I found this from a friend of a friend on Facebook. I rarely even click on vids – so tiny, short, and many of them are stupid or pretend real. But I’m glad I did on this one! It’s so funny that I’ll give you $1 if you don’t laugh.

Btw,  I posted it on my page on Facebook, and got a lot of appreciative comments. But when I went to get it, to post here, it had disappeared, with all of the comments! I guess that was a copycat Youtube, not the original. I’m fine with attributing pageviews to the OP, and not these stealing copycat guys, so I hunted for it on Youtube, and this is the original, with about 18 million views at the moment.

However, if Facebook is so fussy about Youtube videos being stolen, how about cartoons or photos that are stolen ALL THE TIME, EVERY DAY on there?  They always pretend they can’t find what I am reporting!!! Could Facebook’s retarded and nonsensical rules (and illegal activity) get any worse? They are really king of copyright infringement (although MySpace taught them how to do it.)

But back to the dog. Love it!

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I really love fooling around with my WordPress blogs, but it has always bothered me that when people are looking for cartoons on a certain topic, whether it’s Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, or Dancing with the Stars, that they may not be able to find all the cartoons on that topic.

Sure, there are Categories in the sidebar, and tags underneath each post, and even 2 search buttons, but still, I’m not sure that everyone finds what they are looking for.

New way to index the cartoons

So I was superexcited last week to find a plugin that would help me get organized…at least on this blog! It’s AZIndex, and you can find it on WordPress. I’m not sure how long it will last, since it’s been abandoned by the author, and isn’t getting updated to new WordPress versions, but I hope something like this is taken up by some other smart WP plugin author.

Unattractive portrait of Obama via Wikipedia

Sarah Palin via Wikipedia - just lAY OFF the hunting, Sarah.

All the cartoons on this site are on the page now, which you can find in my tab on the top  under All Op-Ed Cartoons or in the sidebar link called Index of Cartoons. Cartoons are organized by tag names (which you can also see underneath each post). While I was putting this together, I combined or deleted some tags (law, lawyer, and laws are kind of similar), so I’ll have to go through and tag some of the cartoons more appropriately. Some of my most used tags are Obama, oil, Sarah Palin, LA Times, TV, and, of course, death. :) I also have more than I thought on armed forces and military, which I will probably combine…

Of course, I really have to upload a lot more cartoons on this site, anyway – this is just a small portion of what I’ve been doing the past couple of years. (For instance, I have a hella lot more California cartoons that I do for CalWatchdog.) But before Uclick laid me off I was in 3 venues: Slate, Yahoo, and Gocomics. Seemed like that was enough, and I didn’t add that many here. But when they laid me off they took down all 2 years of archives there, just gone. so…

I’m also not sure what to do about my cartoon roundups that I’ve been doing for the LA Times. I haven’t been tagging all the various cartoonists I include. Maybe I should.

How to buy these cartoons

Anyway, hope this is fun and helpful. Here are terms for using these cartoons. Everyone is welcome to enjoy the cartoons or make comments, or share with a friend, but it’s illegal to reproduce or use cartoons  (or any image) without permission,  EVEN IN SCHOOLS, and is subject to hefty fines. And as you know, I always go after people. ;)

As I was writing this, a little post by Steven Hart caught my eye. He says Tom Tomorrow has left the building at Salon, and:

One of the many ingenious things the newspaper industry has done to destroy itself is to dumb down op-ed pages, shrink comics down to postage-stamp size, and shy away from political cartoonists. There was a time when Pat Oliphant, Herblock and Paul Conrad were as well known as columnists like Art Buchwald and David Broder.

(Why did he include Oliphant with Paul Conrad?) Anyway, I’m not included in his little group, but that’s okay. I’ll always have my pen and my flights of imagination.

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High winds and choppy seas frustrated efforts to hold back the oil spill seeping into Louisiana‘s rich fishing grounds and nesting areas Friday, and the government desperately cast about for new ideas for dealing with the nation’s biggest environmental crisis in decades.

bp plc oil spill cartoon

Like it was just A problem, a natural disaster, instead of being entirely manmade by BP!!!

The spill — a slick more than 130 miles long and 70 miles wide — threatens hundreds of species of wildlife, including birds, dolphins and the fish, shrimp, oysters and crabs that make the Gulf Coast one of the nation’s most abundant sources of seafood. Louisiana closed some fishing grounds and oyster beds because of the risk of oil contamination.

A lawsuit filed this week by an injured technician on the platform claims that Halliburton improperly cemented the well. Cementing is a process in which a slurry is used to fill the gap between the drilled hole and the casing, or the pipe that brings oil and gas up out of the ground.

