Bizarro (11/24/09)

I wore cuff-links to a job interview once and was so distracted by their clunkiness that I only caught bits and pieces of what the interviewer was saying. Fortunately, I did well enough to land the job, but the incident taught me that cuff-links, no matter how good they look, simply do not agree with me. I’m partial to dress shirts that hug the wrist, not ones that slosh around like billowy robes threatening to unravel in a stiff, starched mess should the fasteners holding them in place happen to fail.

Bizarro (11/12/09)

Being no fan of holiday creep, I’ve been pleased with the lack of Christmas decorations around Chicago this November. Stores that would usually be crawling with Santas and Rudolphs have given me precious little to complain about. In fact, my neighbor across the street still has her Halloween decorations up, orange string lights and all. That combined with an unseasonably warm string of days has made it seem like early October instead of mid-November. The only thing that has snapped me back to reality has been the shrinking amount of sunlight affecting those of us on the far eastern edge of the central time zone.

Bizarro (11/7/09)

It might seem like the would-be taggers in this strip have made a mistake by purchasing white spraypaint, but they actually might have stumbled onto a goldmine. All they have to do is paint some rudimentary images on this igloo and put the whole thing up for auction. It might just go for a mint, like the outrageously expensive, white on off-white painting that stirred up such controversy in the play Art by Yasmina Reza. Of course, it’s hard to display an igloo inside one’s home, but I’m sure anyone who could afford an expensive art collection could also afford to build a meat locker devoted to housing their latest acquisition.

Bizarro (10/25/09)

There’s a grocery store in my neighborhood that sells pinatas alongside their incredibly fresh produce and (ahem) startlingly complete selection of pig parts. Unfortunately, all of these pinatas are American cartoon characters or superheroes, like Batman and Dora the Explorer. If I could find a multicolored steer like the one galloping up to the trough in today’s Bizarro, I would almost certainly buy it and find some way, any way, to incorporate it into the rapidly approaching Halloween holiday.

Bizarro (9/13/09)

At first glance, this strip struck me as a clever take on the famous “ascent of man” drawing that shows an ape followed by a neanderthal followed by a modern-day human. But then I noticed the small, almost unnoticeable black speck at the far left of the strip. Was it an asterisk? What was it referring to? Then I realized it was a snowflake and my “goodness, this is clever” meter started clicking like a Geiger counter. That tiny snowflake transformed a strip I thought was funny into a strip I truly appreciated.

Bizarro (8/20/09)

Remember a few years ago when Miss Teen South Carolina embarrassed herself by giving a ridiculously convoluted answer to a simple question? Sure you do. Everyone remembers the painful references to “U.S. Americans” and “the Iraq,” but what we don’t remember is the original query: “Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?” As a lover of geography, I was more horrified by the question than by the rambling nonsense it inspired. And now it appears that the vast majority of high school students are unable to distinguish between Europe and South America. I wish I could interpret their ignorance as a sly dig at the legacy of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism, but I’m afraid that would be too much of a stretch.

Bizarro (8/16/09)

I’m usually careful when composing e-mails, but like everyone else I forget to attach files from time to time. This is particularly embarrassing when the e-mail contains a detailed description of the missing file. I’m sure thousands of people have received messages that went on at length about a contract, a business letter or an event program, and then searched in vain for the phantom document. And when does the sender realize that the file isn’t attached to their e-mail? Immediately after hitting send, of course.