Tag Archives: morals

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

Disinformation or Misinformation – You Choose

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Disinformation or Misinformation: You ChooseDisinformation or Misinformation: You ChooseDisinformation or Misinformation: You ChooseDisinformation or Misinformation: You ChooseDisinformation or Misinformation: You ChooseDisinformation or Misinformation: You ChooseDisinformation or Misinformation: You ChooseDisinformation or Misinformation: You Choose

Disinformation or Misinformation – You Choose

Recently scientists with nothing better to do than make stupid science jokes calculated that the earth hols approximately 20 quadrillion ants. That’s a lot of zeroes, fifteen to be exact, and a lot of critters. And some really bored scientists.  It’s also an interesting piece of information.

According to the article, for every human alive on the planet, there are roughly 2.5 million ants. When I read that nugget of info, I thought this must be some kind of misinformation created by the  cabal of chemical companies that sell pest control products like Raid or the Pop Tarts I so fondly consume like a junkie.

My next thought wandered and meandered for a bit before it settled on the war atrocities in Ukraine. Wouldn’t it be great if we could take maybe 100 million of those ants and smother them all over that psychopath Putin after having been dipped in dark molasses. It should would make for some great reality TV as well an Internet meme.

The Source of Mis- and Disinformation

After all, one cannot think of that war, and its absurd, cruel justification, without coming across the words misinformation and/or disinformation. Sure, you could use the word “lies” but that would mean I have to rewrite the title of this blog and it’s too late in the day for that.

Where and when did misinformation and disinformation start? Was it in the time of the cavemen? Sorry, cave people – I wouldn’t want to offend their powerful media lobby. There were certainly cave women, cave children and no doubt sexually ambiguous cave people. Then again with all that body hair and animal furs, how could you tell one  caveman apart from another? But I digress.

No one knows for sure where and when disinformation started. Some historians believe that disinformation started about 315,000 years ago in per-historic times when a Neanderthal named Unk in cave 36b told his mate Gwendolyn he spends his Sunday nights down by the river fishing and contemplating the meaning of life. In reality, he would double-back and go to cave 17 to play poker with the boys and watch strippers. Poor Neanderthals — always getting a bad rap — lots of misinformation about them out there.

What Information Is True?

Since we as media-consuming modern people no longer can tell if a story, an article, a news report or a Bugs Bunny cartoon is genuinely true, and not some made up story meant to confuse us while the Russians try to sell us expired borscht, how do we know what to believe? What information is actually true?

Here is my advice:

  • If someone with an eye patch and a limp named Manny says “here, eat this, it’s fresh”, be very careful.
  • If the story you’re reading online is authored by someone named Vladimir P. or Donald J. T., take heed.
  • If you’re financial advisor says “You’ll make a killing with crypto! Trust me” then run away and call the police.

That’s about all the wisdom I can spare.

Wishing you peace, joy and a year’ supply of fresh danish.

Utu the Powerful

What disinformation have you propagated recently?

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

How To Mask Your True Emotions

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Mask True Emotions
Mask True Emotions
Mask True Emotions
Mask True EmotionsMask Your True Emotions. Please.

I just read a scientific article (without moving my lips too much) on what may have been the worst year ever — 536 CE. Or AD if you prefer that abbreviation. According to these scientists — Trump devotees by default excluded because facts are involved — 536 was the worst year ever! Volcanic eruptions, freezing winters, no sun, failed crops, and perhaps worse, no TV or Netflix to get through it. Neither chocolate nor cinnamon danish had been invented yet. Times were literally and figuratively dark. A mask of misery had covered the globe.

I can only presume with little or no scientific evidence, and even less research because it’s too damn hot today, that people back then must have been freaking out. (Kind of like now, except we have Netflix and danish of various sorts.) The superstitious and  uneducated masses, lacking any real guidance, must have run wild in the unpaved streets, begging for help, searching for any answers, and fearful of their neighbours (also, kind of like now).  The many simple and few enlightened folk must have hid in their homes and hoped for the best and some kind of miracle to free them. (Also, kind of like now. Is it just me or does anyone see a trend?)

2020 vs 536

Many have said that 2020 is the worst year ever! Virus, death, racism, riots, an American election with two old white guys, China spying and running rampant over democracy, millions unemployed. The usual. But people have become very angry and vocal of late. [Note to reader: I am not suggesting people don’t protest. Quite the opposite, they should stand up to the entrenched powers that be. Or kneel. Or whatever gets some good media attention. It gives me great material to work with for the blog.] But at times it might be a little too emotional. Too in your face. Too much fomite-soaked anger blowing in the wind.

We could all really use some emotional masks.

Emotional Masks

I am not talking metaphorically here. Some smart person (Trump devotees by default excluded) is going to come up with some kind of mask that inhibits or in some way tempers our emotions.

