Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 12/19/01
Artist's Statement
I sent this cartoon to my editor
with the caveat that it had emerged directly from my subconscious and that,
should anyone complain about it, I would be utterly unable to formulate any
kind of intelligible explanation or defense of it. I thought it worth reminding
him that I had been on painkillers for several weeks.
But then a funny thing happened. My editor e-mailed me and said he had some
reservations about running it since it would appear in the same issue as a
"Savage Love" column in which, believe it or not, Dan Savage catalogues
various items that have been removed from women's vaginas, including "cylindrical
vegetables" that had been forcibly inserted. He was worried that, thus
juxtaposed, my cartoon would seem to be making light of sexual assault. So
he suggested we wait a week and in the meantime run an old cartoon from the
file we keep in case of just such emergencies.
But then inspiration struck. I e-mailed him back with a brilliant breakthrough
compromise: what if the carrot was stuck up the old man's butt instead?
Huh? How about that? He replied: "That works splendidly."
I am in the end happier with the second version and grateful for the fruitful
debate between artist and editor that created it. We present both versions
at the website for our viewers to judge for themselves. Which is funnier:
a carrot up a woman's butt? Or up an old man's? And, most importantly: does
the second version imply that the old man has a carrot up his butt even
as he is speaking to the children?