(click on image to make it become enbigger)Today's Bizarro cartoon is brought to you by a grant from the Mixed Messages Institute.
Life is full of mixed messages, not the least of which is our parents' insistence that we treat animals and other weaker creatures with compassion, while serving us the steaming, mutilated remains of a tortured chicken
or pig.
On a less serious note, some of my readers may not know that Bizarro is offered to newspaper clients in two formats: panel and strip. I draw the cartoon in panel form, then convert it to strip on my computer, adding extra drawings on the side, if necessary. Typically, the elements shift around, the caption balloon above the characters moves to the side, and their isn't too awful much more to be drawn. This one, however, had to be finagled in many directions to get it to fit. The booth is wider & shorter, the ducks are bigger, etc. Looks pretty crappy here, you might want to click it for the larger pic.
Almost any time I draw a fair or carnival, I add a redneck shoving wads of food in his mouth, which to me is mostly what these events are about. I found fairs interesting when I was a kid, the annual State Fairs were a big deal in Oklahoma and Texas, but as an adult I can't see past the horror. Nothing says "doomed species" like throngs of overweight humans in airbrushed T-shirts, cramming more calories down their gullets than air, lit by flashing lights against a background of hideous stuffed animals, paying money to be hoisted into the air and jerked around until they get dizzy. (Note how both the OK and TX fair have giant rednecks at the gate. I've always assumed it was bait.)Am I old enough to be a curmudgeon yet? Is there an age limit?