They STILL don’t name the company that caused this disaster! I had to read farther and look other places to discover that it is BP- British Petroleum. So then I just had to do a BP cartoon immediately, even though I’m suffering the aftereffects of a car accident – and let me be clear, when I say “accident”, that I mean this idiot crashed into me while deciding to take over my lane with his ugly huge Ford van. I’m still in shock, actually – I have been babying this car for the 4 years I’ve owned it, and have never loved a car before. We both have insurance, a miracle, but he put a hole in it, and in my time, and in my pocket, at least now.

Anyway, Donna Brazile writes in CNN:

The failure of the “shear ram,” the set of steel blades intended to slash through a pipe at the top of a well and close off the flow of crude, should not have surprised BP or the corporations that work for it. Eight years ago, the Minerals Management Service found that 50 percent of the shear rams tested failed. So calling the failure of the “last resort device” an accident is like calling the damage caused by a drunken driver an accident. Failure to take the proper precautions is not an accident; it’s negligence.

She goes on to plant a big kiss on Obama’s behind, and say how well he’s handling this, which remains to be seen, of course.

Anyway, it’s clear that BP lied about the extent of the damage, the amount of oil, what would happen, etc. However, I don’t think any of my papers printed this one…:) Libel, anyone? This cartoon is dedicated to marine animals everywhere, and those who didn’t make it through the scum.

Caption: BP PLC IS A LIAR.

(I could also have written, We’re not just initials, we’re jackasses. )

More cartoons:

1. The beach, the surf, and California’s political campaign. Aah.
2. Political oil, immigration, Facebook cartoons for the LA Times for May 2, 2010.

Gizmodo and iphone cartoon

I was interested in the news about Gizmodo and the iPhone last week, even though I don’t read/have either one, just because I like tech news.  It took me a couple of days before I had time to read the details.

Gawker Media’s Gizmodo blog dropped a bomb on technology enthusiasts Monday with information and pictures of what looks like a prototype for Apple’s next iPhone. Gawker paid for access to the device from a person who found it at a bar in Redwood City, Calif., Gizmodo editor Jason Chen said. Gawker founder Nick Denton coyly acknowledged in a tweet Monday that his company has paid for exclusives before.

I was outraged at this! And happy to find this article from Daily Finance on how Apple could easily sue Gizmodo for knowingly buying the stolen iPhone. The author actually talked with Nick Denton.

Gawker Media has admitted — boasted, really — that it paid $5,000 to get its hands on a prototype of a fourth-generation iPhone for its gadget blog, Gizmodo.

Now that I’ve had a few hours to digest all this, I am somewhat scandalized, even outraged. Put simply, Gawker Media brazenly, publicly flouted the law. It subsidized a crime: the selling of stolen merchandise.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/aGnF2V

What Jeff  Bercovici doesn’t bring up, however, is how Gizmodo also stole and used intellectual property, known as trade secrets.

Business Insider says that Denton now claims he LOST money because of this big scoop! 

With characteristic humility, Gawker Media owner Nick Denton describes his company’s acquisition of an iPhone 4Q — two months before Apple (AAPL) was set to unveil it — as “pretty much the biggest tech scoop ever.” But while there’s no question the story brought Gawker millions of page views, what it hasn’t brought so far, Denton says, is money…

Today the LA Times says the police raided the house of the blogger who wrote on Gizmodo. ‘Bout time. Not exactly police, it was a REACT task force.

Wiki describes Nick Denton, owner of Gawker Media, as British and openly gay. Well, he’s openly bitchy, that’s for sure. He has a bunch of blogs, some worse than others. Defamer is his most famous. Nice graphics, boring gossip. (I guess sites like this are for people who don’t live in Hollywood and are jealous.)

But the first blog of his I even noticed was Wonkette, which is supposedly Washington DC gossip. Well…I guess. Lots of slurs, sexual innuendo, and just plain swearing. Reading the comments and the ad demographics, when I had to, which I’ll explain, I think the average reader is a college-educated 25 year old male who is pretty sure he knows everything and is the center of everyone’s world. If this is not your favorite demo group, stay away.

Anyway, there is a blogger on Wonkette who calls himself the Comics Curmudgeon. He reviews (says hateful things about) editorial cartoons each week, and his posts get about 15,000 views. That’s popular, in my little world. Mean comments follow his posts. I would never have found him, but he included my cartoons in his roundup the first week I went on Slate. The 4th time he posted a cartoon of mine he called me “the mysterious D. Barstow.” Well, mysterious would be a good description if one had never learned to use google, I guess, or read what Slate says about me ON THEIR SITE.

I got hundreds and hundreds of hits on my blogs, but it took me half a day to figure out where they came from. Because he didn’t bother to link to me. Not to Slate, Gocomics, or any of my blogs. In fact, Wonkette hardly ever links to any place, I noticed. Bad online etiquette and extremely greedy. (also bad self-esteem, worried someone will leave Wonkette and never go back.)