My design, which was rejected by the patent office for using too many swear words and containing a selfie of me wearing nothing but a moose hat and slippers, is simple. It will look like your regular everyday mask you can buy at any of the major mask outlets (such as Musk’s Masks, Masks-R-Us, Masks, Flasks and Basques).

The difference is it will come with a 12oz (355 ml) container of liquid emotional modifier (read: booze) of your choice. To start, four kinds would be available: Scotch Whisky for the upscale set, Beer for the blue collar audience, cherry-flavoured schnapps for the rustic crowd, and Vodka for those who wish to keep their consumption discreet, but still not give a crap. At the start of your day, soak your mask before you go out. Or talk to anyone in your household. Repeat at lunch, coffee breaks, dinner and bedtimes. I’m not saying you have to drink the booze, just inhale the vapours until you’re giddy and a little sleepy maybe.

While there are other ways to tame our emotions, such as therapy, weed, pills, yoga, archery, wood-working, setting small fires, or playing strip poker, I say give your mask a shot. Of schnapps preferably.

Manifestly mediocre,
Friar Druker of Snickerdoodle

What mask should you wear when being intimate?

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

The Pause That Refreshes

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Stanko & Tibor - Pause From Reality

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).

  1. 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.
  2. 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?
  3. 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

Meaning of Life

The Mother Of All Mothers

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To those among you who profess to be educated, refined, erudite, savvy and cool, and who still secretly read this cartoon under the blankets with a flash light:

The title for this post, “The Mother Of All Mothers” came to me as I almost tripped drying in between my toes just as I got out of the shower. Why the hyperbole/Saddam Hussein reference? Look, if I knew why my brain works the way it does, the doctors would have prescribed a fix for it already. But thankfully they haven’t.

Introducing a new character to a comic is a bit like passing a kidney stone. It’s slow, there are convulsions of massive discomfort, both mental and physical, and during which I would really like to take a fistful for painkillers, but I do refrain where possible. If the public response to the new character is anything like that of previous characters (i.e. deafening silence, quiet scoffing, old ladies giving me the finger at shopping malls, the odd letter containing death threats from fringe groups like the Amish Biker Gang), I may have to resort to using profanity in following episodes to increase my readership among my family and friends.

Speaking of family, my nephew actually said he laughed when he finally read my comic, high praise indeed. Furthermore, a number of you (the not-yet-but-who-should-be-incarcerated) have suggested that the mother character somehow is similar to or even resembles my own mother, may she rest in peace, in either physical and personality traits.

What are you people smoking?? Couldn’t be further from the truth. My own (and only) publicly acknowledged mother is not the inspiration for the character you see here in Stanko & Tibor, the finest chronicle of the North American badger since 2008. Sure, my mother can heap mounds and pounds of guilt like an Alberta oil sands commercial dump truck, but she ain’t the inspiration. My grandmother on the other hand… No, no, I kid, I kid. The character is merely a vehicle for jokes and healing psychological scars I have from childhood that modern pharmacology hasn’t yet found a cure for, shock therapy notwithstanding.

So enjoy this episode, don’t read too much into it, I am not that deep (I watch Bugs Bunny reruns and eat industrial chocolate chip cookies, people). Laugh, if you will, turn away in horror if you must, spit on the floor in disgust if necessary, but be sure to tweet or Facebook or Google +1, or whatever it takes to get the word out on this comic cuz I need the exposure.

With haughty and rigid salutes,

Major General Admiral Pedro Dönitz

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Tradeoffs

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The days of summer are still here if you judge it by how often I have the air conditioner running. Steamy, sticky weather mixed with the much needed rain(storms) to quench the dry grass and wilting herbs around my house. If that isn’t summer, I don’t know what is. Well, I don’t know what summer really is, say, in Japan or Argentina. But that is because I don’t pay attention to things unless they are brightly colored, animated, or have something chocolate-like covering it.

So what should we pay attention to, if I may segue clumsily from one thought to the next without an editor present to rap me on the top of the head with a ruler? Maybe we should pay attention to the little things in life like the smile of a young child or a good night’s sleep and value those things so that we can look back on them and inform others of their worth.

But if that is too much work — and frankly, given the heat and humidity of the past few days and my aching back from a swollen belly filled with fatty and sugary foods ingested at a pace that would give night terrors to the Weight Watchers society — work is the last thing I want to do right now. But I digress.

This episode of the comedic Caravaggio spread via electronic bits and bytes designed to tickle your fancy presents us with the age old question of youth vs. wisdom and which one would you choose in arm wrestling match. No, wait, which one would you want more of if you get extra portions of it for free, like with a free coupon. And I have no definitive answer because that takes a lot of time and thought, and the TV is on as I write this. But I do know I have made a lot of mistakes in my youth and haven’t repeated them as I have aged. Mostly because I have no energy.

