Flaming Keyboard
(Click any image to embiggenate it.)
Bizarro is brought to you today by Future Clean.
My favorite thing about today’s cartoon (above) is the art, and by that I mean the glow of the fire. I can’t say the joke is all that compelling, to be honest. In the collection of writings that Christians call the Old Testament and Jews call the Torah, god appears to Moses as a burning bush and gives him the famous Ten Commandments. For some reason I thought that if that happened today it would be a burning computer. What bushes have to do with computers is anyone’s guess. I’ve no clue. I’ve nothing more to say about this cartoon other than when you have to write a joke each day for over thirty years, a few are going to be clunkers.
On a side note, I find it interesting that only two of the famous Ten Commandments are illegal in modern societies (killing and stealing) and one more is only illegal if you do it under oath (bearing false witness). I have no point to make here other than that I find it interesting.
I like doing cartoons about muppets and other kinds of hand puppets and have done so on a number of occasions. Here is a favorite from a few years ago, and here is another. I used to do a one-man show called The Bizarro Baloney Show, which was me doing various odd things onstage for about an hour. Within that show I did a couple of bits with hand puppets that looked like dogs and in one of those bits, one dog puppet rips the dog puppet off of the other hand and the naked hand screams “I’m blind! I’m blind!” Then I’d put the dog puppet back on the naked hand and ask if he was all right. He would say, “Wow, that was freaky!…Let’s do it again!” Audiences found this funny.
Regarding this cartoon about a general store in the Old West, I think the sign on the front of the desk is as funny as the main gag.
Here’s a cartoon that mixes stage magic with the pajama arts, or “martial” arts, as some people insist on calling them. In case you’ve never read those signs on those small storefronts all over the place, “mixed martial arts” is a thing.
Somebody wrote to me this week and said this kind of thing happened to some people in history once, where they were condemned to die by guillotine, brought up on the platform in front of a crowd, but at the last minute were sent to prison instead. I guess to scare them. I can’t remember now where I saw this or what the details were so I should never have brought it up. My bad.
I’ve witnessed many fads that make no sense to me in my life. The most notable one is the practice of some young men of wearing giant, rodeo-clown-style pants so that their underwear shows, but another is this habit of taking pictures of food you’ve ordered in restaurants and posting them on Facadebook. In what world is looking at other people’s food interesting if you’re not a designer of restaurant food? I suppose it goes hand in hand with the other ways in which Americans tend to be obsessed with food these days like the two entire television networks dedicated to food. The whole thing seems to be infringing on the first commandment’s territory: “Thou shalt have no gods before me.” I don’t believe in anything like that kind of god, I’m just saying America’s obsession with food seems to me to be verging on religious.
Witches have lots of scary behaviors, like mixing gross things together in a big pot so that somebody they’re mad at will have nothing but bad luck, and being ugly and greenish. But perhaps the most scary thing they do is eat children, which Hansel and Gretel came terrifyingly close to finding out. In the old days witches had to eat them all in one sitting which was very challenging, but these days, with modern plastics technology, they can store the leftovers to enjoy later. If you think this entire topic is disgusting, blame my good friend, Cliff Harris The King Of Wordplay, because this cartoon was suggested by him. Cliff has other funny wordplay ideas that he has put into a book that is perfect for a gift, or to leave on your coffee table, or to put with those books that so many people seem to have next to their toilet which always creeps me out because who would want to touch something that someone else has been touching while they are defecating? Get Cliff’s book here and toss the guy a few cents. Your money could not go to a nicer guy.