Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 12/19/01

Artist's Statement

I sent this cartoon to my editor with the caveat that it had emerged directly from my subconscious and that, should anyone complain about it, I would be utterly unable to formulate any kind of intelligible explanation or defense of it. I thought it worth reminding him that I had been on painkillers for several weeks.
      
But then a funny thing happened. My editor e-mailed me and said he had some reservations about running it since it would appear in the same issue as a "Savage Love" column in which, believe it or not, Dan Savage catalogues various items that have been removed from women's vaginas, including "cylindrical vegetables" that had been forcibly inserted. He was worried that, thus juxtaposed, my cartoon would seem to be making light of sexual assault. So he suggested we wait a week and in the meantime run an old cartoon from the file we keep in case of just such emergencies.

But then inspiration struck. I e-mailed him back with a brilliant breakthrough compromise: what if the carrot was stuck up the old man's butt instead? Huh? How about that? He replied: "That works splendidly." I am in the end happier with the second version and grateful for the fruitful debate between artist and editor that created it. We present both versions at the website for our viewers to judge for themselves. Which is funnier: a carrot up a woman's butt? Or up an old man's? And, most importantly: does the second version imply that the old man has a carrot up his butt even as he is speaking to the children?