A fool and his Cheeseball...

Cheeseball philosophy. We're all entrepreneurs now. Make cheques payable to Throbgoblins International and send to...etc...etc

LabRats update

There's something of a hiccup in the uploading timetable for the Labrats site. Looks like April 1st is a non-starter. However - for the literally several Labrats fans out there - here's some Ratalin strips to slake your thirst (I can dream).

The world is a factory floor and we are all just widget attachers in the great assembly line of life. Switch off that troublesome part of your brain that hankers after satisfaction. Turn down those misgivings. Who needs culture when you can have economy? Who needs education when you have training? Put that moral restlessness aside -it'll only get you into trouble. Seriously - it will!

Plot Device?

It is terrible for the families of all individuals killed or injured or taken in war, just as it is terrible for the individuals themselves. That is undeniably true. I hope the British squaddies get home safe. Having said that....Propoganda is propoganda is propoganda. The hypocrisy and implicit racism of the British press is both painful and ridiculous. One toddler's heavily armed heroic mother is another toddler's collatoral damage. The cartoon is not exactly pertinent, but somehow it fits.

A FLOOD OF IMPORTS?

Illustrated at short notice, this - for a folding CD back. It's hard to believe that there are still people who question the basic principle that 200 years of shitting in the kitchen makes for serious housekeeping problems somewhere down the line. But of course these folk not only exist but dominate our public spaces through the cynical alchemy of consumer advertising. They scream out from the hoardings and the radio stations and peddle their headf*cks and their bottom lines every fifteen minutes on a hundred TV stations. I don't have a TV station. I have a pen. Anyone want to borrow it? It's re-fillable.

Nobody likes having their toys taken away.

Today the EU announced an agreement to massively increase the volume and "affordability" (sic) of transatlantic air travel. Nice to know we're all working together on this. It seems that we're plumping for the environmental catastrophe option, doesn't it.
Democracy in action.
This failure to join up any strands of thinking will not come as much of a surprise to anyone who is actually paying attention. There are many people in the UK who have grasped gleefully at the straw offered by flat earthers and deniers of all colours in order to hang on to their toys . The fact that these people exist in Brussels must be well known to Caroline Lucas and other dissidents at the EU. it is saddening but hardly unexpected. A quick glance through some of the attitudes exhibited in any comment stream and in many, many blogs will leave you in no doubt that a substantial minority of people value their next five minutes of private pleasure far more highly than the future of some notional "others". The evidence will be twisted or ignored in the name of economics.That's why we're in this mess. Human greed and stupidity are powerful blocks to sustainable change.
The explanatory fantasy of the deniers is that a small group of greens have risen to flummox and overwhelm global capital. They mix this with a mutually exclusive big government tax-grab conspiracy and hey presto - weasly excuse masquerading as maverick individualism. A tantrum of epic proportions, They are believing and doing what they want to believe and do. Devil take the hindmost.
Greed and stupidity. Give it a name.
As to the in and out of which "hair shirt" (I hardly think so) to put on - Perhaps the definitions of work and play etc have become rather corrupted these days. In a capital economy we are fettered by definitions that compel us to judge work ( and its' supposed opposite) in monetary/cost terms, and very relative ones at that. In a landless society we are constricted as to acheivable alternatives. Nevertheless we need to surmount these handicaps and somehow fashion a huge paradigm shift - a cultural change so significant that it overwhelms all this (essentially) bickering about relatively insignificant consumption cleavages. When we look at the majority world we know that this is so. It's not just a matter of living closer to work, or monitoring flights, but of radically redifining what constitutes work, and what constitutes pay, and what constitutes play, frivolity, community, status, identity etc. All our consumption and production patterns ARE going to change, one way or another. The question we are all engaging in is how - the hard way (battening the hatches like a myopic backwoods militia slurping the last drops of privilige before the inevitable historic backlash) or the less hard way (carefully and considerately dismantling the apparatus and cutting our cloth accordingly)
All our inherited assumptions must be questioned. I really don't see a lot of that going on. We built this thing on slavery and exploitation and our deepest thoughts and dreams as well adjusted citizens are still stained with these prejudices.
But hey, what do I know? I'm a cartoonist. Ask a lawyer,

Pig wrestling

There has been much upset at Throbgoblins International following the channel 4 shitefest on revisionist climate "science" - a programme whose cowboy posturing made it so bandy it couldn't stop a pig in a ginnel. To stretch the motif past snapping, our considered response is this: Never wrestle with a pig. You'll both get covered in shit, and the pig will enjoy it!

BOFFIN AND A BATHTUB (in a hole)

I'd intended to write a razor witted polemic about the madness of handing over valuable crop land for biodiesel just to feed western vanity and convenience (and probably at gunpoint) -but I ended up doing this.




It's our blind spot.
Blind spot.
It should be obvious.
But it's not.

bah!

JOHNNY BULL and his UNCLE SAM

The temptation here was to rip off both Maestro Robert Newman and the evergreen Brown Bottle. In retrospect I reckon that the temptation to resist that particular temptation should have been resisted. Never mind. But...any cartoon you can walk away from is a good cartoon. Or is that landings? I forget.
My 11 year old son has been laughing himself silly all evening at a Dilbert annual whilst I have quietly nursed a crumpled ego suffered whilst re-reading Polyp's Big Bad World collection, (I bow to the master).

Dear Diary...

IRONY- all the bitter satisfaction of sarcasm without the dirty looks.

The traditional climates of some ski resorts are beginning to take a terrible turn for the better. Its a calamity. Communities which had long since given up any hope of clement weather and succumbed to the jingle of global tourism are now undone by a climate switch partly fuelled by - you guessed it - global tourism. They finally get the break in the weather their grandparents dreamt of, and they're ruined. All that money and all those hopes tied up in pink puffa jackets and expensive cocktails for so brief a bubble. How many other parts of the world currently alarmingly dependant on trans-global partying are staring down the barrell of this particular gun, I wonder. Tomorrow I shall think of the actual people involved and hang my head in shame.

Any accusations of unresolved weak-kneed ski-envy will be rigourously dealt with by my legal team - Messrs Reedham and Wheape of the Robin Getz Partnership.

It's a great comfort

OK, fellow lefties. Enough of the whingeing anarchist nonsense. Let's get something straight. There is no such thing as society. You do not live "lives" within a shared, negotiated "culture". No! You consume and produce as assets in the service of an ECONOMY. You are insignificant integers in the stock-taking equations of an international network of purchasers, providers and middle-men, all number-crunching for the benefit of abstract mobile capital. Your highest purpose is to embody the greatest surplus value possible and therefore the best investment return. If you see even the tiniest, weeniest flaw in this approach to global organisation, then you are EVIL - plain EVIL. You should take your miserable, ungrateful arses off to a cave somewhere and just DIE. OK?
Now here's a cartoon. Look at the funny mouse....hahahahaha!

creche infiltrated by anarchist agitators

Bloody kids, eh? It's all ME ME ME! They should use the bleedin' ballot box if they don't like it, or get off their fat, nappied arses and get a bloody job...etc etc etc.