Tag Archives: profanity

Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Gord The Bard – Not

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Gord (a.k.a Dad) The Bard

Gord The Bard - NotGord The Bard - NotGord The Bard - NotGord The Bard - NotGord The Bard - NotGord The Bard - Not

So as some or most of you readers may know my dad passed away a little while ago, and as you guessed it, this post of the comic is dedicated to him, and his many, many pearls of near savant-like wisdom. (My mom once referred to him as an idiot savant, but that may have been after he bought her a golf shirt for her birthday, despite having asked for something entirely different.)

One of the many things that went through my head when dad’s life energies were ebbing was “I’m losing maybe my biggest fan.” He was one of the few people who always praised, always read (yet not always grasping the comic part of the blog) and always responded to the comic. I’d get a short email that would usually say “Fantastic! Quit your job and do this for a living!”

Dad wasn’t too aware of the financial realities of embarking on an anti-lucrative career as a writer/comic doodler. He never let reality stand in the way of a questionable employment choice. But he certainly did support me and champion my writing skills and creativity. That’s what great fathers do. They’re champions for their kids. He was a repeat champion.

As for the richly profanity-laced pearls of wisdom he would utter in front of impressionable children, religious people, the elderly, the infirm, more sensitive souls, the vast majority of his family, and of course his long-suffering life partner a.k.a. Binnie, or My wife, they were a part of his near-genius. I can’t say absolute genius because he bought a lot of crappy American cars when he really shouldn’t have.

Also, dad was a man of science, if you discount climate change. What do you want? He came from a different generation, and when he hit 70 or so, he faithfully adopted the mantra and position of many old men his age, which can be succinctly boiled down to “Ah, it’s all bullshit.” Yet he was a genuine scientific skeptic. He believed in scientific proof where any claim, medical, chemical, commercial or otherwise was made. (Except for the human-induced climate change thing. Go figure.)

As an active dad, he took us skiing, golfing, cycling and made sure we had fun doing it (excluding golf — I still bear the psychological scars). He made sure we had a balance of activity, to counter the laying around watching TV or listening to music we did.

I could go on at length about his habit of eating bagels in the nude at 1:00 in the morning but I’ll let you get back to your Covid-enforced TV streaming and overeating.

Stay strong, stay sane-ish, and give someone you love a hug. Preferable with a mask.

Achingly hairy and twice as isolated,
Koko Druker

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

How To Replace Democracy – Choose Your Price

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Stanko & Tibor - The Price of Democracy

How To Replace Democracy – Choose Your Price

There was a report recently stating that if automobile makers want to reduce the weight of their vehicles, they will have to use more plastic parts because they are lighter. What is a key ingredient used to make plastic? Petroleum, the main ingredient in gasoline. So to reduce the amount of fuel vehicles use, they need to use parts made from the stuff needed to make gasoline. There is a price to pay for progress. Ironic. Or is that coincidental? I don’t know. English isn’t my mother tongue.

The same irony is valid when applied to democracy. To make it more useful, relevant and effective, you need more people to come out and vote. But participation rates in democracies have been going down for lots of reasons that I won’t speculate on here, largely, because I will employ far more profanity than usual, and after all, profanity should be reserved for use in the home, classrooms and inside your motor vehicle, where it’s best applied.

Furthermore, of those who come out to vote, most probably aren’t informed on all the issues and vote with their hearts and not their heads. Or they vote against someone or something rather than voting for someone or some idea. We can identify what and who we dislike more easily that what or who we like. Yet, if they knew the price of not voting, or voting with their hearts, maybe they’d reconsider. Or maybe not.

Solution: Price Democracy

Let’s apply some speculative and questionable pricing theory. Democracy needs to be priced properly for it to have relevance and value. You see, when you put a price on something suddenly you give it value you can calculate. Can you put a price on free speech or freedom? Well, it’s hard, but I’d say it’s worth at least $100, before taxes. Maybe a little more if I can print profanity-laced t-shirts and hand them out randomly. But I digress.

