Tag Archives: truth

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Heroic Lies and Other Black & White Untruths

August 18, 2015 jd67 Leave a comment

Dateline: Mid-August, it's a heatwave and simultaneously election season. It's too much for a bear to soul.

Heroic Lies

As the thick, dare I say pasty fog of sleep cleared and I managed to roll out of bed, turn on my iPad and read with some amazement the latest Chump von Trump zinger about who’s really a hero (clearly not that sissy pants John McCain III), I started to understand a bit about universal truths and universal lies. You just can’t have one without the other.

I won’t get into the “death & taxes” universal truth argument because you can avoid paying taxes as long as you’re heavily disassociated from reality due to a pill or heroin addiction, have a crafty and crooked accountant who makes you look poor, or you have a printing press. Kind of like Greece pre-Euro crisis/national emasculation.

And what of death? Is it a universal truth? Or a universal lie? Is it all darkness? The big sleep? Or is it just a phase before we boogie on down to Hades for some eternal, unpleasant sun-bathing with only half a tube of Bain De Soleil SPF 4? To be honest, I am not too keen to find out personally, given my genetically built-in fear of it, and the fact that I am a bigger sissy than John McCain or that delicately prune-like Herr Hair von Trump.

Infallibly Fallible

Having coincidentally thought long and hard (maybe 15 seconds or so) about the lying as a coping mechanism and the infallibly fallible politicians we have to choose from in democracies when election time rolls around, I have decided to use my web-based bully pulpit to give this installment of the comic that now is down to a readership of three — one of whom is heavily medicated to prevent unintended and unscheduled naked jaunts through the park again, and the other two, conjoined twins battling fiercely over gets to wear the sole part of pants they own before head off for a job interview as a WalMart greeter — a message!

It is universally true that politicians will lie any chance they can get. They can’t help it. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t vote for them. No one really wants to hear the truth anyway. So deal with it. We get lied to all the time by people in power. It’s the basis for a functioning political system and the accompanying bribery machine that makes it all work so smoothly.

Let’s be honest about lying for a moment. We non-politicians aren’t a whole lot better. We lie every minute of every day. We lie to our lovers (‘Of course I’ll leave my wife for you’), our spouses (just ask the members of Ashley Madison), our bosses (‘Oh it wasn’t me. Frank in Accounting must have screwed up the TPS reports. I heard he’s off the wagon again’), our children (‘Of course you’re as smart and pretty as your sister’), our religious mentors (‘I have no idea who peed in the holy water, Father Mike’), and especially to cruel dentists when they ask if we floss regularly. Of course, I do.

Donald The Don

Well, maybe not everyone lies. Maybe that walking piece of chum Trump is telling it like it is. Maybe all Mexicans are drug lords and/or criminals, John McCain isn’t really a hero and all of the women on The Apprentice flirted with him – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected. Could it be that Donald, future ruler of the world, has stripped away the veil of lies to tell it like it is?

More likely his hair dye has pickled his brain.

Lovingly exhausted,

Ombudsman Druker of the 3rd Precinct

Crime, Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Your Guide to True Crimes, True Idiots

July 22, 2015 jd67 2 Comments

True Crimes

Driving home this evening in my creaky, achy minivan, trying not to notice the criminally exorbitant price of gasoline in my fair city, I heard on the radio that the national bureau of statistics had calculated that the rate of violent crimes in the country had dropped to its lowest point since 1991. Well, I thought, that is a pretty good sign of a society that is not totally going into the porcelain crap collector.

Yet that was followed by a more sobering fact that non-violent crimes had indeed increased in number and frequency, and showed a mild yet consistent trend upward. What made the report truly interesting and surreal was something I hadn’t really considered as a crime statistic before.

A Little Extra Death

Let’s differentiate between non-violent crimes, such as fraud, property damage, identity theft, excessive fruit fondling, and the violent ones, like breaking-and-entering (which sounds vaguely sexual), robbery, Pope-pestering, rabbi-rousing, wearing a pink polo shirt with checkered slacks, manslaughter, murder and pet-kicking.

But we now we have a new category of crimes being counted: terrorism. Just think, blowing up people and places is considered a crime that’s counted among the stats now. When I was growing up writing your name in pee in the snow was considered a violent act. Especially if you misspelled your name or only used lower case letters. Now it’s the ideologically-driven, indiscriminate murder of civilians that police have to count. Like they don’t have enough paperwork to do and African-Americans to physically abuse, now they have to deal with terrorists when they file a report.

