January 18th, 2016

Basket Drivers

by Wayno & Piraro

(To instigate the embiggification process, click a limb of any mammal in any image.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Fortune Telling Cartoons.

Today’s double-wide Sunday cartoon is simple but I like it. You may need to click the cartoon to instigate the embiggification process in order to fully get the gag.

I don’t fish anymore and have no interest in it but I used to as a kid so I know of what I speak. I suspect the lack of activity is exactly what many avid fishermen like. I don’t eat fish, either, and never have in any large quantities because I can’t stand the way anything that lives in water tastes. That includes all species of fish (saltwater or freshwater) shellfish, squid, octopus, and seaweed. It all has the same horrendous, foul, rotted-flesh taste to me. I’ve tried many times over the course of my life to learn to like it but have come to the conclusion that my revulsion toward it is genetically programmed. I also firmly believe that the oceans are being systematically destroyed by commercial fishing and since the oceans are the engine of weather on our planet, the prognosis isn’t good. I also dislike the fact that fish are left to suffocate when we catch them. It has always bothered me that there is no way to put a fish out of its misery quickly and humanely. Oops. I just took all the fun out of this cartoon, didn’t I? Sorry.

I don’t know if I would be able to believe it is not blubber because I’ve never eaten blubber. But it is my understanding that the people who settled in the far northern areas of North America and are now politically-correctly called “Inuits” have traditionally eaten a lot of blubber. I’m sure I would find it disgusting because the kind of blubber they eat comes from animals that live in water.

I wrote this cartoon because I can’t stand being able to smell someone else’s cologne or perfume unless I’m actually making out with them. Any more than that is too much, in my opinion.

I also really enjoy cartoons with punchlines that are exclusively graphic. This cartoon, for instance, only works in a drawing and could not be dramatized on video or film because the joke is about the way something that gives off a strong odor is commonly drawn. I wish I could give you another example of this kind of cartoon from the Bizarro archival dungeon but I can’t think of one right now. Damn.

A little punny, this one, but I like the occasional pun. Nothing more to say about it.

I got one piece of hate mail from this cartoon from a guy telling me to keep my liberal BS to myself. I think it’s a little funny that he assumed I was talking about the Republican debates since the cartoon doesn’t specify. I’m guessing he has noticed what I have, that  the Democratic debates have been mostly about income disparity, health care, the cost of college, and other social issues for grown-ups, while the Republican debates have been mostly about fear: ISIS, terrorists, immigrants stealing your jobs, Islamic extremists disguised as refugees, America losing its “greatness”, etc. Any psychologist will tell you that nothing motivates people more than fear and politicians have been using this tactic since the beginning of civilization. “Those people are the problem and I will get rid of them!” (Incidentally, none of the things on the GOP fear list are statistically likely to touch your life in any significant way.)

I don’t know if there are public sandboxes anymore but there used to be when I was a kid. And they always had cat turds in them. No surprise there. If your kids want to play in sand, it’s safer to bring them to the beach because cats don’t like water. They may come across discarded syringes, chemicals, and other forms of human pollution but that’s nothing a good hazmat suit won’t protect against.

That’s all for this week’s roundup, Jazz Pickles. Hope you have a dandy week and do not eat anything that tastes as bad to you as fish does to me.