Original, hand-drawn cartoons I had published in the SF Bay Guardian newsweekly

The Feel-Bad Movie of 2007.

I recently saw the summer blockbuster, Zeitgeist, The Movie. It's a harrowing thriller about a secret cabal of elite power brokers who allegedly orchestrated the World Wars (while funding both sides of the conflicts to reap obscene profits) in an effort to form a single global government; a New World Order.

Spoiler Alert: The villain in the new Star Trek movie is physicist, Enrico Fermi.

We just got back from watching J.J. Abrams latest effort, Star Trek, and enjoyed ourselves for the most part. Casting, I thought, was particularly inspired (although I did fully expect Spock to point his finger at one of the aliens' heads, make an incision and take his super-power). The acting was also far more nuanced than that of the original series, largely due to the absence of William Shatner. And, of course, the special effects were top-notch, not surprising since the movie cost almost as much as the Republic of Kiribati's GDP (it did, look it up). However, we did have a few issues with the plot afterward. One issue in particular could destroy all science fiction as you know it.

Bill Gates gives Society back some of the money he illegally bilked from Society, gets sainted.

Mr. Gates is finally leaving Microsoft to dedicate the majority of his remaining years curing malaria and doling out charitable grants through the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation, the wealthiest foundation in the world. Thanks to illegal, backroom dealings and extortion, Bill built Microsoft from a small software company into a full-fledged monopoly in just 20 short years. During that time, Microsoft made workers pull 80-hour weeks, categorized them as "temporary" and "freelance" to avoid paying medical benefits, and threatened critical employees with lawsuits if they tried to leave. But that's not why I'm mad.

The financial crisis was society’s fault, but I bet it never does any jail time.

Remember when wrong-doing was, well...wrong? Back in the day, people used to feel bad when they did things that everyone else in society agreed were unethical, or just plain creepy. But that all ceased to exist the moment a Hollywood executive invented reality TV. These days, doing wrong no longer results in your immediate and eternal social ostracization, it results in your own television show on E! network.

Evidently, Bush wasn’t a pigheaded, fear-mongering liar—just a Conservative.

For 8 years, I believed George Bush was an unrepentant charlatan, an ineloquent dolt and a power-hungry madman, but maybe—just maybe—I was wrong about him. Maybe there was another reason for his lies, war-mongering and mass eradication of our Constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms.

Cartoons are just badly drawn ads that don't sell anything.

by thecroz | September 13, 2005 - 9:02pm

For awhile, The San Francisco Bay Guardian news weekly was offering $50 a pop for cartoons with restaurant themes to run in their newspaper's Dining section. I had a few spare moments and some vestigial drawing skill left, so I cranked out a few in my spare time because, hey...fifty bucks is fifty bucks. Eventually, the Bay Guardian came to its senses and stopped paying out revenue it didn't have. But until then, I took them for a couple hundred in cold, hard cash.

BOOKS

I am America (And so can you!), Stephen Colbert—Sage advice for an ailing nation.
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens—The case against belief.
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, Brian Greene—A mind-bending romp through quantum physics.
Adam's Curse: A Future without Men, Bryan Sykes—It's not MY fault, it's my chromosome's.
1984, George Orwell—Who says no one can predict the future?
Nonzero : The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright—It gives you hope for the future.
The Stranger, Albert Camus—Alienated existentialism at its best.
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson—Why aren't textbooks this funny?

POLITICS

Change Congress Help keep Big Money out of politics
Earmark Watch Bringing citizen oversight to congressional spending
Money And Politics Illuminating the connection
Open Congress The real story behind what's happening in Congress
Fortune 535 Find out how wealthy your local politicians are
OpenSecrets Center for responsive politics
Citability Making government accessible, reliable, and transparent
Data.gov Public access to high-value, machine-readable data sets
Public Markup Review and comment on proposed bills before they are even introduced
FedSpending Find out where your tax money is going
The Sunlight Foundation Shining light on money, lobbying, and government
Transparency Int'l. Stop corruption to save lives.
Congresspedia The citizen's encyclopedia of Congress

Cartoons are just badly drawn ads that don't sell anything.

RANDOM

RANTS

LINKS

BOOKS

POLITICS