Never Enough

I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, a short essay, then the past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner Wayno, whose weekly blog post I highly recommend.

And here’s this week’s ANSWER KEY to the above Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.

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IN JANUARY, 2024, CHANGES ARE COMING TO RANCHO BIZARRO that we hope you’ll enjoy, or at least won’t make you puke!

Have you ever spent the majority of your life weaving a beautiful rug only to have it pulled out from under you by a world that would rather see what kinds of rugs a robot could make? 

Of course not, and neither have I. Probably no one has.

But there’s no denying the world is changing faster than some of us ever imagined it could. Most of us can’t even read about all the ways in which things don’t work the way they used to, much less learn the myriad* new systems well enough to cobble together a living from them.

Creative types, like writers and cartoonists, can no longer depend on large corporations like the publishers of newspapers and books to support them, so we’re having to get creative and learn to market ourselves directly to readers in new ways. 

The good news is that being creative is what we creative types do, so this is an excellent opportunity for growth. The bad news is that growth and change are hard and I don’t like hard things. 

If you’re like me, you tend not to learn much when you’re not forced to. Sure, I learn stuff about psychology, philosophy, history, and culture all the time, but that’s because I enjoy those topics. I never just take a deep dive into how to install a septic tank or calculate the trajectory of a rocket so that it enters Mars's atmosphere instead of heading straight into the sun. (NASA pro tip: Never name a rocket Icarus.) Those things don’t interest me and I don’t need to know them, so why risk making my head explode? 

Another topic I’ve feared could result in my brains being splattered on the walls is Internet marketing, but it suddenly has become the septic tank I need to install, the rocket I need to aim in the right direction. Ugh.

The Internet is intuitive, fun, and easy for people under, say, forty-five (and older ones who have worked to keep up with technology). Neither of those groups describes me.

When I was thirty-five, I had been an adult for fifteen years already, but I had only ever heard of personal computers and the Internet and had never seen either one. Phones were still attached to walls by wires. There was no social media, nobody had a website, and you couldn’t buy anything online yet. People of my generation and before became good at navigating and succeeding in that world, but then that world disappeared seemingly overnight. (If you know where it went and have an address, please contact me.)

So here we are. It is said that mental health can be measured by a person’s ability to accept reality, and though I’ve rarely been accused of being mentally healthy, I’m taking a crash course in reality and meeting this challenge head-on. 

Plans for the new year here at Rancho Bizarro will include my writing a little less here in my Sunday blog posts and posting my longer think pieces (like last week’s popular essay on the dangers of fame) in a weekly subscription newsletter. It will feature the more in-depth, and thoughtful essays, editorials, and humorous stories that I’ve traditionally put here in my Sunday blog posts, as well as some extras like videos and photos from my life, non-cartoon art from corners of my career and personal life you’ve not yet heard of, and other fun stuff yet to be determined. 

I will also offer regular chances to join me in online video calls from time to time so we can chat and become better friends.

I’ll gear the newsletter toward people who like to read and think around corners, not just scroll for cartoons and move on to funny cat videos. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those activities!) As writer Nick Wolny so cleverly put it, my newsletter will be for “people who are not afraid of paragraphs.”

All of that entertaining, enlightening, and educational content will cost something like five bucks a month. I hope many of you will join me in the new year, allowing me to continue to live indoors, to which I’ve become accustomed. Details about how and where you can try it out will be posted in this blog when the time comes.

Wayno and I want to keep our cartoons free of subscriptions and ads for as long as we can and this is a step towards that. As always, we thank you for your readership and support and will continue to bust our knuckles to provide content worth spending a few minutes with each week. 

*Grammar police pet peeve: People commonly use the word “myriad” with “of,” as in, “myriad of ways.” This implies that myriad means something like “collection.” It does not. Myriad means “countless” or “many.” You wouldn’t say “countless of ways,” so don’t say “myriad of ways.” (Thanks for indulging my grammar neurosis.)

Let’s move on now to Wayno’s week of Bizarro cartoons!…

Psychedelic mushrooms often think other mushrooms are talking to them.

ONLINE AUCTION OF A SIGNED BIZARRO PRINT: I’m a fan of this Buddhist organization and donate yearly to their online auction. You’ll find lots of cool stuff there, and in the art section, you’ll find a big, color, archival-quality print of a Bizarro cartoon that references Buddhism. Click the link, scroll down a bit, and you should recognize it easily. Even if you don’t want my cartoon print, bid on something else!

Tiny little pipe cleaner restaurants are so cute!

Same reason proctologists never order rigatoni.

(Wayno’s blog post this week explains this joke if it is eluding you.)

A commentator on IG said that invisible eyes would not be able to see. I think they have a point.

I’d kill him for saying that if he weren’t already dead.

That’s the chuckles for this week, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for putting up with us for another few minutes. If you enjoy what we offer here and that we do it without ads or clickbait, please consider helping us keep it this way via the links below. In gratitude, we’ll keep busting our knuckles to keep you entertained.

… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!

…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels  

King Features Subscription + archive access

COMICS KINGDOM SHOP (now with Bizarro products!)

WAYNO’S TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!