There’s a lot of the taste of shoe leather going around these days in the Presidential campaigns.  Of course, being the civic minded folks that we are here at WoodChips Central, we commissioned Woody to create a Presidential Candidate Gaffe Preventer.

I think he did a pretty good job, don’t you?  I mean, he took an existing product, a handkerchief, and applied a new creative use for it.  And it seems to work pretty well.

Of course, we had a pretty lively debate here at WoodChips Central about whether to publish the cartoon.  Some folks admonished Woody to not be too proud of his invention as an individual accomplishment, reminding him that he used public roads to go buy the hanky.

And others, myself included, are rather worried one of the candidates will criticize the seeming lack of security preparedness for the candidate shown testing the Gaff Preventer in the cartoon.

You just can’t win with some of these folks.

Anyhow, I’ll leave it to you to guess which candidate(s) the cartoon is talking about.

I’m thinking you can’t miss on that guess.  You decide.

Have a nice day – J. Daniel

Cartoon dialogue:

Maple: I heard things are so bad Congress had to lay off 25 EXXON lobbyist.

Elmer: Wow, that bad!

Caption: Now Washington really feels our pain.

Today’s cartoon puts me in mind of a whimsical little French story that happened long, long ago – about 1680 actually.

Way back then, through some accidental twist of fate, the French government lost focus on trying to control everything.  I’m not sure why – could be they were all on a multi-year holiday, or campaigning for re-election or thinking about getting involved in another expensive foreign war helping the American colonies.  Hmmm … my time frame may be off a bit on that last one, but really, no matter the reason.

Because while they were off doing whatever, there was a lapse in government regulation of the economy.

Ha, ha – gotcha there, didn’t I.  Total fiction.

There is NEVER a lapse in government regulations, just enforcement.  That’s because enforcement requires work and follow-up, but creating regulations is just about writing a bunch of stuff that other people are supposed to do, and carefully phrasing it so it doesn’t apply to you.

Okay, so that part is real.

Anyhow, during this accidental freedom thing, something really strange happened.  The Read the rest of this entry »

I’m just waiting to hear this oxymoron about forcing people to comply with a government mandated program voluntarily, aren’t you?  We have a couple of candidates in the race now, Governor Romney and President O’Bama, so we’ll see if either one of them says it.  And of course, with all the health care reform talk, the health care mandates and a Supreme Court decision, it may just be a Read the rest of this entry »

I got the idea for this cartoon from Jim Zaccaria, a Facebook friend.  Jim always has interesting and clever posts.

As I was developing the cartoon, I wanted Mimosa to say Woody was looking “out of sorts.”  I checked to make sure I was using the phrase correctly and ran into this great web site about English phrases.  You will want to check it out.

Anyhow, below is Tim Bowen’s description of the meaning and history of the phrase from Read the rest of this entry »

An astute WoodChips reader recently pointed out (actually on March 26th, or was that the 27th as the 26th) that our free WoodChips calendars had two March 26th days in it.  The comment seemed to imply we had made a mistake.

After much deliberation here at WoodChips Central we decided to follow the American Government / Many Large Corporation’s damage control models and…

1. Spend all of our time trying to blame anyone but ourselves
2. Spend none of our time actually fixing the process, and
3. Eventually settle on the fact we could blame it on someone else – the Mayans, in this instance, since this is their big calendar year — Ummm … and this may all blow over on December 21st.

We were all feeling pretty smug about how we handled this PR opportunity (that’s government / corporate talk for when things are all really #$%$#$ up), but then our PR guy said that one of the really good damage control things is to Read the rest of this entry »

In all fairness, I must give credit to a British friend of mine, Gerald,  for the CheeseHenge and building materials concept, who in all fairness tells me he got the idea from someone else, I think famous and in Britain, a comedian named Eddie Izzard, who is quite funny – so anyhow, that’s the whole fairness and credits thing – chuckle.  I hope the cartoon lives up to their expectations.

So, outside of my own uncontrollable imagination, I also get cartoon ideas from astute and creative WoodChips readers like Gerald, and Eddie. who have now been inducted into the Honorary WoodChips Hall of Fame.

If you have cartoon ideas, I’d love to hear them.  Just click on the title of this post and enter your idea in the comment box that magically appears below.  You could be the next Honorary WoodChip if you do.

And wouldn’t that just make your day – J. Daniel

Cartoon dialog:

Setting: A pre-Stonehenge created by the early Britons made out of cheese.
The British public works project manager, who looks amazingly like a NeanderTree, is being interviewed by a reporter from FMBC.

As a mouse in the background is running away with a big hunk of cheese he just cut out of CheeseHenge, which is starting to fall over, the BC Project Manager is saying to the reporter, “Aye Mate, we expect it will last for a thousand years.

The caption to the cartoon says: The early Britons creatively experimented with different building materials before eventually settling on stone.

Sometimes you can do all of the study in the world, but you will not understand until you actually put it to use.
Travel is the best teacher.

I heard some unsettling news this week from my friend Gerald in London.  Gerald is an ace copywriter and well informed gentleman with Drayton Bird Associates, who also seems to know just about everything concerning internet marketing, websites and their construction.

So I had mentioned how much I enjoyed the pubs during my extended time in London in the late 70′s.  And he informed me in the course of that email conversation that many of the pubs are becoming franchise chains – not the authentic thing as I recalled.

Images of rubber-stamped lookalike pubs and McDonald’s and Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken flew through my head, stomping all over those good memories.  Good God, I thought, of all the places I had hoped to hold with their tradition, surely England and the pubs were two of them.

Not that we’re so good at that, really.  Here in the States, it seems things change so much that if we hang on to something for just ten years or so, it warrants the attention of an historical society or something.

Perhaps sensing my consternation, Gerald quickly followed up by adding that there were still plenty of real, authentic, genuine pubs to be found.  I was much relieved.  I had, apparently, let my imagination run a bit too wild on his initial news.

But with just cause, I tell you.  Because I had a great start on my very first night in London, in my very first pub.

It all started as I Read the rest of this entry »

I got this cartoon idea from the late, great Arthur C. Clark, British science fiction author, inventor and futurist extraordinaire.  He fired my imagination as a young man, and I believe I’ve read virtually all of his books.  You may know of him from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Someone once asked him what his sign was.  And he replied, “I don’t believe in astrology — I’m a Sagittarius, and we are skeptical.”

I selfishly changed the sign to Virgo.  You may gather that I am a Virgo.  We are said to be yawn-wide boring.  I wonder if Mitt Romney is a Virgo?

Oh, and I am skeptical.

Have a nice day – J. Daniel

Cartoon Dialogue:
Mimosa, at the Bark n’ Barley Bar:  “What’s your sign, Woody?”
Woody: “I don’t believe in astrology, Mimosa.  I’m a Virgo and we are skeptical.”

Okay, so some of you may think the bus looks a lot like an Etch-A-Sketch.

And some may think I am picking on Republican political candidate Mitt Romney – who, by the way – just had a staffer say that after the primary election was over they could just reset him (implied – on the issues) like shaking an Etch-A-Sketch and making the screen blank again.

Hmmmm … well, you are right about the bus.  Strangely, it does resemble an Etch-A-Sketch, what with those straight connected lines and the white bus wheels that seem to resemble Etch-A-Sketch control knobs.  Funny how that worked out, really.

But you’re only a little bit right on me picking on Mitt.  I am, perhaps, going for bigger fish.  Like politics in general – in America – and around the world – in the history of mankind (we think big here at WoodChips Central).

You see, Mitt’s developed a near fatal problem in the past few days.  And you will NEVER guess what it is.  I’m not talking about the fact that Read the rest of this entry »