A Confederacy of Clowns
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic, and this is my weekly blog post. The large Sunday Bizarro comic above is mine, as are the comments below. The past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics that follow were written and drawn by my partner Wayno, whose weekly blog post I highly recommend.
And here’s this week’s ANSWER KEY to my Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.
Hey there, Jazz Pickles. I hope you’re enjoying your visit to this planet. I’m staying fascinated.
I used to be a strict materialist. That is to say, I would not even consider concepts outside of what science could test and prove. Without a second thought, I’d toss everything else into the bullshit basket.
But a few years ago, I realized that this kind of knee-jerk obstinance was not only foolish but unscientific. If all scientists had closed their minds to concepts and phenomena believed impossible, we’d never have discovered or invented much at all. All advancement begins with imagination.
I also realized that my reticence to entertain the existence of weird stuff was all about protecting my ego—I needed to prove I’m a science-based realist and nobody’s fool, dammit!
So I dropped the pretense that I had a firm grip on how the universe works and what is or isn’t possible and opened my mind to considering any possibility—and it has been blown more times than an adult film actor.
All that is to say that I used to make fun of reincarnation beliefs (it’s pretty easy to do) but have gradually changed my mind about both possibility and likelihood.
Anyway, that shift in perspective led me to read the book “Children Who Remember Previous Lives” by Ian Stevenson. It’s about his career investigating the stories of very young children who remember details about their past life that he’s been able to research and validate. If these stories are true, it’s huge.
To buy into the concept, you must believe the man who collected the stories is a respectable scientist and not a carnival-tent kook. I do. I found him, his methods, his conclusions, and mostly the stories very credible.
It isn’t the stand-up comedy version of reincarnation where people think they were Cleopatra or King Henry the XIII’s third wife. It’s much more common and rational—if that makes sense given the topic—and the stuff he’s found in common among the stories makes logical sense.
I could write thousands more words about my thoughts on this topic but I’ll leave it for another post one day.
Now let's open our minds to what my partner Wayno's Bizarro cartoons from the past life week…
He’ll also need a keyboard for the cat to walk across as he types.
After we’re gone, Wayno’s and my heirs can open a museum of all the images we’ve created and collected but never displayed. If they can find a building big enough.
Why wait to hear someone’s complete sentence when you’ve got something so much more interesting and important bucking to get out?
I suspect that find will benefit his financial situation.
Viewing his art can make your eyes burn.
Big, coffee-flavored suckers will do the same thing.
That concludes our humor dump for the week, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for your endurance. If you like this stuff, help us keep it going via the links below. We’ll be as happy as a cat in a cartoonist’s studio.
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