Etymology and Cheap Segues

Interestingly, the etymology of the word idiot is Greek: idiōtēs (“person lacking professional skill”, “a private citizen”, “individual” – if that last descriptor is true, then we’re all idiots. Seems about right).

More critical to this fractured, late-night rambling, I thank the literary gods for that etymological deus-ex-machina because I had no clue how I could segue in the next paragraph from crime to the Greek tragedy occurring in Europe, and the subject of this inane comic some of you read when questioning whether you want to continue living or not. (Coincidentally, in a recent Reuters poll it was revealed that the expressed desire to commit suicide and/or vomit after reading my blog/comic has stayed steady between 99-100% among my loyal readers.)

Actually, come to think of it, now that my sugar levels are spiking, if we are speaking of true crimes and true idiots, Greece’s inhabitants and especially its politicians, and most of Europe fall under those descriptors.

Corruption Matched Only By Idiocy

Marvelling at the complicated corruption and financial extortion and ineptitude that is Europe and a bankrupt Greece, one has to wonder who is the bigger idiot, Greece or Germany, the bankroller of the EU.

If we had to define Greek attitudes toward paying taxes, acceptance of bribery monies, nepotism and backroom deals, we could generalize and say they wilfully and knowingly committed fiscal self-fornication for many a decade. When they entered the Euro Zone, they now had a rich Onkel to bail them out.

So when the proverbial περιττώματα hit the fan, some German banking sucker would fork over some cash at exorbitant and usurious rates figuring Greece was good for the dough. Little did those fat, corrupt German bankers know that the Greek skill and penchant for pissing away the money of others was comparable to that of drunkard on heavy diuretics at an ouzo factory. (Btw – I love hurtful national stereotypes. They make writing this crap much easier.)

Simple, Idiotic Answers to Complex Questions

Now that we have all watched this criminal Greek tragedy while Iran was negotiating a sweet deal to continue funding terrorism and simultaneously build a nuclear bomb pretty much unfettered, a simple yet moronic solution presents itself in this episode of the comic once referred to by Pope Francis as “the devil’s dung.”

Bomb everything, pave it over and put up a Wal-Mart. Violent, arbitrary, Neanderthilic and a wholly unnecessary overreaction? Sure. But so are Fox News and shopping at Wal-Mart on a Saturday.

No, I say we follow the simple, direct, armed approach. It has specific, measurable and attainable goals, as was taught to me in management classes. Which I mostly faked my way through as I was playing with my phone.

Everlastingly exhausted and mentally dull,

Alexis Nikos Druker

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

The Pause That Refreshes

July 4, 2015 jd67 1 Comment

A PAUSE REFRESHES. SOMETIMES.

Contrary to what most of you think, I have not published anything in months because I was in “pause mode” – which sadly doesn’t mean vacation. I was working darn hard at my job. A job that has me traveling far more than I imagined. So the enforced pause from the world of cartooning, blogging, and as some call it “spewing out crap onto the Internet” has slowed my output of witty observations, crooked drawings and sometimes hurtful commentary.

Did the pause refresh me, recharge my will to cartoon and blog? Did this enforced creative hiatus do wonders for the material I have lined up for future episodes of this crudely crafted comic? Not really. I’m still sleepy and I have gained weight from eating hotel food and indulging in vats, heaps, bushels of chocolate when I was anywhere within spitting distance of a vending machine or airport lounge. But that isn’t such a bad thing because what I saw while traveling the globe, and stopping to eat chocolate bars, made me realize many things about humanity, inhumanity and chocolate.

Cheaper By The Billion

Like the absurdity of repeatedly cleaning the gunk out from between my toes –deemed by international podiatrists as a proper measure of good foot hygiene and a sign of latent pathological fetishes– I saw many absurdities in my most recent travels. Each time I was in a cab stopped at a light (rare in Mumbai – traffic rules are the mere notions of a fevered, frustrated motor vehicle bureaucrat), or driving on somewhere elevated to avoid a local flood due to the passing monsoon, or to swerve violently around a dead animal or injured beggar, I had time to pause and think about what passes for humanity.

One key theme repeated itself as I went east: Life is pretty cheap. That isn’t meant to say human life isn’t important in Asia. Not at all. It’s just as important there as it is here. Seeing how we treat each other, and more importantly, the declining quality of baked goods that use oils and carob to substitute for butter and chocolate, everything and everyone on this planet is a commodity, especially when you’ve got millions and billions of them (or it).

