Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 12/07/05
Artist's Statement
This is kind of like one of those dodges where you fulfill a writing assignment by writing about not having anything to write about. I used to give my own writing students some credit for ingenuity for trying this, but I never let them get away with it. Luckily there is no one (except you, discerning reader) to call me on this lameassed cop-out. I just couldn’t quite bring myself to care about anything in the news this week. I have to admit that I’m less enthusiastic about attacking the administration now that it’s liquefying than I was when it seemed so monolithic and invincible. Which is not to say I’m opposed in principle to kicking a man when he’s down; this particular administration should be kicked and then stomped on and then smeared across the pavement until we need to call up its dental records to identify it. It’s just not as interesting, artistically. It’s admittedly kind of fun watching them desperately try to spin reality, which worked for them for so long, to no effect. President Fuckboy unveiled a bold, clear, detailed new P.R. slogan: “Victory in Iraq.” But I feel like I’ve already said everything I’m going to have to say about Iraq for the next decade: we shouldn’t have gone. Now we’re fucked. Republican scumbags continue to be dragged off to jail. I for one am shocked. Who would ever have suspected the Republicans of placing politics or money above principle? Sad, sad. They continue to execute people in good conscience in barbarian shitholes like the Carolinas, to the horror of the civilized world. It all seems so dreary and predictable. I did have an idea for one of my old-style personal cartoons but, interestingly, it could only be drawn in my old-style horizontal format, and I had to abandon it. So instead you get this.
Actually it would be easier to list the things I do care about rather than the things I’m supposed to but don’t. Such a list would begin with my cat and end with the controversy over the taxonomical status of Pluto include very few items in between. Contributing to my general apathy is the weather, now unmistakably identifiable as shitty. This is my least favorite time of year—I mean the period beginning around Thanksgiving and extending roughly until Memorial Day. Some people would diagnose this as Seasonal Affective Disorder. But is it not also possible that winter sucks? Everything dead, bare, frozen, hateful. There was ice on my deck this morning. A flock of Canada geese are making their mournful honking racket out on the Bay. I will renew my call for any readers in attractive foreign locales, such as Paris or Buenos Aires, to extend invitations to me to sublet their apartments.
Correction: my friend Carolyn, depicted in panel 2, appears to be flatchested only because of my hasty and inept drawing. In reality her breasts are shapely and buoyant.