New Yorker Rejects #8

Can you feel Fall in the air? I certainly can. Much like the dropping of withered leaves, my rejected cartoons are suddenly piling up in the gutter, asphalt-soaked and ripe for decay.

Except that's not right at all.

Maybe tis the season of rejection, but that doesn't mean my cartoons are worthless! I mean, I'm earning a partial living as a cartoonist, for goodness' sake! No, just as The Birds paraphrased The Bible in saying there is a season for all things, I find that piles of rotting leaves and that coldly worded New Yorker rejection emails are fully appropriate manifestations of their environment.

And I find, in keeping with my concern for the environment, that recycling old materials into something new and useful is how to practice creative self-promotion sustainably.

Not that I'm promoting this blog, or anything like that. I've never asked anyone to sign up (just hinted and suggested and used other forms of psychologically coercive language to try and make you do it).

So I wish you the very best of Daylight Savings Days however you choose to celebrate, and I hope you enjoy what is essentially a mulch pile of cartoons.

Before we Start, Though...

I'd like to say a brief word about advertising. And that word is "disgust". I am literally almost nauseated by sales pitches. It's part of why I haven't try to sell anything on this website. The idea of bringing any more advertising into the world is nearly unbearable.

That being said, I am totally for sale. Doesn't the entire subtext of this post read like a giant Wikipedia pop up banner?

But I am worried about advertising creeping into everything. As far as I'm concerned, it's noise pollution. It makes me feel like I'm a bag of money to be hunted by stealthy predators. Animals, of course would evolve a way out of this mess, probably by gaining an ever-perceptive ability to detect advertising in their soundscapes.

That's kinda what I'm worried about, though.

Actually, more and more I've been realizing that I'm an anti-anthropomorphist, which is a clunky term I made up before I thought to ask if anyone else had ever had this though. Which it turns out they did, and it's called biospherical egalitarianism.

Or ecocentrism.

The idea that all species have intrinsic value, and that we shouldn't exploit them beyond what we deem absolutely necessary...

Dammit!

Well, that's the goal, anyway? I mean, am I culpable? Does drawing cartoons of animals count as exploitation? Will it lead to more anthropomorphism, which will inevitability lead to that species's banal reduction to a token of human worship and eventual tragic extinction?

Hmmm, I dunno. Maybe we're not doing any better in the corporate world.

I'll say one thing (and that's not two things): I get it wrong too. I've misunderstood tons of things about animals and biology. For instance, I always had the frog in a boiling pot thing wrong. Frogs don't jump out of boiling pots. A frog would die in boiling water. What frogs actually do is jump out of heating pots long before the water reaches a boiling point, which makes perfect sense for an animal that–of course–should be able to detect it's ambient temperature in order to survive.

Unless you get 'em really distracted.

See? See what I'm doing now? I'm anthropomorphizing and ranting about screens and a bunch of cartoon frogs are gonna end up getting killed!

Somebody stop me, please! Anyone? Hello? ChatGPT?

No, remember, robots are not the answer to finding meaning. Except for R2D2, Rozzum Unit 7134, or Johnny 5. But of course, those are just in stories–

Stories!

Stories must be the answer to this problem! Through stories we share ideas and experiences and can invent beautiful, real neural connections to others that inspire hope and courage.

Hmmm...

No, it kinda feels like our cultural anxiety is creeping into those too...

Well, I just hope there's something that still feels good out there for you. And that nobody gets hurt.

Because let's face it, it doesn't feel all that great to get back in line.

Thanks for reading.