I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, a short essay, and 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 my Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.

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Saludos, Jazz Pickles and other whatnots. Welcome to this thing.

Today’s cartoon is about the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. Like many children’s rhymes and stories, it’s been sanitized a bit over time. I’ve always heard it like this:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.

The first two lines are cute and evoke an old lady with a bunch of kids living in a big shoe. Sounds like fun. I’ve long wondered, though, if she was “old,” why are her offspring still children? Was somebody still impregnating her into her fifties and sixties? And regarding her not knowing what to do, it seems to me she’d be so busy trying to scrounge enough food for all those monsters that she’d never have time to wonder what to do. Then there are other concerns like finding enough polish for the entire house before the rainy season.

A quick visit to Wikipedia told me the rhyme used to have at least two more lines:

She gave them some broth without any bread;

Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

So now we see that she was starving and abusing them. Well, who can blame her? Anyone who’s had too many children and was forced to live all crammed together with them in an item of footwear is going to get a little testy. 

In my cartoon version, above, the old woman has won the lottery and bought quite a lot of housing, so at least that problem is solved. But they’re all open-toed, so it’ll be hell to pay when it rains.

My favorite line about the lottery is that it is a tax on people who are bad at math. 

If you’re playing the lottery and hoping to hit the jackpot, you may be interested to know that, according to a statistician, any given high school quarterback has a better chance of going on to one day quarterback the winning team in the Super Bowl, than you have of winning the lottery.

Have you ever felt that lucky? I sure as hell haven’t!

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You don’t have to be good at math to know that you’ll get your money’s worth by subscribing to my weekly articles in The Naked Cartoonist. The five bucks per month subscription is part of my naive attempt to replace some of my newspaper income (remember those? They were made of actual paper!) and continue to live in a structure more permanent than a shoe. Fingers and laces crossed that my scheme works!

My most recent article is titled “Flirting with Adultery,” and it got lots of nice comments. Here is one of my favorites:

“Trust and tofu. To thine own self be true. This is a brilliant piece of work. You write so well. Thank you.” —Joanne

Whoever Joanne is, she has moved into first place on my list of favorite readers! Subscribe now and knock her off her perch before she gets a big head!

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Let’s see what was in Wayno’s normal-sized head when he devised this week’s Bizarro cartoons…

That’s our comedy crap fest for the week, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for watching where you step. If you enjoy this nonsense and appreciate that we offer it for free, please help us keep it that way via the links below. We’ll recommend you for a lifetime achievement award in gratitude.

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