirt being sold at a public event where shirts are for sale. Vendors bring L, XL, XXL, and XXXL, because that's what sells. (And the majority of these shirts are not being sold to young men who are going for the baggy fashion thing.) This sea change in a couple of generation's time isn't a medical mystery. The simple fact is that as a society, Americans are sedentary, eat garbage, and way too much of it.

Class picture, 1970........ Class picture, 2008

The complaints many have about the fashion industry selling rail-thin girls as an ideal are warranted, to be sure. Being underweight is as dangerous as obesity. But I believe the movement to accept obesity as a natural or healthy state for more than a tiny percentage of the population is equally wrong. The added stress this puts on our already crumbling health care system is reason enough to fight this epidemic, especially among children. I'm not advocating discrimination against overweight people any more than I advocate discrimination against LGBTs or Muslims. But to my mind, being proud of obesity isn't much different from being proud of anorexia. It's just a more mainstream condition.

Just my two-cents worth, as usual. Sorry if I offended anyone and hope you got a smile out of the cartoon.

Cat in a Box

Bizarro is brought to you today by Inappropriate Pets.

I suppose most cats enjoy boxes and wrapping paper, that's nothing new. We live with three cats and all three are into this. I'm not sure why anyone bothers to waste money on cat toys, cats hate them.

Of our three, one of them likes boxes and small enclosures so much, she sits in them almost constantly. If she's awake, there's a pretty good chance she's in a box or laundry basket somewhere in the house. We leave them lying around for her. She likes deep ones where only her ears stick out the top and also very small ones which only her ass and hind legs will fit into. It looks like she's wearing cubicle, cardboard hot pants.

Enough with the cute animal stories. The previous post about the dog taking a Rorschach test elicited a lot of different interpretations. The cartoon itself is something of a Rorschach test, apparently. I didn't think of that when I drew it, but I like it.

Don't forget to check out the new Bizarro iPhone app. It's dandy and cheap. You'll love it.