Tag: humor

Takei – Definition

Seems actor George Takei isn’t just famous for his stellar acting on Star Trek. He has parlayed his celebrity into appearances on the Howard Stern show and is something of a Social Media icon – especially on Facebook. And several times from an unmentioned cartoonist friend of ours. As you all know I am a big proponent of those who share other’s work to provide credit where you found it. It isn’t too hard even if you found the picture/cartoon on google because many artists, including yours truly, puts their URL on the image.

George, or whomever is posting for him, doesn’t seem to always have the time for that so he just takes it and posts it as is. Interesting that someone who is in the intellectual property business seems to miss that courtesy.

Any other celebrities that I should spoof their social media habits into a future definition?

NOTE: For those who were here yesterday I didn’t like my caricature of George Takei so I updated it.

March 2, 2013
Klingon Cling-Ons

Don’t ask me why Klingons as Cling-ons is funny to me but it is. So I had to draw a Captain Kirk lookalike with his pants down around his ankles and Klingon Cling-ons coming out of his butt.

For those who haven’t heard “cling-on” here is the definition from Urban Dictionary:

Toilet Paper that gets stuck up your ass even after you wipe

Poster of this image is now available on my Society6 page.

February 19, 2013
Customer Service Phone Trees

Today’s cartoon highlights one of my biggest process pet peeves when it comes to customer service. In order to get to a live operator, the phone tree forces you to enter your customer id number or your telephone number. Customer ID’s are worse because no one has them memorized.

So after entering said number, you wait on hold, and when finally connected to a live agent they force you to repeat the number. What’s up with that?

Everyone has good and bad experiences with customer service reps but I am interested to know if there are any customer service policies/processes that you find irritating that are outside the control of the reps themselves.

February 3, 2013
How to Operate a Dual Flush Toilet

You would think today’s cartoon has nothing to do with Australia. But you would be wrong. In an effort to conserve water, dual flush toilets have been installed in a whole bunch of places including all the hotels we stayed in. Some, unfortunately, didn’t work as well as others.

For the uninformed, a dual flush toilet has two buttons. One that is a half flush for liquids and the other a full flush for solids. The problem is that in several situations the half flush wasn’t enough to actually flush everything down so it required another push. Usually the second push was the full flush button just to ensure there was no yellow in the bowl. So instead of using half the amount of water to flush, you end up using 50% more than a typical sing flush toilet.

Or maybe it was just operator error.

January 16, 2013
Australian Beer Tastes Like Piss

Today’s cartoon is an homage to the beer of Australia. In America we get Foster’s as pretty much the only import of Australian beers. You know the commercial “Fosters, Australian for Beer.” However, you won’t find it anywhere in Australia and if you ask an Aussie, they will tell you that Fosters is crap they can and market to foreigners (typically “piss” is used in the sentence as well.

Now I am not a beer connoisseur like another in our travel party. I like pilsner and lagers. Don’t like wheat beer, don’t like ales, don’t like Guiness. Hell most of the time a Miller Lite is good enough for me (got to keep my figure you know). The beer whiz in the party thought all Australian beer tasted like piss. Compared to the microbrews all over the United States, it definitely was a much weaker taste. And trust me we went all over. In fact, here is a little taste of what beers I drank.

Tooheys and James Boags (OK I know it is Tasmania not Australia) were probably my favorites. Four X was one my least favorite though it is the most popular beer there.

Sadly there was one Australian Beer that I didn’t get to try… PISS BEER.

From their website:

Aussies have been on the piss, getting pissed, drinking piss, drinking more piss and, most definitely, taking the piss for the past two hundred years. The amazing thing is none of us thought to bottle it earlier. (Too busy getting pissed, probably.)

January 9, 2013
Wombat Facts

Today’s cartoon lesson on Australia, takes us to discuss the lesser popular marsupial, the wombat.

Interesting that indeed wombats poop square shaped pellets. They are practically blind and use their scent to find each other (no wonder Binky doesn’t bathe) so their square poop won’t fall off the log or other areas they drop it. And because they don’t process the vegetation they eat very well, someone decided they would make a good source of paper fiber.

For those who don’t recognize the glass wearing animal in the lower right, that is Binky a Wombie from Peter Marinacci’s webcomic Wombania. He says that wombies are genetically altered more intelligent wombats. Whenever Peter posts a cartoon with Binky I tend to act like I don’t like him. And Binky returns the favor if you have ever read the comments on my posts.

So yes. The first ugly cousin of the cute koala are wombats/wombies. Well really just Binky (the rest of the wombies are cute).

January 2, 2013
Australian Recycling Efforts

So the story I am told is that there was a Kangaroo farmer in Australia. Of course you could find use for Kangaroo pelt and meat but what about all the by product? So he decided to take the kangaroo balls and make Kangaroo Scrotum Bottle Openers. Now he is a multimillionaire.

