Rules and Reason
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, then a short essay, then the Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics which I turned over to a colleague, Wayno, in January of 2018. Wayno does a weekly blog post, too, and I highly recommend it.
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RULES AND REASON
As some of you know, I am a fan of marijuana. I grow my own here in Mexico and that’s legal, as long as it is only as much as my household would personally use. So for me, that would be about 100 acres of plants per year.
I’m just blowing smoke about that; a handful of plants are plenty to get me through a year and I can grow them in pots on my patio. What this story is really about is photo I.D.s and what they’re for.
I smoke my ganja from a flexible silicone pipe with a little glass bowl in it. You can remove the bowl for cleaning, which I do often. It is a tiny thing and easy to slip out of your hands, especially when you’re using slippery stuff to clean it with. When you live in a house with ceramic tile floors as I do, if it drops, it’s toast. (If toast could break into tiny, sharp pieces.)
So I went to the online store I bought the pipe from and I ordered a new bowl, as I’ve done a couple of times before.
(Apparently, smoking weed has not made me less clumsy.)
If you’ve ever bought anything online, you know what a thrill ride filling out the forms can be so you can imagine how excited I was when I discovered they’d added yet another step.
After completing all of the payment and shipping info and jumping through the required 21st-century hoops, this pesky box pops up telling me that before they can submit my order, they have to verify my age. They require that you be at least 18 years old to buy from this site, even though this site does not sell drugs or illegal objects of any kind. Figure that out and let me know what you come up with.
So the automatic box asks me a few questions. I answered them truthfully but they declined to verify my age and said to expect an email telling me more. What joy.
I fairly skipped with glee over to my email program and read the prophesied epistle. It said they were sorry it didn’t work out before but there’s one more thing I can do to try to verify my age: I can upload a copy of my photo I.D., then another photo of me holding my photo I.D. next to my face to prove it’s really me. Hell, I’m in my sixties and have a gray beard so the photo of me holding it should be evidence enough that I’m over 18, but whatever. I want my little glass bowl so I give it a try.
I figured my Mexican drivers license might confuse them so I used my old California drivers license instead. A few minutes later, I get an email reply saying I was still rejected. Want to guess why?
If you guessed it’s because my CA drivers license had expired a couple years ago, you’re right. By this time I was fairly fed up with the whole thing and was going to bail on the order entirely and just carve a pipe out of an old cow skull or something, but to blow off steam, I hit “reply” and said simply this, “My expired California drivers license means I can no longer drive legally in California. It does not mean I am no longer the person I was two years ago.”
I was about to sign off and put the whole stupid episode behind me when I received an email reply from them. “Thanks, you’ve been verified,” was all it said. Elated, I returned to the site and my purchase had been completed.
It is so rare that I have an experience where an institution is able to put reason above rules that I wanted to share the story with you. May it give us all hope that sanity may one day prevail.
But for now, let’s take a break from the demanding world of age verification and enjoy Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week. There is no age requirement.
There’s a rumor that he can reproduce without having sex.
But they are secretly hoping they get to use it a LOT.
Most cats only respond to shred therapy.
Wayno shows a couple of different versions of this one in his weekly blog post. Actually, he has several extra behind-the-scenes sketches this week, and the weekly pipe pick is one of my absolute favorites!
One clever commentator on our IG account said this: ce n'est pas un m&m. Well done, @craigduff!
All I can say is I’m glad his marotte stops at the neck.
That signals the end of our partially-nude comedy review this week, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for hanging around until the hippie’s dance of seven veils. If you enjoy this kind of nonsense and appreciate our lack of pop-up ads, clickbait, and age requirements, please consider helping us keep it that way by dropping by one of the links below. We’ll shake our marottes at you in thanks.
Until next week, be kind to animals and remember that you are an animal.
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels