I salvaged a book by cartoonist Gary Larson, entitled “Cows of Our Planet.” The cover is a cartoon of cows circling the earth. He has a color cow insert (dare we call it a centerfold?), and it features, among others, “The Three Mile Island Guernsey – North American cousin to the Chernobyl Angus,” “The Wild Highlander -Extinct, it couldn’t hold its milk,” and “The Flying Guernsey.”

I picture Larson, drawing away, chortling. I suspect that all cartoonists know when something is funny – it’s a gut reaction. I know this is true. Today I was at a meeting and, lo and behold, I again found myself drawing Bacon Family cartoons. My cartooning is a form of underlife – defined, a form of resistance to what one sees as nonsensical authority. I am not a big numbers person. This is because I find numbers to be limiting. Numbers don’t tell the whole story. In fact, numbers don’t tell a story at all. The person who puts the numbers on the page or out there for people to see, he, she, or they use the numbers in order to make a specific viewpoint or viewpoints known.

I won’t provide specific details here because my doing so might get me in trouble. No one reads my dispatches anymore, but I can see it – someone at that meeting might decide to see what it is that I wrote today, to which I say ninny ninny yoo ho.

Gary Larson most likely works in a quiet space and most likely has never drawn cartoons at meetings.

If he did, he’d most likely draw cows going against the meeting status quo. For example, he might draw a cow in a chair. In the front of the room would be a farmer, pointing at a chart of cow milk production. The culprit, that is the one with supposed low milk production, would say, “I could’ve sworn I gave 10 gallons 10 years ago.”

The New Yorker magazine has a page in which readers are invited to put captions under existent cartoons. The odd thing is, I have never ever been able to come up with a catchy one-liner. I see what other readers come up with and I say, “oh yeah, I wish I’d thought of that.”

I think that there is certain part of the brain that, when fully developed, allows for this form of creativity. It’s the same part of the brain that enables some to play and win at chess, complete Sudoku puzzles, and do crossword puzzles. I have never completed a crossword puzzle. I also proved to be a terrible copy editor. This all must have something to do with needing a big picture context

I do well at Scrabble, particularly after I’ve been at it a while. And also, a word game called Quidder.

So go figure.

I’m also not a good artist – I can’t draw a cow to save my life. All my cows look like horses. However, my horses do not look like cows, for which I am grateful. No pressure on me then. I can continue to laugh at Larson’s cow cartoons.

Next: 68. 3/9/23: All In Readiness