October 8th, 2013

Bats, Cats, Dogs, Snakes

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by Love Child.

I often claim it is my birthday but today it really is. As a person who was once in his twenties, let me tell those of you who are still trapped in your youth that you won’t believe how fast life goes. And it just gets faster, so enjoy every moment that you can. I’m 55 today, which makes NO sense to my mind, which is still 18. As it turns out, however, I like everything about aging except for what it does to your body. I’m smarter, wiser, able to navigate through life better with fewer mistakes and frustrating insanity. I have a much better perspective on life now than I did when I was young and am with increasing ease able not to sweat the small stuff. And the older you get, the more you realize that the small stuff is almost everything. It’s pretty great.

On the down side, even though I’m in good shape, the older I get the more often I reach across a table to pick up a pencil and rupture my spleen. When I was young, I had to fall out of a moving car to rupture my spleen and even then, it only hurt for a few minutes and I was right back to sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Now, the spleen stays ruptured for days and every waking moment is a painful reminder that I’m rapidly approaching my expiration date. I’m not afraid of dying, but I am somewhat concerned about how many ruptured spleens I’ll have to endure before that happens. Oh well. No point sweating the unavoidable.

Yesterday’s cartoon brought up a lot of issues about adopted pets verses pets purchased from stores or breeders. So it seems appropriate to introduce to you a new member of the Almighty Jazz Pickle Empire, my new sweetheart, Jemima. We’re in love and we don’t care what the Christian Right have to say about it. My SpecialLadyFriend, Klamelda, loves her, too, and has agreed to welcome her as a sister-girlfriend. (Since none of us are married to each other, she can’t be a “sister-wife.”) Jemima was found by a friend of mine tied to a parking sign with a piece of yellow caution tape. Unable to find her guardians, my friend was looking for a suitable home and Jemima found her way to me. Except for her habit of emptying the recycling bin when I leave her home alone for more than 15 seconds, she’s perfect.

And, speaking of yesterday’s cartoon, Jan, one of three folks that cartoon was dedicated to, sent me this new photo of Louise with her collection of Bizarro books. Louise is currently the only snake in the Mighty Jazz Pickle Empire, by the way. If your companion animal is a Jazz Pickle, send me a photo showing this and I’ll add him/her to the national registry.

BIZARRCHIVES: One of my oldest Batman cartoons, this one comes from 1995 through the magic of time travel. I scanned it from a book of mine because I don’t have electronic files for images that old. This was created when I was still using the old coloring technique of guessing what percentages of CMYK I needed for each shape. It’s not nearly what I could do now on my own computer, but in those days, I was really happy with the way the color turned out.