Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 3/03/04
Artist's Statement
I had already decided what this week's cartoon
was going to be and even drawn three of the panels when my old Jaegerbuddy
Elena in Seattle forwarded me a link to the following article:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html
After reading this story I spent the rest of the afternoon in the sort of
shock that afflicts people in science-fiction stories who get an unwelcome
glimpse of some apocalyptic future and then spend the rest of their lives
as mad street prophets shuffling around impotently warning everyone that they're
Doomed. I mean I knew the scientific evidence for global warming--the correlation
between carbon levels in the atmosphere and global temperatures as recorded
in antarctic ice, the shrinking of glaciers, etc.--and I understood that the
implications were grim, but this kind of Book-of-Revelations rhetoric coming
out of the Pentagon--not, traditionally, a hotbed of spittle-flecked alarmism--and
the terrifyingly short timetable really shook me. Every headline I saw or
heard, from "Gas Prices to Skyrocket" to "Haiti in Chaos"
and "Could Be Top Pick in NFL," seemed petty and transient and meaningless,
like illegible print on old yellowed scraps of newspaper half-buried in the
ice. I considered giving up not only on the cartoon I'd been drawing but on
cartooning in general, just saying, like, fuck it, finding a girl to marry,
and cashing out all my stocks to buy a plot of land in the Canadian Rockies,
a shitload of canned goods, and my own Thompson gun. Instead I drew this.
Human beings' risk assessment is notoriously unrealistic and superstitious;
the entire Midatlantic region lived in a state of mild terror of The Sniper
for several weeks, but most of us only glance with annoyance in the rear-view
mirror at a tailgating 18-wheeler that would smear us into a pate` if we had
to brake unexpectedly. Now we (or the national media, at least) are obsessed
with the mostly symbolic issue of gay marriage while al Qaeda quietly plans
its next attack and UV radiation inexorably burns away the ozone. And our
cynical leaders are always ready to take advantage of our stupidity. It just
infuriates me that George Bush, who would blink at you as blank-faced as a
toad if you asked him to define "UV radiation" or "ozone"
or even "molecule," continues to lie about the clear evidence for
global warming and call for "more study," just like his oilman father
did twenty years ago, preferring to risk forfeiting the entire future of the
human race rather than cause his campaign donors in the petrochemical industry
any inconvenience at all. He's a dumb, gutless little prick, and I'm afraid
it's not much consolation to imagine that his name will be vilified by our
grandchildren, or that his gravesite will be lost under fifty feet of ice.
The panel about the dreaded Carbs, by the way, has been floating around in
my head for several weeks, ever since I heard a woman with one of those very
loud, piercing voices detailing her own variation on the Atkins Diet in a
cocktail lounge, and it occurred to me that it might be an even trade-off
to die a decade earlier if it meant you didn't have to have boring conversations
about your diet.
I've calmed down about the global warming thing since last week, but this
probably only means I've successfully erected some sturdier new fortifications
in my denial. If there are any girls reading this who would like to marry
me and then go live in the Canadian Rockies with a shitload of canned goods
and a tommy gun to await the glaciers, you may contact me through this web
site.
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