My theory of cheap life is economic in nature. With well over one billion people in India, and China having its 1.5 billion and another half a billion or so scattered in and around the region, when a monsoon, earth quake, volcanic eruption, maniacal dictator or just a plain old, run-of-the-mill plague comes along, suddenly you’re down a million humans or so. No one bats an eyelash except maybe the media, unless it interferes with the cricket/soccer scores. Someone else will aways come along and fill in the void. When you pause for a moment, especially when you’re trapped in a taxi in a colossal traffic jam, the source of which is most likely someone being stupid enough to cross the road assuming drivers will actually stop, you realize that makes life pretty cheap.

Gay Marriage – The Pause That Refreshes

You know what isn’t cheap? Divorce. Once the Supreme Court of the USA decided to make same-sex marriage legal, that country had to take a pause. Some hugged, some recoiled, some wept, and some rejoiced. A small but I am sure influential group triple rejoiced: Divorce lawyers.

I bet divorce layers across the 50 states of the USA took a moment to reflect, to pause, to opine, to ruminate over the implication that gay marriage, now finally legal, would be the impetus for many costly, prolonged, anger-soaked legal proceedings that will fill the courts and subsequently the coffers of many in the family law community. Many a golf club membership or over-priced Autobahn-cruising, German luxo-barges –mit Leder– will now be funded due to the legalization of gay marriage in the USA. What horrible sitcom will arise from this that we haven’t thought of yet?

In actuality, the moronic, semi-sentient, troglodytic judges of the Supreme Court got the decision all wrong. They shouldn’t have legalized gay marriage. Sheer and utter foolishness. They should have made marriage, civil, religious or underwater, altogether illegal. Gay or straight. Or hermaphrodite. Your sexual preference shouldn’t determine whether you can marry or not. Marriage should be outlawed. For several shallow yet meaningful reasons (so I can beat a dead horse while I wait for my coffee to steep in the French press).

It would eviscerate the profession of divorce lawyering thus forcing them to get real jobs like a McDonald’s burger-flipper or Walmart greeter. They could be replaced by ice hockey referees who make split second decisions, and are unionized, wear helmets and have blades on their feet so they are less likely to allow fights to linger.
It would virtually eliminate the so called profession of wedding planner. Has anyone ever met a wedding planner they liked? That didn’t overcharge them for something a software program or an iPad app could effectively do for a fraction of the price?
When was the last time you were at a wedding where the wedding cake tasted half as good as it looked? Never, that’s when. Sure, the hors d’oeuvres are tasty, and if it’s an open bar, a wedding can be fun. But wedding cake? The gross overuse of “fondant”, the dearth of real cocoa in the chocolate icing, the millimeter-thin layer of marzipan between the layers of sponge cake. It’s a sham. The wedding cake is the the triple-decker tower of sugary false promise that inevitably is given to the janitor or taxi driver hanging around at the end of the night looking for freebies. Was there ever a greater confectionary deception than the wedding cake?

Conclusions and Naps

So what are you, the reader of this absurdist rant, this fantastical (hey, that rhymes with ‘testicle’) work of art going to take away from this instalment of the irregular periodical visually chronicling the foibles of humans, and its author/creator? Will you pause, for a moment, before hitting the delete key in anger, index finger cocked and ready, and think about what I have said here? Or will you take a vacation hoping that when you come back, I will have come up with something about the financial Greek tragedy that’s the subject for the next comic? Or will you take a nap and wake up refreshed?

Don’t bet on it.

May you never step in elephant droppings,
Mentally Malicious Mogul Druker of Maharashtra

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

The Half-Truth About People

August 15, 2014 jd67 Leave a comment

Half-Truths, People and Insane Ramblings

Carl Jung, the noted psychotherapists (or was it psychiatrist?or psychoanalyst? I can never remember, but I just know one of them can get me mood-altering substances in bulk if I just use that tried-and-true line “What, you don’t hear the squirrels telling you to burn down the forest and rid ourselves of the gopher menace?” Come to think, that squirrel did make a lot of sense, and he was right about the housing market crash… but I digress) once said these famous words:

“Why are there never any crackers or Saltines on the table when I order the damn tomato bisque, seeing as I come to this diner at least 3 times a week since my wife Emilie can’t make a bisque worth crap??!!”

After much forethought, some back thought and a lot of sideways thinking, I understand what Jung was trying to tell us in that cryptic message. I have come to the conclusion that you can categorize the world into groups.

Smart people who are nice

This category is indeed a rare breed, but I have plenty of family members, friends and even some colleagues who fit into that category. What qualifies them as smart? Mostly they can figure out the tip on a restaurant bill in a split second, even when the bill is split between like 6 people. Furthermore, it isn’t only education that makes them smart, because I know many people who were or are filled with life smarts and were too damn smart for a school system that couldn’t teach them anything, so off they went on their own to be happy and wildly successful. How do I know they are nice? Apart from petting me on the forehead in a benevolent, pet-like way, they aren’t hesitant to take me out to lunch or order Chinese food and pick up the tab despite my boorish behavior, poor table manners and irregular shaving habits. And they I begrudge the most since I wish they would include me in their wills, but they won’t because they are smart. Bunch of jerks.