Don’t believe they exist? Well my friends take a gander.

Imagine if this guy got rich off this what the rest of us might come up with to give new “life” to typically discarded things. Ideas?

December 30, 2012
I love Kangaroo

So once again today’s cartoon was based in some semblance of truth. One of my top 3 things we did was visit the Australian Zoo (aka the Steve Irwin Zoo). Because of liability and stupid people, you don’t have the same level of interaction with animals in the U.S. as you can in Australia. We literally could enter the pen with the Kangaroos, Wallabies and Koalas.

BUT……………..as cute as they were and typically not being an adventurous eater, I only hesitated for a moment when I saw Kangaroo on the menu. Much like Ostrich or Buffalo is in the states, Kangaroo is a very lean meat. Unlike the other two it didn’t seem as gamey and was quite enjoyable.

One of the guides said we could minimize green house gases caused by cows by instead moving to a kangaroo diet for our meat. However, the guide wasn’t entirely correct. While the majority of methane that cows produce come from their burbs (an affliction that seemingly kangaroos are immune), the roos do fart. Yet the amount of methane produced by kangaroos is about 1/3 of that produced by cows. So why aren’t there kangaroo farms cropping up all over the states. Climate. According to this article “The meatier breeds do not thrive outside of the Australian climate. They are sensitive to humidity, which means that it’s very difficult to breed them outside of Australia.”

December 26, 2012
Australian Taxi Cab Drivers
Today’s cartoon is an ode to the wonderful men and women who drive the taxis all around Australia. I am sure most of them are very competent. So why the heck did you send the others to us? It was if someone had installed Apple Maps (notorious for getting people lost) in their brains. We walked most of the time but in our trip we probably took 6 cab rides. Here were the facts:
- 4 out of 6 drivers had no idea where we were asking them to go (even with cross streets mentioned)
- 3 of those 4 even had GPS
- Only one tried to use it unsuccessfully
- 3 of the 4 lost drivers were in Sydney
And it wasn’t as if we were going to some obscure place. But in Sydney, where we had most of the issues, it wasn’t limited to cab drivers. Walking one day without my map, I got a little disoriented on Sydneys spoke and wheel system of streets. I asked a cop how to get back to my hotel. He pointed in a direction that I knew was wrong even when I told him what street it was on.

Actual Cab Conversation:

Us: We would like to go to Nick’s Seafood

Driver: (blank stare)

Us: In Cockle Bay Wharf?

Driver: (bigger blank stare)

Us: Darling Harbour??

Driver: (puzzled look)

Us: Here on the map!

Driver: OK

Us (after many minutes of driving): I think you are on the wrong side of the Bay. The restaurant is on the other side

Driver finally uses GPS. Puts in a restaurant none of us ever mentioned and started off.

Us: That isn’t the restaurant. And I think we are driving in a big circle.

Finally the driver stopped about 1/4 mile from where we were going and pretty much gave up. Thankfully we were only charged half the meter rate.

Now to be fare, all of our tour bus drivers and the drivers as part of our transfer shuttles never got lost for a minute. This actually was the opposite of our experience in London several years ago. The cab drivers knew every little pub and alley everywhere. The guy who brought us from the airport got lost.
December 23, 2012
Tipping in Australia

To commemorate my trip to Australia (yes that is where I have been) I am going to do a series of cartoons that give you and idea of what it is like to experience the great Down Under. The Series is “Ken Groo with the Low Down on the Down Under”

Obviously the first in the series has to do with tipping and what is customary in Australia. You read the guides and ask people that have been there and you find out that tipping is NOT customary in Australia like it is elsewhere in the world. That is because they charge more and therefore pay a higher salary to waiters, clerks, etc. Well that is what they tell you.

What actually happens is that you are bombarded by Tip Jars everywhere. As an American we are accustomed to tipping for any service such as throwing in your change to the coffee shop clerk or putting in a percentage of the check for a meal as a tip. So it becomes confusing Down Under. Am I looked at as a cheapskate if I don’t throw in a tip? Or am I looked at as a sucker if I do because I don’t know any better. Luckily for me I don’t have a conscience so I went with the guides and screwed everyone out of extra money.

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I thought it was the end of the world already as my site crashed for about 6 hours. Something over my head with a php something so I updated it to the most recent version and then I could see the site but not get to the admin page. So I dropped it back to 5.2 and finally got back online. So sorry if anyone had trouble getting in. All that to say that just in case the world really comes to an end before my update on Sunday, remember when you see all the memes/cartoons about the end of the world, back in 2009, I was the first.

December 19, 2012