April 1st, 2011

Mummy Sex and Drugs

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by Apologies.

I didn’t think this cartoon was as opaque as it apparently is, but I got lots of questions about it. The first I heard was when my friends at KFOG radio in San Francisco called me the morning that it ran in the papers and said people had called in asking about it so they were having an on-air discussion. I then opened my email to find numerous queries about it there, too.

Some examples:

“Clueless here! What was the significance of Mummy Mom (March 29) purchasing a box of powdered milk in the grocery store?  Since there are boxes of gauze in the cart, are we to assume the powdered milk makes the paste (glue) to hold the strips together?”

and…

“OK…the shopping cart is loaded up with gauze.  Got it.  But what’s with the powdered milk?  I don’t understand what that has to do with mummies.  The punchline couldn’t be the brand name, “Cremation,” because the figures are mummified, not cremated.”

My favorite question came from this sleuth who had found hidden meaning in everything:

“The K2 soup mix caught our attention first with the “fake weed” (also labeled K2) that is used by teens across the country as an alternative to weed. Also quite a few of the other labels have drug or sex connections in current Urban slang (see below definitions)

K2= currently completely legal drug in the united states that looks a lot like potpourri but gives out effects very similar to marijuana, sometimes called roses. It is actually synthesized THC but does not come up on a drug test.

Ego = Penis

Powdered Milk =Dried ejaculate

Firecracker =A snack made with crackers, peanut butter, and marijuana. Basically, it’s peanut butter and weed sandwiched between two crackers, then baked.

Foley =One who can bong a beer faster than anyone and parties the hardest.”

I found this last email hilarious. If I put this much research and thought into every cartoon, I’d never make my deadlines. As is often the case, people were trying to make too much sense out of this cartoon. The simple answer is that mummies are dehydrated (eventually) so they buy dehydrated milk for their dehydrated babies. (I changed “Carnation” to “Cremation” just because it is also a death-related word.) The guaze in the cart is for general maintenance.

None of the other products have any public significance but are inside jokes to people I know. “Foley” is the name of the guy who suggested the idea of a mummy shopping. The “R” crown is a symbol I use for my good friend Rey, who has a terrifically inflated ego and whom I tease about it mercilessly. “K2” is well known to my regular readers as a symbol I use frequently. It stands for my daughters, Krelspeth and Krapuzar.

That’s the whole story. I sure hope this clears things up and isn’t a disappointment to anyone. For more info on the symbols I put in my cartoons, click the “Why Dynamite? Pie?” link at the top of this page.

Here are T-shirts and other shwag with this cartoon on them…MUMMY.