Smart people who are mean

I was going to start with Hitler or the Quebec tax collectors being good examples, but that would be too obvious. Politicians sometimes fall into this category, but they also fall into the Dumb people who are mean group more often than not. I also thought of a few evil professors I had who thoroughly enjoyed belittling their students largely because they were unable to get an erection (or orgasm) as the younger students at the college wouldn’t pay them the time of day. Or they had a spouse that no longer loved them and had begun sleeping with the international student staying at their house for a semester and let everyone and his brother know about it. We also see examples of smart and mean people in business, the clergy, spiteful postal workers whose livelihood will soon be taken from them and crafty yet nasty grannies at Wal-Mart or other shopping institutions who have somehow outfoxed you at the checkout line, cut in front of you and managed to crush one of your toes doing it. May they rot in hell.

Smart people who are opportunistic

This group can run the gamut between nice and mean, it all depends on how they were raised and usually how hungry they are for food or sex. You see, smart people know when to capitalize on an opportunity, like snagging a free meal at a wedding they weren’t invited to, or someone who isn’t watching their case of beer at frat party. Or they know how to have drunken sex with someone at that frat party not really caring what the long-term outcome is especially if she’s in a different faculty and has herself issues with controlling her alcohol consumption at these events, which really covers up a home life where the parents were lushes themselves.

But it isn’t always about food or sex. It’s sometimes about seeing a good deal and seizing the opportunity, like when you’re shopping for that electronic gift that your spouse wishes you wouldn’t buy, but it’s on sale and your impulse control is weak at best, not unlike that of a heroin addict. Or perhaps saving someone from being run over by a car because you know that person you save will be grateful and give back to society having been given a second chance at life. Unless that person was a serial killer, so then you indirectly led to the deaths of others thinking you’d be smart and save a life. Dummy.

Smart people who are nice but dumb

So, how can you have a category that’s an oxymoron? Well, I think the very definition of ‘oxymoron‘ (adjectival compound noun, singular, consisting of the abbreviated word for oxygen (‘oxy‘), an omnipresent gas across the globe, and morons, an omnipresent amorphous blob of idiots scattered across the globe in great numbers) shows quite clearly how you can have people who are smart in one discipline, like biology, computer engineering or gambling, and are also sometime nice, but you know they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Like that brilliant colleague you know who can’t figure out which side of the escalator to stand on (the right, dummy) when others are trying to rush up the escalator instead of taking the stairs so they can get to their places of work or the proctologist appointment post-haste (also morons). There are a good deal of these smart, nice but dumb people in modern society. Sometimes they are made managers by other smart/dumb people thinking that gleaming success in one category, say rebuilding an engine block or calculating the trajectory of missile, must apply to others areas. Idiots. Nice idiots, well-intentioned, but smart idiots. They should be sent to a re-education camp or remedial school with whips. Just because.

Dumb people who are nice

You know you’ve met people in this category everywhere you have traveled across this earth, save maybe France (that’s the next category). We have encountered them in all walks of life, be it any societal sphere, any country, any age. Sure, sometimes it’s hard to suffer fools, but nice fools, well, they aren’t actively making the world a worse place for kicks. In some cases, they are making it a better one by not getting into fights at supermarkets, or giving freely of their tax money by playing state-sponsored lotteries so my school system and health care system have some extra funding while the rest of the world goes to rot. Now, I know many of you readers think “Hey, the dumb-but-nice category watch too much reality TV, which is in and of itself a crime.” Reality TV is a crime, but watching isn’t; it merely should be used as a marker of sorts when the aliens land and separate out the useful people from the soon to become alien dog food. Dumb but kind. These are people who everyone should be nice to largely because you don’t want them to become the next category as there are WAY too many of those on this earth.

Dumb people who are mean

Wow, where do I start? With the bureaucrats in my city who deserve life in the electric chair? Or the taxi driver whose manliness comes into question when others pass him and then likes to believe I cut him off in some alternate universe where taxi drivers are even-tempered, kind and respected, and then proceeds to scream at me through his driver’s window in a language that has yet to be deciphered and decrypted by modern linguists and computers? Or is it the policeman who arrested a citizen who pointed out to said cop that he shot through a red light in a school zone without his siren blaring and lights flashing just because he felt like it? Or the woman the policeman pepper-sprayed because said low-IQ and anger-filled, petty constable was upset had his idiocy brought to light and proceeded to violently twist the arm of the poor shuck who pointed out the fuzz’s flagrant disregard for motoring laws? (Actually, you NEVER point out anything to a cop in this city because they will arrest you, thus making you a member of the dumb by nice category. Idiots.)

