Bizarro is brought to you today by Jewish Christmas.
I’m in a big rush today so I can’t write much. Thanks to all the Bizarro Jazz Pickles who showed up to my talk at MoCCA last night on a cold, wet, damp, chilly, soggy, rainy, freezing, windy, blustery, crappy night. You’re sweet. (Though some of you were dill.)
Now to the cartoons:
1. A doctor cartoon. I didn’t really mean for the Grim Reaper to look like he’s smiling, but that’s what skulls do. Hence the term, “Jolly” Roger. And why wouldn’t they be smiling? Their problems are over.
2. A politics cartoon. The seed of this idea came from my strange and mysterious friend, Richard Cabeza. Thanks for your seed, dick.
3. Another doctor cartoon, this time with a Thanksgiving theme. I’m not a fan of holidays that are about “thanks” and “blessings” that incorporate mass slaughter of innocents. I know most of you think that I’m crazy for wanting to give birds the same right to live an unmolested life as we human mammals (apart from the necessary and natural balances of nature, which our mass farming and slaughter falls as far from as humanly possible) but that’s just who I am. I’ll be eating plant-based foods tomorrow and being thankful for that.
That’s all for today. I’m in a big rush. The walls are caving in and I need to hide under my desk.
Also, happy birthday to one of my fathers-in-law, Ralph. He’s a great guy. I think I’ll send him one of these books that is the perfect gift for any occasion.
Everyone should watch the PBS Nature episode “My Life as a Turkey” before they go shopping for their holiday feast. It’s beautifully filmed and a real eye-opener about the intelligence and emotional depth of these amazing birds.
f eating animals thanks for making cool comics and for noting what you believe in dude
So when are you going to draw a Bizarro Jazz Pickle symbol that we can have tattooed on our foreheads so we can recognize each other on the street (unless it is really cold and we are wearing a toque, of course)?
SOON!!
I hope that you and CHNW enjoy your vegan feast, Dan!
My mother is making me sooo much yummy vegan food – I absolutely can not wait.
I’ll be posting pics to my FB profile.
Happy Veggie Day, Dan! Nuts, seeds, grains, legumes and veggies and berries are WAY more traditional anyway! Thanks for making us laugh all year. :-)
Just a heads-up: The ‘Jolly Roger’ link went to the Chinese restaurant sign.
Oops. Will fix that now!
Love the Death comic. I think it’s t-shirt worthy.
I’m curious about something, why is it wrong to eat an animal, a living entity, but just fine to eat a plant, another living entity? Is it because plants don’t have faces? Real question. I agree that the way we treat our food animals is sad. I would gladly eat a meat product grown in a vat of nutrients rather than eat a slaughtered animal. But until that is available, I will say a little prayer of thanks to the living entities all along the line who have died to provide my sustenance, whether that have fur and feathers or leaf and stalk.
Happy Thanksgiving! (seriously)
For me, it is about sentience and suffering. Plants are a natural food for mammals like us and we obviously have to eat something. Plants are far more nutritious and healthful for humans than meat. Since we don’t have to eat meat to be healthy, the suffering it causes is, for me, philosophically indefensible.
Thanks for your question!
And there are plenty of things we can eat that are taken from plants without actually killing the whole plant (for people worrying about the sentience of plants).
I like to type plants.
And then, there is always that other stance – I have no idea who voiced it first: “I am not a vegan because I love animals, but because I hate vegetables.” :))
I believe that line came from a stand-up comic named A. Whitney Brown, way back in the 80s. He was also one of the original writers on The Daily Show. Might still be there, no idea.
You argued once that humans were not made to eat meat – but somewhere you wrote that you take a vitamin B12 pill from time to time because it`s not found in any plants/non-vegetarian foods (at least in sufficient amounts) – so where do/did these vitamin B12 pill plants grow again?
For the records – I am not defending the meat industry in any way, quite the opposite and I try to minimize my consumption of meat – I ideal would be to live vegetarian, too. But the arguments some hardcore vegetarians/vegans hold up from time to time are outright hilarious, make them look stupid and not really help in spreading “the word”.
Good question, thanks for asking. No mammal creates vitamin B-12, it is only found in simple organisms like bacteria and algae. So the animals we eat don’t naturally create it, either, they get it from eating bacteria. We used to get it that way, too, from the trace amounts of feces in the dirt on the plants we ate. Now that our food is cleaned so much before packaging and again before eating, we don’t always get enough. It’s a good idea to take a B-12 vitamin supplement every now and then just in case you’re not eating enough dirt. :o) More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B-12
Thanks for taking the time to clear that up! :)
That Richard Cabeza (ha-ha) inspired cartoon is super funny. Yet, it makes quite a comment on how people really are changing their habits because they have less money to spend. You can almost feel the audience breathing a sigh of relief at the “decree”. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Dan, if you’re really opposed to the mass deaths of innocent animals, then you should stop supporting Peta. That organization kills THOUSANDS of innocent animals:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/4988-Skin-Game
I flinched when I read this sentence – Thanks for your seed, dick. Umm, isn’t there a rule somewhere that prohibits the use of the word seed and the name Dick in the same sentence.
You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You da man! Enjoy your feast.
I can pat myself on the back now that I know that at least one person got that line. :o)
I just wanted to share a link to another daily I came across that seems to support the anti-turkey view of Thanksgiving… or at least makes the point that there’s more than one perspective on this ritual: http://www.gocomics.com/thats-life/2011/11/19. I don’t really follow Mike Twohy so can’t say whether this reflects a philosophical stance or is “just a joke”. Hopefully the former.
I question the geometry of the scythe.
The peculiar bends of scythes are to let the blade lie flat on the ground while you stand upright and run it on the ground in an arc. The blade edge encounters wheat or whatever at a slight positive angle, slicing it like you slice bread, rather than whacking it.
An added plus is that the cut wheat is carried in a pile to the side and left in a running heap, easy to gather.
This particular scythe has a bend that would work to put the blade on the ground pointing straight up, which is not right; and the angle of the blade wouldn’t let the sharp bottom edge hit any wheat as it ran along the ground.
Death has a scythe to stand for harvest.
Scythes are particularly useless as weapons, all the angles and balance being wrong for fighting; except you might cut the ankles of somebody cutting next to you.
I expect that death finds you standing in a field, in the tradition, and cuts you off at the ankles, starting on the side away from him.
There’s a cartoon you can have free, all rights granted. Death at work running through a crowd, leaving them piled at the side, shoes remaining where they originally were. Maybe some gleaners. Then modern death as a John Deere combine.
You’re completely right on all accounts. Let’s just hope no one uses my cartoon as a blueprint for building a scythe of their own.
Now that I think about it, Death is always smiling because he knows something we don’t …
I LOVE the turkey cartoon! Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Clown College Football Widow. That gag is such a stretch. What is the thought process to formulate such an idea? Does it start with the mental image of a clown with oversized shoes muffing a kick? Or is the beginning the concept of a football widow. This is one of my favourites since the “civil war surgeon” quite a while back.
It’s sort of all those things at once. I usually start with the pun and then figure a way to add layers to it. In this case, the huge shoe trying to kick a ball. Glad you liked it.