Category: My viewpoiint

SAVE THE WHALES

I am fascinated by Bumper Stickers.  Every known (and unknown) cause is represented by a bumper sticker… somewhere.

What I find most interesting about the myriad of bumper stickers is the play on words often used to get the point across.  Now, I know “Save the Whales” is not a play on words and is a very legitimate cause.  One I believe in.  However, having been raised in a very conservative, Fundamental Christian household, whenever I hear the word “Save” it reminds me of sermons past.

The cartoon is an obvious blend of the two concepts.

On the other hand, maybe Rev. Brown is actually an angel and he’s speaking to Jonah…before he “saw the light”.  You know… one of those modern translations.

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GIRL SCOUTS… “TOSS YOUR COOKIES!”

Everybody loves Girl Scout cookies…

Steve, my neighbor, has two daughters who make the annual pilgrimage to our house to sell us Girl Scout cookies.  As a good American, I buy more than I should, even though I’m “O & O”… Old and Overweight.  I do what I can… to help the cause.  Unfortunately, I have about 5 favorite kinds.  If I just buy my favorites, I’m in trouble!

Steve has a great sense of humor.  One day we were talking about cartoons and he said he had a cartoon idea he wanted me to draw.  This cartoon is his idea.  I never asked him where he got the idea, but I’m guessing the idea of tossing Girl Scout cookies probably came near the end of the campaign with a stash of unsold cookies and not wanting to admit you couldn’t sell what you agreed to take.  Or, more likely, knowing you didn’t want to buy 50 boxes of cookies to support your scout.

As a parent and veteran of fund-raising wars, I can relate.  I know of one parent who offered Girl Scout cookies year round.  We often accepted them but secretly wondered how fresh they were.   We never had the courage (or sense) to check the expiration date.  Maybe it wasn’t the best plan, but… Girl Scout cookies can’t possibly go bad, right?

Have you ever wondered where the saying “Toss your cookies” originated?  Who started it?  What event triggered the saying?  Now, thanks to Steve, we don’t have to wonder anymore… But, I suspect, due to the universal understanding of what it means, one of the girls might not have been enjoying the ride because she ate too many cookies… Just a theory, you know?

“YOU’VE GOT A BAD HEART…”

I drew this cartoon while going through the process of dealing with newly diagnosed heart disease and the steps taken by the medical experts to deal with it.  My end result was open heart surgery.

“YOU’VE GOT A BAD HEART.”

No one living an active life wants to hear those fateful words… Come to think of it, neither does the couch potato.  So, why me?  After all these years trying to be a nice guy I ended up with a bad heart!  How did that happen?

Have you ever thought about what having a “bad” heart means?  Aside, of course, the implication you are lucky you made it to the Doctor’s office before you died.  For that matter, isn’t an autopsy open heart surgery?… Just a little too late to be of any help.

The idea they can turn a bad heart into a good one by simply performing surgery struck me as a little simplistic.  If that’s the case, why don’t they attempt a change of heart by performing heart surgery on criminals? It seems like it would save a lot of money over the long haul rather than incarcerating them in institutions which seem to enlarge their bad hearts.

Actually, I knew what the Doctors meant.  The “Bad heart” they were talking about was a physical condition not an attitude.  But, thinking like a cartoonist, that’s not what I heard.  I had to draw it like I heard it…And how I remembered it.

Speaking of what I remembered, don’t you think the gown is a nice touch?

TAXPAYERS WANTED… DEAD OR ALIVE!

I’m beginning to realize a lot of my cartoons could be re-cycled by simply changing the topic.  Average Americans are all facing the same issue.  Everything is going up… except our income and quality of life.

I drew this cartoon after a large increase in auto insurance rates.  As I look at the cartoon, it would be very simple to replace “Insurance Rates” with “Gasoline prices”, “Food costs”, “Bank Fees”,”Deductibles” , ” co-pay amounts”, “taxes”  or any number of other rising charges we face.

I decided to add a second cartoon to this blog entry because it also is interchangeable.  The cartoon was drawn during a period when State Farm was attempting to force agents into  a contract that wasn’t in the agent’s best interest.  They claimed agents with the old contract were wanted but put incredible pressure on them to accept the bad contract. To update the cartoon, “Agents with old contracts” could be replaced by “Taxpayer” because the basic issue is the same.


All the politicians are stressing the need for “Shared Sacrifice”.  The part they don’t bother to mention is how the “shares” are being distributed.  When the top 1% make most of the income in our country, why is it that we, at the other end of the food chain, are being asked to take the brunt of the sacrifice?  When I see the people at the top willing to accept what the people at the bottom have to deal with on  a daily basis, I’ll feel we’re “in this together”.  The last I knew, human sacrifice was illegal in the U.S…  It appears our leaders feel otherwise.

TRAFFIC CALMING? WHY NOT CALM THE DRIVERS INSTEAD?

I live in a fast-growing area that hasn’t addressed increased traffic congestion caused by rapid growth.  In the Summer, our population explodes with the infusion of  additional tourist traffic.  The buzzword for politicians has become “Traffic Calming“.  So far, efforts to “calm” traffic have slowed it but at the expense of increased congestion.

To avoid the bottlenecks, locals (because the tourists don’t know the shortcuts) have resorted to cutting through neighborhoods to get to where they are going.  The politicians answer to that is to put up stop signs at every neighborhood corner… making it even slower to get anywhere by “calming” the traffic.

“Traffic Calming” is an oxymoron.  Traffic going slower but increasing congestion does not create a calming effect.  Slow does not necessarily equate to calm.  Cars aren’t the problem…it’s the drivers!  Cars don’t get Road Rage, drivers do…

Add cyclists and pedestrians to the mix and it becomes a real battle.  Since the local political mindset seems to favor slow under the guise of traffic calming, I tried to imagine what their ultimate solution would be…

Bingo!  An EXPRESS LANE FOR PEDESTRIANS!  It might not calm down any drivers but it would guarantee they drive slower…  Isn’t that the goal?

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