There are countless, millions of examples of dumb and mean. Religious zealots of all stripes who kill for a cause. Why think critically when you can kill others for glory? Much simpler. Why think critically? Let’s not forget politicians who are caught with their pants down, both literally and figuratively, and then blame the press and subsequently find religion. Or BNP for getting caught and then not being too contrite and paying a $9 billion fine. Or that ass counsellor at summer camp who was just overjoyed at being a petty dictator so he could ruin the self-confidence of 8-year-old boys. I won’t got into snooty restaurants who apparently don’t want my money just because I made a rude gesture toward the waiter that resembled kneading dough with two fingers, while I waited impatiently for a table. (I have low blood sugar issues, what do you want from me?)

Dumb people who are opportunistic but don’t know what the word ‘opportunistic’ means and get taken advantage of by smart mean people

This is small category, but it usually involves people who don’t dress well, but think they do so they buy that horizontally striped shirt with orange accents when they really shouldn’t have. Often, they walk down a corridor where lots of other people are, and their gait is wide, their arms flail, they check their phone for email thus slowing everyone else up, and if they are carrying a backpack or purse, they have it hanging just so thus forcing you to deke and slide past them in such a way that causes you to twist a muscle in your back or arthritic hip. Their other flailing arm I just mentioned? It’s already clocked someone else in the head because dumb-dumb has no concept of personal space but just bought a smart phone sold to them by some evil smart person. This section also covers the ones who rush into a super store to get a deal on those crazy shopping days where it’s supposedly 90% off list price, and thereby causing injuries to others and themselves to glorify the gods of Mammon and greed, yet they desperately NEED a 400-inch TV set that is somewhere on Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs next to sex and shelter and bacon. At least, that is what the smart but mean marketers with a big bonus target told them. (It’s called the Internet people. Just order, click and ship.)

So there you have it, the world sorted it out for you. Now go take this jewel of information and do with it as you will. Just make you sure when you get arrested that you forget conveniently that I was the one who told you THE TRUTH.

Lovingly pudgy, haltingly hairy, and addicted to sugar,

Pope Gregarious the XXIII

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Truthfully Lying Inaccurately

July 9, 2014 jd67 2 Comments

Fractious and Foolish, Not Factual

Upon cleaning the house and removing debris, junk, garbage, refuse, detritus, jetsam AND flotsam, not to mention papers from the kids’ school year that could serve as proof they are intelligent if we were ever to sell them on the black market, I decided to do something foolish, childish, immature even. I asked my wife why she’s keeping empty, massed produced canisters that once held tea. Painful, disdainful and solitary confinement-treatment silence reigned for intolerable minutes, with no discernible peep from the significant other, who, for reasons still inexplicable some 15 years later after agreeing to sign the contract that bound us in unholy matrimony, decided to fulfill her end of the bargain and marry me, I can only assume, on a dare from I’m guessing someone she once called a friend and now sticks needles into via a voodoo doll.

Why foolish, you ask? What stupid spouse of the male variety would ever do such a thing as to question his significant other on matters of emotional nature when he knows pursuing this to a logical (read: NOT an emotional) end would/could/should, nay, will with absolute death-and-taxes certainty lead to elevated blood pressures, voices and no doubt to a withholding tax on acts of a sexual nature for an indeterminate period of time? (Think in terms if business quarters — like “Q2 and Q3 were barren with transactions evaporating south of the Mason Dixon line, and principal shareholders sorely disappointed ready to revolt and appoint a new board” — and you’ll get the idea.)

This marked difference is not so much the Mariana Trench depth of division between the male and the female. I am sure gay couples are this stupidly, erratically emotional too. I’d say rather it’s the difference between being single and married, or at least single and shacked up with another inmate under the auspices of “for better, for worse, in sickness and in health.”

Rampant Single Stupidity

You see when I was single I would do stupid things galore from keeping pre-historic underwear and old beer bottles to ancient car magazines and punk rock albums I no longer listened to just because I couldn’t bare the thought of cleaning up, let alone tidying anything, as that would have detracted from my cartoon-watching time. But now the wheel has turned and the shoe is on the other glove (I told you, logic has nothing to do with this rant). I am cleaning up after my kids and need help logically keeping things in order, including it would seem, empty tea canisters with no monetary value, but high clutter value. When I was single, logic and order played no role in anything I did. No one questioned me except my parents who were legally forced to admit they loved me and provide shelter, clothing and food once the court order became effective. In fact, the word logic wasn’t even in my vocabulary (I was a very poor student).

