I admit to being a fan of movies about the Old West. I don’t watch them from a cowhide armchair in a room decorated like a Montana steakhouse or anything, but I enjoy the genre. There are definitely good and bad ones, though.

However you look at it, these folks are being scorned for being different. For being where they “don’t belong”. Which motivates me to dig one level deeper and just ask, where did we even get the cliche image of Heaven this cartoon is built on?

This is an era when a person can understandably be heard to shout from their balcony, “What next?!” Honestly, at this point would a plague of bears be all that surprising? It would certainly be cuter than the current plague of idiocy ramming its fist up the backside of America, and probably less dangerous. A panda can kill a person but they aren’t particularly good at dismantling democracies.

“Did I miss anything?”

Is there a more loaded question than that one in this era? These days, you can miss a LOT just by blinking. But then again—these days—most of what you’re missing is stuff you wish you’d never seen…

I would not call myself a “grammar nazi,” though I have been called one. I’m not the kind of person who will correct someone’s grammar on the fly, without being asked (and who asks others to correct their grammar?) but I admit I would like to.

And, of course, I’m utterly devoted to curling, but that goes without saying…

In this week’s post: what happens when rats trek, the difference between me and Wayno, my new thing, 7 new cartoons, and some cool info about Popeye’s dead composer…

Hey, Jazz Pickles, here’s a quick and joyful announcement!

The National Cartoonists Society gives out yearly awards for various categories of cartooning and this year they’ve nominated our Bizarro’s own Wayno in the category of “Newspaper Panels”!…

It’s been a fun week here at Rancho Bizarro as we celebrated a milestone in a five-year project! Last Tuesday, I launched the new website for my graphic novel, Peyote Cowboy, which I’m posting more-or-less as I illustrate it.

Beloved Jazz Pickles, as promised, today is finally here; I’ve launched the website for my graphic novel, Peyote Cowboy, free for anyone to read. It’s been a long journey so I’m pretty excited! Read all about it in this special post.

I hate to think it but there may be people not familiar with the pop-culture reference in this week’s Sunday comic. If that describes you, look up “lone ranger tropes,” then come back and laugh. If you’re among those who refuse to wear a mask under any circumstance, you may…

Hey, Jazz Pickles, how are you holding up? Inhabiting these meat bodies as they shuffle around on this floating rock has always been a weird experience but ¡DAMN! it’s been especially weird lately. More for some than for others…

I have to admit I have not read a single article about the college football controversy. (And I never watch video news.) But from the headlines I’ve seen in my periphery, I’m guessing…

In last week’s post, I skipped the profound, heartfelt, armchair philosophy and instead, offered a few amusing thoughts about that day’s cartoon. A good number of Jazz Pickles said they enjoyed my occasional pontifications and hoped they would continue, so I’ll happily comply today. This one is about no less than…

If you had a food product that you were trying to market to the public, would you call it “shaved ice”? I would not. The word “shaved” invokes thoughts of hair, stubble, nicks, and cuts, not frozen treats…

I haven’t looked this up, but pretend that I have and that I’m saying it with authority: Since the invention of letters, no other graphic form of communication has caught on with the speed and saturation of the planet as has…

The above cartoon created more “I don’t get it” comments than I had anticipated, but I get it. One thing that cartoonists sometimes attempt to do is to lead the viewer to perceive something differently than usual. The bait-and-switch that happens in your head…

The above cartoon is dark, but dark times sometimes call for dark humor. As I’ve preached many times on this blog, humor is both a uniquely human and uniquely powerful way to deal with the tougher aspects of life: tragedy, fear, loss, anxiety.

In popular culture and casual conversation, people tend to talk about “karma” as though it were a kind of universal point system wherein if you do something bad or good, something bad or good will happen to you in return. I have to admit that I long believed that karma was basically that and I assume many others do, too. But recently I came across a more complete definition of karma that is making a lot more sense to me and it’s this…

I’ve heard more than a few people recently, some in my own family, express anxiety and depression over the uncertainty of the world going forward. I get it. You’d have to be a fifth-degree blackbelt Buddhist monk not to have some concerns at this point.