Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 9/07/05

Artist's Statement

I've been trying to think of a way to make this cartoon idea funny for months now, and I guess I never did. The only thing that strikes me as humorous in this cartoon is the panel with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I had an authentically funny cartoon idea all ready to go until last Wednesday night, when I had my weekly late-night lying-on-the-floor-despairing-of-any-cartoon-ideas conversation with colleague Emily Flake. I was cheerfully describing to her the cartoon idea I was planning to draw that week, "Alternative Energy Sources," one panel of which would be "Prayer," and she sheepishly interrupted to say, "You know that I did a cartoon called "Aleterative Energy Sources" a few months ago... and that one of the panels was "Prayer"?" Fuck! Now that she described it I realized that I had in fact seen this cartoon, and forgotten it. I'd subconsciously plagiarized Emily's idea. An occupational hazard. Now I was left with nothing. "Although I did steal poo falling on people's heads in Hell from you," she pointed out. "That's true," I said, considering. Then we both broke up because who would have imagined that we would be having conversations like this in adulthood. I did contemplate stealing "Alternative Energy Sources" anyway and calling it even for poo falling on the heads, but in the end I decided to scrap the whole premise and fall back on this one, which I still hadn't figured out how to make funny but which I was really aching to draw anyway. The abuse and degradation of the word "Freedom" has really been getting on my nerves lately. It's come to be nothing but a slogan to justify anything the Bush administration wants to do, mainly siezing oil reserves that are inconventiently located underneath what is technically other nations' territory. I have to wonder whether anyone who parrots it as a defense for the war in Iraq has any idea what they even mean by the word. When was the last time most Americans used any of their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, anyway?

"Alternative Energy Sources" is even now being re-tooled, and the most hilarious panels have been salvaged. That'll have to wait yet another week, having waited two already, because my friend Jenny gave me the genesis for a brilliant George Bush/Hurricaine Katrina cartoon last night. Just you wait.


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