Tag Archives: rebirth

Good Riddance 2016 – Happy 2017

Good Riddance and Welcome

Well the people who follow the Gregorian calendar can now officially say ‘good riddance to 2016’ — especially given that death has been  a big theme this past year. (If you follow the Chinese, Zoroastrian, Muslim, Jewish, Japanese Imperial or Mayan calendars, it was still a pretty shockingly crappy year from some perspectives.)

And I am not counting the long list of celebrities who shuffled off their moral coil, and there were many. Influential too, in all manner of subjects and areas of expertise.

However, we should not forget those who weren’t famous or successful who were killed, murdered or just plain suffered to death in just about every part of the world. Don’t forget, they are just as much a part of life as those n Hollywood or elsewhere. I know, the media doesn’t want us to focus on that so much, because it doesn’t get ratings. But try not to forget.

I wonder if there is a death counter to tally up all the people who willfully or less than willfully said good riddance to this mortal life. That would be a tough job for any computer, or even the best accountant, no matter how good the software. Do humans do a global death census? Maybe we should, but counting the dead is hard because they tend not speak up when asked.

2017 Has To be Better, Right?

2017 —  Will it get better? That is the question on so many peoples’ lips. If you are an optimist –gullible, on medication or otherwise — it can only get better. After Donald Trump‘s election, and countless other terrorist attacks in the name of some ‘benevolent’ god, life can only move toward the positive, depending on your point of view, of course.

For the bitter pessimists among us, we have to suffer through four years of Donald Trump and the inevitable talk shows that will tear him to shreds. We’re all losers here. There is still Putin, terrorists, and worst of all, Mariah Carey is making a comeback. Some in the media are asking, if she’s making a comeback, why can’t a benevolent god from ANY religion give her tongue gout?

Good Riddance Again?

The human memory is conditioned to blot out bad experiences (like murder, torture, losing money at gambling, or an overdone steak). We tend to remember the things that gave us joy and euphoria. Obviously that’s different for different people. But if we just learned to remember the awful stuff a little more often, maybe we wouldn’t fall into the same bad habits like betting on democracy, or your favorite sports team, or the mafia to get you out of a sticky situation.

My recommendation for the future is simple: Eat what you like, spend time with those who make you happy, quit your job if you hate it, and watch plenty of animated TV – way better than reality.

Faithfully without faith,

Nostradamned Ignorantus Biggus Druker


Hibernation Consternation

Stanko & Tibor - Back

Dear readers of the written word (way easier to read those than the spoken ones, I am told), you have been warned, alerted, messaged and poked. The hibernation has ended, and the resulting consternation begins. Let me elaborate in between bites of my Oreos.

Hibernation

It has been quite some time since I last enlightened (a.k.a. polluted) the world with yet another tour de force of the artistic/comedic kind, and many of you had very quietly (a little too quietly) suspected that I had either given up the ghost or was suffering from the early onset of death brought on by a pronounced case of cyanosis from being left out in the emotional cold.

Come to think of it, the lack of concern about this hibernation is troubling, because you all should have been flailingly up in arms over the fact that I was virtually no-existent in the virtual world of cartooning and comedic buffoonery. Then again it was a very cold winter here in North America with snow, cold, wind, snow and I think some frosty snow.  That could have prevented the frantic arm-waving, although my mom told me it’s a great way to warm up and make other people think you’re unstable so they leave you alone at shopping malls.

Which, had I listened to my mother like a good boy and done like she instructed, would have made my most recent excursion to Costco, that hell hole of a money-sucking armpit that knows just how to get me to part with cash using crappy lighting and industrial sized packages of cheese sticks, less horrendous and eye-wateringly painful. Waving my arms with reckless abandon would have probably had a parting of the Red Sea effect just long enough for me to get through the dairy section unmolested by people of questionable hygiene habits to get the 4 liter bag of milk my kids devour like Rob Ford on crack.

But I digress.

I did not truly hibernate, nor did I truly retreat into a cave. I just took some time to see what it would be like to be a leech on society. Not as bad as I thought.  To be honest, so many of the past months were spent in a creative cocoon of sorts, time I used to learn, to draw, and to write ideas for this blog/cartoon. Ideas and sentences and paragraphs that will to some degree wind up in edited form in the soon to be published e-book that covers the last 5 or so years of Stanko & Tibor, the tome that brought shame to an entire family, and a lot of money to highly trained psychiatrists and paranormal psychologists trying to figure out what the hell makes me tick.

Consternation

As for the consternation part of it, no doubt will I expound upon topics of such great import, such earth-shattering significance, such gravity-altering force that it will shake the foundations of science, art, home gardening, basket-weaving and philosophy to their very cores. It will fill minds with synapse-provoking anxiety and mental disquietude, not unlike being on a roller coaster when that listeria-filled hot dog leads to diarrhea that kicks in when you’re at 3.5g and there’s nowhere to go.

Topics such as modern dentistry, body hair, productivity and global warming as it relates to male pattern baldness and DNA will be explored to a degree unknown by people outside of a mental institution or on serious meds. There was also an idea for something akin to the fake Hitler diaries, but using Bin Laden and maybe a goat as a love interest. I haven’t sussed that one out yet, but with my sugar intake of late being best described as ‘prolific’, ‘shocking’, ‘like Rob Ford on crack’ and ‘pronounced’, it won’t be long before I have a battery of ideas to assault you, the dear reader, with, and hopefully create some of the aforementioned consternation.

So let’s get right to it. Enjoy another installment of the creation that Neil de Grasse Tyson calls “cosmic doo-doo” and my lawyer calls “probable cause.”

Hauntingly handsome and devilishly hairy,

Rocco Druker