HOMELAND SECURITY ALERT! FLIGHT RISK

A lot of my cartoons are to “poke” my friends…

In this particular case, I didn’t know the recipient of the cartoon’s attention.  Fortunately for me, the person (who shall remain nameless because he carries a gun to work…) must have  a sense of humor.

I was contacted by an insurance client who knew I was a cartoonist.  The client (who also shall remain nameless… he carries a gun to work, too.) is a police officer.  He wanted me to draw a cartoon to poke fun at another officer on his police force.

As the story goes, his friend was home alone at night and had fallen asleep on the couch watching TV.  He awoke to the sound of glass breaking and immediately thought he was being burglarized.  Since he was nowhere near his gun, he grabbed a household item (Here’s where multiple versions of the story come in…) and crept through the darkened house, heart in his throat.

From what I heard,  he was ready to confront the burglar in hand-to-hand combat and use all the self-defense skills he had learned in the Police Academy.   THIS WAS SERIOUS!!  Imagine his relief when he discovered the broken window and a small bird lying on the floor with a broken neck…Crime solved without firing a shot!

His mistake was telling his Police buddies about it.  They couldn’t let it go and asked me to do a cartoon to commemorate the event.  He was given the “Award” at a police function.  To date,  I’ve received no credible threats…  Should I be worried?

APPLE GOES AFTER THE SENIOR MARKET WITH NEW CELL PHONE.

When APPLE announced they were making an iPHONE 4 that would work on Verizon, I instantly knew what their next product would be.  A product aimed at their largest, untapped market ….  SENIOR CITIZENS!

Verizon spent millions touting their “Can you hear me now?” theme.  Now that they’ve teamed with APPLE, what would be more logical than a product that solves the major drawback for Seniors when using technological devices?  SMALL PRINT!  It is a natural and logical step to blend the iPAD size with the features of the iPHONE 4 to go after Seniors.

Couple that with a tweak in their advertising theme and it will be a “BABY BOOMER BONANZA!”  It will create the perfect storm for marketing to an aging population because it would include over-sized speakers for the hard of hearing.  It doesn’t get any better than that!

Now… Would it be too much to ask for a manual in LARGE PRINT?… with lots of pictures for those of us who are “technologically impaired”?

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.