So whether your wish is for more wisdom from the teachings of the sages, or enhanced youth through modern medicine and lots of exercise and sleep, know this — it will take away time from TV watching and eating greasy cheeseburgers, so weigh your thoughts carefully.

Hugs and kisses and sweet dreams.

Horatio Hornblower Druker

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

And Toothpaste For All

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Oh to be thin again, to be limber again, to be less gaseous and less rotund again. And to have healthy, strong teeth again. Having chipped my tooth some weeks ago, one of my front teeth no less, I realized that the onset of age, even in the realm of the dental knows no mercy.

As I stare into the mirror and smile to see this chipped chopper, I wonder both silently and aloud, “how the heck did my wife ever agree to marry someone as challenged in the looks department as me?” That question took on deeper significance this weekend as it was our wedding anniversary, and she — who felt duty-bound to keep her word and marry me despite probably having heavily regretted it when she woke up the next morning after I had proposed knowing she was under the influence of both jet lag and alcohol — once again said these past 13 years have felt like 13 minutes. Under water.

What does any of this have to do with this episode of the comic foretold in the bible as one of the 4 signs of the apocalypse and referred to by Salman Rashdie in his book club as “not suitable material to wipe a baby’s butt” have to do with toothpaste and beauty? I’m really not sure, to be honest. This is the Internet after all and they let any putz with a keyboard and the ability to type publish pretty much anything they want, so it’s your fault for reading this.

But I digress. The idea for this particular episode was not actually related to the aforementioned description of dental damage. It was a mere reflection of the marketing wordsmiths who gave us “new and improved” and other such marketing gems. And with that explanation, I will trundle to bed with a belly full of Thai food, a car magazine at the ready and maybe an intense focus on a 8-hour face-to-face discussion I’ll be having with my pillow shortly.

To those who have celebrated this long weekend with family, food and merriment, I wish you well. And remember to take out the garbage and brush your teeth.

Sincerely,

First Officer of the R0yal Brigade of Sheep Herders Lord Druker upon Cushy Bed

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

Occupy Dim Sum

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Occupy Dim SumAs I sat at my desk today performing menial, mind-numbing tasks in order to help a colleague,  my various trains of thoughts, all loaded with many cars of twisted, ephemeral cargo, skipped the tracks, as if  a drunken, heavily unionized switchman on his last day of work before vacation and with a large dose of  cold medication in him were at the switching controls.

And it’s apt that I mention cold medication as I have been suffering (not loudly enough it seems) from a sinus infection that only now, after what would seem like a few hundred decongestant pills and other kinds of sprays and vats of chicken soup that have been popped into my body on a pretty regular basis, seems to be getting a little better. But only a little. I still need reasons to complain.

As for those thoughts skipping off in different directions, I managed just long enough to string together enough of them to do this cartoon, on a topic that cried out to be covered by the sharpest mind, the keenest wit, the most vicious humor this side of the western hemisphere. Unfortunately, he’s on vacation and the rest of the staff were fired due to “right-sizing” and “rationalization” so I was left with the job of cartooning this sucker. How it got from Wall St. protests to dim sum I am really not sure.

It really did distract me from my ever more decrepit house that requires untold amounts of stabilization and repair (think Champlain Bridge, but far worse workmanship). If I could convince you people to buy a t-shirt, or better yet, when I get around to it, the e-book I plan on creating of this comic, I would have just enough to finance those repairs. Or buy the repairmen a beer. You have been warned — an e-book is coming of the  Stanko & Tibor saga.

So keep reading this comedic/operatic saga that will stand the test of time, unless my PC dies before then. Highly likely.

Be well, and don’t forget to speak with pride when you mention my comic to  your shrink and/or parole officer.

-Giovanni di Prosciutto

Meaning of Life

Xmas Inc.

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Anno 2010 has come and gone, and I say good riddance. Floods, drought, scandals, financial shocks, food fights, barbarism, nudity, dirty underwear being laundered in public. And I am just talking about my household.

But on the upside, it’s a new year, there are new challenges, new horizons, new taxes. Oh wait, that isn’t an upside unless you work for the government. But I digress.

This particular episode of the comic that helped redefine the meaning of the word “spam” and led to the literary critic at the New York Times  to refer to Stanko & Tibor as “unfit to line my bird cage” was inspired partially by real events. My little child wrote a letter to Santa and actually just wished him well and didn’t ask for any gifts, she just sent him hugs and kisses and sent a hug to Rudolf too.

As for the Santa Corp angle, well, I had to make it somewhat funny and after a return to financial excess by Wall Street, hey, I couldn’t resist taking a pot shot at that. Could you? Didn’t think so.

So all the best for the New Year and keep reading and laughing and “liking” the comic on Facebook.

Lots of love to all

Stanko & Tibor - Dishonesty Folly
Stanko & Tibor - Dishonesty, Folly