Yet somehow, the lessons of life stuck, and my university major in “space optimization so I don’t trip going down the bloody stairs” is paying dividends but is upsetting those who I require help from when asking why we should even keep a freaking tea canister when we have enough crap lying around the house. I could try and apply abductive reasoning to gain that moment of clarity, but that will piss off someone who just sighs in misery and thinks of melting down her wedding band to fund a trip back to the old country.

The World Goes Around, But How?

Speaking of scientific theory and fact-based decision-making, I may have discovered what makes the world spin around, and I don’t think Sir Issac Newton’s theory of gravity or the sun’s magnetic pull are correct. You see, applying logic to places where I am allowed (note: NOT to cleaning up the house to rid it of excess tea canisters) I realized that when half the world is awake, standing up and moving around, the other half is lying down, sometimes sleeping, sometimes doing bad things on their iPads, mostly horizontal, and without the help of Viagra or Cialis, not terribly erect. So the theory goes, those that are lying down, or at least having sex in boring positions, have lowered their center of gravity sufficiently to allow those on the other side of the globe to sway the earth with their higher centre of gravity, kind of like a ball filled with liquid, as it rolls around.

The sleepers and the “having boring sex lying downers” aren’t putting any momentum into the earth, while those moving about vigorously, particularly proctologists on call, truckers high on caffeine pills, lecherous politicians, sweaty plumbers and strippers dancing at clubs (not all mutually exclusive groups by the way) are making the earth swing about on its wobbly axis. Hence I have solved what makes the earth go around, in perfect imbalance, if you discount years of science and sex and money as other explanations.

Sure, I know what you’re thinking — he’s totally lost the plot this time, but let’s be honest. If I am prevented from throwing out legitimate crap from the house and left to think about these things because of the aforementioned withholding tax, I can’t be held accountable for these scientifically steadfast theories that will be borne out after I am dead or when I bribe the Nobel counsel with strippers and chocolate.

Lastly, what does any of this have to do with the latest and greatest posting of the Stanko & Tibor comic, frequently cited in criminal testimony as a decisive factor that led to mass fruit fondling incidents at supermarkets across the globe? Well, like the outlandish plot line and dialog you no doubt read in the comic and then forwarded it to publishers all over the globe in the hopes of helping me get discovered (or incarcerated), we humans are interested in the lives of others, no matter how ridiculously untrue or bizarre those stories may be, because our daily lives of tea canister shifting and arranging have robbed us the will to think for ourselves.

Wishing you many sleepless nights
Sir Issac Einstein von dem Hinterland Druker

Meaning of Life

Deep-ish Thoughts

January 14, 2013 jd67 3 Comments

To ye, kind and simple reader, should you choose to scan further, you shall find something not unlike, yet not truly a coherent series of thoughts that, if reported to local authorities could lead to me being incarcerated for having been allowed to indulge in too much sugar and corn syrup products.

Recently I said that we suffer from mental arthritis because we can’t seem to come up with new ideas.

Here’s one. Viagra for my socks. They just won’t stay up. There is no stiffness to them. No resilience. They get all soft and wiggly in no time after they are stretched from toe to calf. I walk to work with these cruel winter boots (when it’s not raining) and every step I take, every move I make, those evil, scheming, unjust socks slide down ever so slightly, ever so disturbingly to cause bipedal distress.

These foul socks are like the teenager caught in a nasty lie, steadily sliding down in their chair as they are being exposed for having had a mega-blowout party at home against their parents’ wishes that resulted in someone vomiting on the fancy duvet, while the expensive booze is greatly depleted from the liquor cabinet, and the upholstery on the antique chair you got from grandma after she croaked smashing her head while in her nightgown when fetching the whiskey bottle from inside her nightstand, is stained with oily finger streaks from ketchup chips.

Oh those insidious socks, looking all appealing in the sock drawer, beckoning with their stretchy, blue cotton pattern, with a neatly sewn in tartan pattern that reeks of stability and conservatism, all nicely folded. Silently waiting to be separated and applied to my feet, ankles and hairy calves for a day of walking, sitting and massive frustration as I reach down repeatedly throughout the day, on the way to work, on the train, at my desk, the bathroom, pretty much anywhere, to pull them up for the umpteenth time.