Conversely democracy could be priced in an inverse sense — meaning, if you don’t go out and vote, it’ll cost you some real cash. Like $20. OK, maybe that’s too low. Make it $30. But negative incentives tend not to work. Even if you got a tax break for voting in municipal, state or national elections, most people would skip it anyway because the outcome would suck anyway.

Bundling Democracy at the Right Price

What if democracy and voting came in a packaged bundle?  Much like mobile phones and cable TV subscriptions, if you could sign up for the democracy bundle that meets your budget and needs, you maybe be encouraged to vote.

Sure, right now, I get the right to free speech, and other services like health care, fire and police protection and sanitation. But what if I could get a free movie every month along with my right to vote? Or if I pay more, I could get 5 or more votes for any given election.

I bet if voting was tied to having your Internet connection cut or maintained, people would come out in droves to vote. Vote or we’ll cut off your Internet. That would scare the piss out everyone. On the other hand, if you could get increased upload/download speeds on your Internet connection if you went out an voted, that might be a good incentive. Or free dope.

Discount Democracy

Or better yet, you get a discount on your cable/TV/internet/mobile phone bill for each vote you make AND you get to kick someone at the cable/TV/internet/mobile company where you’re subscribed right in the privates for the crappy customer service and time wasted on hold when you need help with your erroneous and unjustly exorbitant bill.

What about loyalty voting points if you vote for one party every election? You’d get a loyalty card that could trade for privileges like a plane ticket to a warm vacation resort, or your street gets paved before the others in your neighbourhood. That happens now anyway  in a lot of places, but you have to be intimately linked to organized crime, and that means having to fill in my calendar with even more appointments at brothels and cheap motels than usual, and I’m too busy for that.

And if all else fails, we move to a democracy pricing model based on the single model that has shown itself to be more reliable and accurate than any other since academics and computational models became all the rage: We guesstimate the price like on the The Price Is Right.

Insincerely friendly,
Jean-Baptiste Colbert Druker of NDG

How would you improve democracy?

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Mental Arthritis

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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

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Contest Winners Ahoy!

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It is with massive fanfare, blaring trumpets, and great pleasure that I announce the winners of the Stanko & Tibor “Provide Me With A Caption So I Don’t Have To Think Of One” Contest.

But before I do, I want to thank the judges who worked so dutifully by my side throughout the intense and lengthy process of deliberation. Throughout difficult discussions, raised voices, pints of beer, fist-shaking arguments and the occasional nap, we stood as one and found our winners. Who were those handsome, powerful, deep-thinking, brilliant (and some would even venture to say sexy if the lighting was just right) judges?

Simple: Me, myself and I. When I asked for help, the response I got was “I’d rather personally spay my cat and then go for oral surgery than help you.” So it was just me, myself and I who took on the Herculean task of judging the qualified entries. (Now a number of you are thinking, “does he have multiple personalities? And should he be allowed out in public without a chaperone?” Honestly, if you haven’t figured that out by now, you don’t know me, or you really haven’t been paying attention. Not an uncommon occurrence.)

As I sifted through the thousands of submissions… Ok, hundreds. Ok, ok, tens. All right! It was less than 10. Where was I? Right, the submissions for the comic. Indeed I did have a good mental chew on these fine suggestions, and I came to the conclusion that the three in particular stood out, so here are the winners:

1st Place: Mr. E. Zeitz for his timely, politically inspired ” ..if only I hadn’t fired 47% of my crew…” Had it not been for Mr. Romney’s most talked about gaffe, Mr. Zeitz might still be in his basement pondering on a caption. Hailing from a small Mid-Western town, Mr. Zeitz’s day job as a carpet layer has exposed him to many industrial solvents and glues, thus freeing up his mind to explore the deepest reaches of absurdity. In fact, the slogan printed on the side of his truck “I can tear up or lay your carpet in under 15 minutes” has been quoted in numerous legal cases as being “offensive on so many levels” and led to a short stint in a Mexican jail. Congratulations Mr. Zeitz!

