Visibilities
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 past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner, Wayno. He does a weekly blog post, too, and I highly recommend it.——————————————————————
My Sunday cartoon above is an extrapolation of the concept of TV’s audio description for the blind, which I’ve turned on by accident a few times and wondered what the hell was going on. If you’re not ready for it, it can be pretty weird to suddenly hear a voice describing what’s happening on screen. “A flock of birds flies across the sky.” “A man reaches into the back of his pants and produces a live catfish.”
I’m very used to closed caption for the hearing impaired, however. I use subtitles for everything I watch on TV (except for sports) because my hearing is badly deteriorated and it’s not just British detective dramas that I can’t understand anymore. I don’t use subtitles while watching sports because they often interfere with following the action and also because what the commentators are saying is rarely worth listening to. “…and he’s run out of bounds near midfield.” Yes, I can see that.
To my mind, the only thing more predictable than play-by-play commentary are the athlete interviews at the end of the game. We viewers can at least turn the damn things off but if you’re the star athlete on your team, you’ve got to deal with the same questions and answers for the duration of your fame. It would drive me nuts. There are only so many ways can you say, “We played hard and so did they. I’m glad we won the game,” or, “I’m bummed that we lost.”
I’ll admit that one of my top three greatest fears is becoming blind. My entire life has been about visual arts so it’s a particularly frightening prospect. And my hearing already sucks and will likely get worse, so I’d be heading into Helen Keller territory.
I saw a documentary about her recently and my mind was blown. Imagine if your consciousness’s experience of this world was entirely through touch. No sight, no sound. Everything you know about language comes to you through taps on your arm. You only know what you directly feel or is told to you through taps on your arm. Her reality was so different from mine that I find it impossible to even imagine.
I’ve written before on this blog about how we each create our own reality and this is a prime example of how different they can be. There is no “one reality,” everyone’s is different and Keller’s was inconceivable to me.
Harder than imagining Keller’s reality is to imagine how Anne Sullivan managed to devise a way to teach someone language through arm touching. WTF?! She was a genius and a saint. I don’t know what else to say. Except that I find them both to be very inspirational in my attempts to obtain a second language. I often tell myself if Helen Keller can learn English through arm taps, I can learn Spanish, dammit.
Let’s move on now to the Bizarro cartoons created this week by Wayno, who’s sainthood has been questioned far more often than his genius.
I was going to say something about him not ordering the garlic sticks but Wayno already did that on his weekly blog post about this batch. (He also included some fun stream-of-consciousness art from his archives!)
Instead, I’ll add that the title panel I have at the top of this post was chosen because ventriloquism is another of those art forms that would sound insane if you explained it to a blind person. “He’s talking to a doll and pretending the doll is answering him.”
I can’t help but wonder how many wallowers he has on Facebook.
This particular breed is very handy if you need something to guard your hellish life.
Everyone knows Sasquatch only drinks Heineken but with the label obscured and his feet not showing, some readers thought this was an ape. It’s not, hence the “prints” pun.
(Or, as Bigfoot is fond of calling them, “The large impressions formerly known as prints.”
He was just visiting some relatives.
A week ago today I posted a new episode of Peyote Cowboy. You can see it here and you can sign up to be alerted via email each time I post, here.
That’s the end of whatever this has been. Thanks for joining us! If you’re enjoying what we do here, please tell your friends. If you hate it, tell your enemies. Either way, please also consider helping us keep this experience ad-free by tossing a buck or two into the bunny’s tin cup via the links below. We’ll thank you by name at our next midnight ritual in the forest.
Until next week, don’t bother leaving the porch light on for me because I don’t even know where you live.
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