I hear you saying, “shut up and get sock garters.” Well, tell me who makes those anymore? And if they do, that would mean more accouterments I would have to add to my complicated wardrobe of socks, underwear, pants, shirt and maybe even a jacket. I can barely get dressed successfully any morning and adding another thing to the list isn’t going to happen.

What does this sock rant have to do with Stanko & Tibor, the artistic chronicle read by prison guards to inmates in maximum security penal institutions as a form of punishment ?

I’m not sure, but if I am this irritable about socks bunching up on me,just imagine what kind of moronic dialog that will lead to and from there it’s a short bus ride to civil disobedience and crumbling democracy.

Good luck and find me sock Viagra.

Private 5th class who just cleaned the latrines Trevor Druker

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Mental Arthritis

December 28, 2012 jd67 3 Comments

For the morally, spiritually, financially, vertically and follically-deficient among you who still profess to follow this unending chronicle of the human condition known as silliness, I give you this 2cm-shallow thought:

As I was walking to the gym one frigid morning, while the biting December cold nipped and the tip of my bulbous nose and the sidewalks were covered in snow and slipperiness, I was given time to think, and that’s usually a dangerous thing as I tend to come up with the crap that passes for this comic and or blog. So in some ways this is all your collective fault for not having occupied me sufficiently.

My father, a man not to mince words, and the man who taught me profanity the likes of which approach poetry for merchant marines, also imparted his wisdom upon me many years ago when we were driving in his Cadillac Eldorado (a lemon of a pimp-mobile if there ever was one). He said a few simple words that burned into my long term memory like a bad tattoo: “People are stupid.” He, the legendary salesman of soap, also told me many years later when I gave up chasing a girl because she already had a boy friend that I had to convince her that “my soap is better.” Ah, always the romantic.

His “people are stupid” kernel of wisdom prepared me for the moronic news stories and miscellaneous events I would experience in my 4 decades on this planet. Things that make you shake your head are justifiably explained by this theory. Especially in any hot country, region of the world or state where they don’t have a decent winter to kill off the weak. Take New Orleans or the Middle East where acts of stupidity occur daily, and where my readership of this comic is zero so I face few threats and reprisals.

Am I tarring entire peoples and continents with a malicious brush? Do you read this comic? If I didn’t make outrageous, hurtful and baseless generalizations and accusations, I’d have no material to work with. I’m just not that creative.

But I digress yet again.

That morning time did give me a chance to think about what makes a person try and come up with an original idea that isn’t riddled with idiocy. The kind of idea that could maybe change the world, like electric pasties or caramel covered popcorn (both having contributed handsomely to the wealth of many a lawyer and dentist).

Are we asking ourselves the difficult questions that could lead to new areas of thought, kind of like my children asked as they were discussing which kind of milk to put out for Santa to go with his cookies. Should it be low fat or the one for lactose intolerant people? Is Santa indeed lactose intolerant? And has anyone, outside of the marketing department, even thought about Santa’s dietary needs? What a creative bit of thinking, I thought.

Yet most times we aren’t all that creative. We are mostly mentally arthritic. Like physical arthritis, the mental kind limits our range of motion, and often requires some kind of interference via pharmaceutically derived and delivered “support”, group therapy or a whole lot of booze mixed with fruit juice to loosen those rusty cranial joints. It’s so easy to be mentally arthritic, you don’t have to question anything, you can go about your routine and not stretch side to side or up and down. Why come up with that next crazy idea if you don’t have to?

What does this all have to do with this episode of the artistic and spiritual tour de force known as Stanko & Tibor and quoted in Wired magazine, the Chinese state media and the U.N. Human Rights Commission as “a reason to close the Internet”?

Because if we don’t occasionally try something wild, we will become arthritic and addled and then I’ll be forced to come up with all the humor and bright ideas for this part of the northern hemisphere and frankly, with my back the way it is, and my child-rearing taking up time (“go ask you mother” definitely counts as parenting in my book), I can’t see it happening. So you’ll all be required to break from your ways and think of something truly unique, like chocolate-flavored suppositories.

Wishing you a happy and healthy New Year,
The 14th Earl of the Grilled Sandwich upon River Druker

Meaning of Life

Shopping for Truth

June 24, 2011 jd67 2 Comments

My dearest adherents to this comic,

As I walked to work the other day I gazed up at the early morning sky to see the sun brightly shining with a light corona of haze on its upward arc in the east, only be shortly met in mere minutes by a semi-translucent, semi-inky ridge of clouds that looked like they wanted to choke off the sun’s intense heat to give relief to an overheated city. I was amazed at the beauty of how sun and cloud play together at that time of day and how humans anthropomorphize our world around us to better cope with it.

