noah murdered the dinosaurs!

^ Noah was a Darwin hating bastard according to Dan Piraro. The full length version is on FORA.tv, Dan Piraro: Bizarro Buccaneers.

Dan Piraro is hot. That is, if you're into geeky artsy guys who have a twisted sense of humour, can laugh first at themselves before laughing at the rest of us, possess a talent for caricaturing human nature, and a rare knack for capturing the current social, cultural, and political zeitgeist in a single hand drawn image.

Like Gary Larson of The Far Side cartoon fame, Piraro loves to explore, and exploit, the absurd and even embarrassing side of us, the most idiosyncratic of all species on this great rock. That exploration is, more often than not, dark and disturbing in what it reveals about us - the sheer stupidities, fallacies, contradictions, and inconsistencies we exhibit. But whereas Larson's views have a more universal panorama, Piraro excels at capturing specific moments in time and place of mental, emotional, political, and ethical calibrations and magnifies them, throws them back at us, sometimes with captions and sometimes without.

His cartoons are sophisticated, even witty enough, to merit appearances in The New Yorker, one of my most beloved publications. But it seems that that great magazine may not think so, or at least I don't remember seeing Piraro's cartoons there (a search on the magazine's site turned up nothing). Maybe it's because alongside his wit there's also outspoken political soapboxing on certain issues. He is, after all, a card carrying vegan and passionate animal rights activist, and The New Yorker may not prefer to go that far left.


On viewing and digesting Piraro's art we laugh, maybe to the point where our sides hurt and tears form in our eyes, or as I did, have trouble falling asleep from laughing because I made the mistake of watching the above video so late into the night. But where does that laughter come from, you have to ask. Is it just out of the sheer hilarity that the cartoons depict? Or is it ultimately out of nervousness, a very necessary release from otherwise unbearable realizations about ourselves, our nature, our motives?

In the end, humour is humour no matter what. And yet the jokes are always at the expense of someone, yes? We're like a dog chasing its own tail. We are the butt of our own jokes as Piraro points out again and again. But in the moment we're too busy to be aware of it. Too busy laughing our asses off.

Related:

Bizarro.com | Dan Piraro's official site (warning: turn your volume down first!)