2nd Place: Ms. K. Sutton for her historical re-enactment theme “I’d rest my leg on the side of the boat like George Washington but this ain’t the Delaware and I don’t have any Jockeys under this raincoat.” Ms. Sutton’s extensive and some would say upsetting fascination with men’s underwear and historical figures gave this particular entry a flair that many soon won’t forget. Even with shock therapy. Ms. Sutton was also suffering from being sat next to a crying baby and a corpulent yodeler while in Coach on U.S. Airways, and then subsequent suffering from jet lag and a Halloween candy sugar shock overdose at the time just before this submission, so she can be excused for her irrational behavior.

3rd Place: Mrs. K. Nellen for her near Woody Allen-esque complaining rant “How long to I have to stand here in this ridiculous outfit, just to wait for someone to drop me a line? Just because the cartoonist extraordinaire is taking an extraordinaire break and can’t think of a proper line himself. I bet you it’s gonna rain soon.” After being released from the New Bedfordshire Home For the Criminally Insane largely on a legal technicality that the lawyers say you need to have a habeas corpus to prove it was she who whacked her three previous husbands, Mrs. Nellen sought to turn her unfulfilled penchant for baking and sewing into a comedic career by supplying punchlines and captions at discount prices. This led her to Canada, where she spends her time caring for two possibly demonically possessed children, a neurotic, mildly Napoleonic husband whose self control with regards to cookies has been described in medical journals as “off the charts”, as well as various and sundry guests from aboard who like to mooch.

So you three winners can claim your prize by going to http://www.cafepress.com/stankotibor, choosing the article you wish, clothing, water bottle, iPad case, towels, posters, you name it and then letting me know what you want and I will have your caption printed on said chosen item – and shipped to you, no less.

Thank you to the others who participated in the contest, and to those of you who didn’t – I’ve got you in my black book.

Forever yours,
Viceroy Druker of the Hills

Day-to-Day, Meaning of Life

Contest Ahoy! Creativity Required, Profanity Optional

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Ahoy ye scurvy land-dwellers! Do I have an offer for you!

Having just recently completed this masterpiece of a drawing over the weekend, while I suffered mightily and stoically through what could be called the autumnal assault on my immune system, a.k.a. a nasty sinus cold, I decided within the last few strokes of the electronic stylus that you the reader should play a crucial part in completing this maritime-themed illustration.

In plain English, I want you to supply the dialogue that should appear in the drawing. I hear you asking yourselves, Why would I even waste a nano-second and several synaptic occurrences on helping this lazy good-for-nothing do his job?

Simple. There is a free t-shirt, sweat shirt, or bag, or some other swag in it for you. Whoever comes up with the winning dialogue will receive -free- an article from the Stanko & Tibor online store with this image and your carefully chosen words emblazoned on it. You can choose from clothing to iPad cases, to carrying devices. Or a water bottle if you’re so inclined or reclined.

I will list 1st, 2nd and 3rd places on the site, with your name, photo, date of birth, driver’s license and social security numbers, which I will then sell to unscrupulous types to help offset the cost of giving away these fine gifts. I’m kidding, I won’t sell it to anyone, I’ll just get a credit card in your name. There, you happy now?

All I ask in return for your time and effort for those lucky winners is that you actually wear the winning item in public, at least once, before you decide to polish your car with it or give it to the homeless. And maybe take a picture of it with you wearing it as proof you haven’t set the item on fire immediately.

The contest runs from today, October 4th until November 4th. A panel of extinguished judges will decide on who wins, and there are no appeals, unless bribe money is attached. Dollars, Euro, Yen, something like that, upwards of let’s say $50.

Good luck and may The Bard be with you.

Lord Hessian of the hound fondlers Druker