Then I thought to myself, what a profound thought from a guy who watches Bugs Bunny with his kids and also produces a comic that involves a lot of fart jokes and sub-mental humor. And then I thought that such a deep thought could only have occurred due to the confluence of several key factors: a lack of meaningful sleep being crucial, modern pharmacology’s miracle of allergy medicine + my gout pills, probably a recessive gene that kicked it at that very moment, and then promptly switched off like a cheap incandescent light bulb, and lastly the left-overs of many a chemically-enhanced sugary product (i.e. gooey cinnamon danish) that spiked my blood sugar to levels not seen since my ingestion of a 100g bar of Marzipan right around Christmas.

And then when that thought dissipated like a drop of oil in a hot frying pan, I was left with this comic’s latest installment, once again on food. And my obsession with it. Not in a “Chef Paul Prud’homme, I can barely get my hands to touch because I am so fat” way. More like a “what am I ingesting that keeps my belly plump, round and unable to pack into my size 34 jeans without deep belly sucking.”

Personally, I like the product names way more than the reality of what’s in them and the effect they have on me. And that’s why I am going to be purchasing products that may well kill me (not the cigarettes, however. Relax, ma) albeit slowly and tastily.

Enjoy, and please check out some new designs I have for t-shirts and sweatshirts, you bunch of wonderful people with generous souls and open wallets.

Guitar Love

Continue reading Shopping for Truth →

Meaning of Life

Truth In Food

May 23, 2011 jd67 Leave a comment

Wow, I am tired. What a long weekend here in Canada. In addition to it being my soon-to-retire mother’s birthday, we in the Great White North take an extra day off to eat, drink, be merry, and plant stuff in our yards under the guise of celebrating Queen Victoria’s birthday. I could make some horrendous comment about a dead monarch with a tight corset and probably some kind of sexual repression issues, but I ate so damn much good food that I am swollen, dizzy and generally dopey.

So let me say this – this comic is an old idea I had literally a year or two ago, but couldn’t get around to doing. Now I have done it, and later on, there will be a few more on this topic, but give me some time. Actually, I was aching to do a post on the not-really-a-rapture, and I have the dialog and the sketch, but I figured, I’d get this one out of the way and then do a hand-drawn rapture comic. And to be honest, I spent the day of the rapture mowing my lawn, trimming hedges, and ripping out weeds, so maybe that was my diving punishment. Then again, since we live right next to a well-attended church, I figured if there was some kind of rapture thingy that we’d get rapture rub-off and we’d get sucked up too. By dint of proximity to the house of worship, I guessed that heaven’s GPS might take us along with the church. No such luck, I still have to make mortgage payments.

Well, it’s time for bed and possibly a sugary, mass-produced confectionery masquerading as a cookie, but is really a product of petroleum, recycled synthetic motor oil and Silly Putty®.

Keep the faith and keep hoping I regain self-control so I can lose some weight and fit into my shorts.

Meaning of Life

Truth In Trump

May 7, 2011 jd67 3 Comments

Dear slaves to this comic,

What a month it has been since I last posted a tour de force in comic format. The last one seemed to have struck a chord with those of you following current events or with a fondness for Burt Reynolds, circa ’78. You know who you are.

Well, this particular commentary wasn’t really planned. But with Osama getting a unintended dose of rapid-fire hot lead from SEALs that aren’t all that interested in fish really made the news. And of course, every nutbar and his conspiracy theory brother came out of the word work, and some never left. Like Mr. Trump, for example. Although many wish he would, but sadly he has supporters and a lot of money. Where is a benevolent god of any kind to smite someone who really deserves to be ‘smoten’, I ask you?

But this skillfully crafted and drawn oracle containing all things commentary-worthy will return to its regularly scheduled mania, mayhem, moronic madness and other words that start with ‘m’ – once I find a better letter for alliterations. Until such time, I may take a bike ride to try and trim the 10 pounds of belly fat I have accumulated over the past 4 weeks or so, through a deft combination of no exercise, high-fat foods, foods with sugar in formats that could only have been created by Monsanto in a secret lab in the desert, and hot dogs. I feel shame.

By the way, for those of you don’t know and who probably don’t care, I am now writing for the main car blog site, known as The Car Connection. So go there, look for my wry blogs on all things advertising in the car world. Impress your friends.

Better yet, read this comic and forward it to your friends, enemies and make it one your favorites. Or just lie to me and tell me you did. Same thing.

OK, time to blog and eat cookies. I meant celery.

Discount Humor Therapy

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