At first I thought it wasn’t Fair Use, for him to be using all of our cartoons without pay. I changed my mind on that. Even though he doesn’t actually review them, or even mention any of the cartoonists by name (except for me that one time – on purpose, I suspect), he does at least refer to the cartoons.

But then there’s his hotlinking. Yes, illegally. Cartoonists on Slate don’t get paid at all. We get paid only by hits. So because he hotlinks (making Uclick/Slate’s server pay the bill for 15,000 looks at each cartoon), we don’t get paid a penny for all those views. Wonkette uses the Uclick servers, and doesn’t give us one gold-darned penny for the creators or eyeballs for advertising.

The Comics Curmudgeon did agree to stop using my cartoons, at my request. A small example of grace from a low-class thieving company.

You can also view this cartoon on Yahoo or read comments on Gocomics.

Oh, and Dooce? I hate that blog, don’t you? I think she got pregnant again just for the hits – have no idea if she ever birthed it. As soon as I read her introduction of herself  – “I’m always constipated” – I knew we would never be friends. And she used to live near me, too!

Captions for blind Google: Gizmodo Nerd:“Yeah, I bought stolen merchandise, and sold trade secrets. So?” Lawyer:“Your honor, my client was practicing his religion – worship of iPhones.” JUDGE: “GUILTY!!! I sentence you to unusual punishment online, reading only Dooce!”

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All they do is rewrite real journalists, or use the news verbatim published elsewhere, and slap a provocative (and usually misleading) title on it. Now PuffPo has gone local, with a Los Angeles subsection. Watch out, LA Times, for plagiarism and attribution without links.

But the part I take personally is that they don’t pay anyone!! They are the biggest blog in the country now, if not the world, run by one of the richest women. Check out this article in the LA Times. Arianna Huffington is quoted:

Huffington said ads will run on the site, and the Huffington Post and Causecast will split the ad revenue. Any money donated to any cause goes directly to the cause, with nothing coming out of it.

Her site continues to expand, reinvesting its proceeds in the product. “We’ve had a very, very good advertising year,” she said. “We would be in the black if we were not expanding. Whether you are profitable or not depends whether you’re standing still or expanding. This is a window we need to take advantage of.”

The article is about how the PuffPost is adding a bunch of news about causes, called Impact, because they’re so liberal and they want to help. Well, wanting to help is a good thing. Yet…her own writers and worker bees get NOTHING, NO MONEY, in their best year yet!  Yet she wants them to donate from their non-existent wages. This doesn’t sound liberal to me, it sounds like a medieval caste system. Ugh, PuffPo is pathetic.

It’s been a cliche for a few years now – everyone online loves to write how they never read a real newspaper anymore. Like this is something rare, unusual, and quite cool. They have Twitter, all the news websites, social media, etc, and newspapers are dead. Um, yeah, right.I’ve been doing Slate editorial cartoons for a year now, and most of my best ideas still come from the hardcopy newspaper. I get the LA Times delivered Thurs, Fri, Sat and Sun, for some very low price. (I miss the Weds food, though!) Newspapers are dirty, and take space in an apartment, and aren’t as much fun as a book or TV. But damned if I don’t find interesting, important, informative info that I really need and enjoy, all the time.

I’m all for saving time and taking shortcuts. And when I don’t have an idea for my next Slate cartoon, I cruise right on over to the New York Times, Washington Post, and usually, but not always, the LA Times.

But papers are better. Since I now mine news both online and in the paper, I’ve decided that reading the hardcopy paper is like getting a Bachelor of Arts degree instead of a Bachelor of Science – it makes for a more well-rounded, educated, interesting person!

This site, Compete, says Huff Post got particularly big after the 2008 election.

Site design and architecture likely factor into this widening gap, as sites like DailyKos and Crooks and Liars post their content in-full on the landing page, where the Huffington Post requires a few more clicks to read complete articles.

A commenter there had a GREAT point:

The Huffington Post employs some smart guys who know how to milk the Big-G. They create pages with great titles which are hot in the news, and then inside, there’s just a photo and a link to an article on the subject from the AP or some other MSM paper. (my bold)  Plus, they’re heavily focused on celebrity pics and entertainment. So you can’t really compare HuffPo to the other liberal blogs.

That undelivered promise was going to be my point, but thanks for writing it up! This is a major reason why I despise the PuffPost, and pity the fool bloggers who keep quoting from it: It seems like almost every “article” there is a lifted photo, with no link, a ridiculous title, then a link to a real newspaper, where they get the actual facts, (If you’re lucky! Recently I’ve been seeing news stories with no link at all! Thieves!) and then the writer adds some lame, uninformed opinion, or, worse, a pathetic try at humor. I have never gotten any original news or even a new point of view from PuffPost.

The problem with online is you always have to be specific and drill down. Everytime you pick one thing, you miss all the rest. Sure, you can get your movie reviews, stocks, tech news, science, whatever grabs you. But you never see the entire paper that way, and it’s dissected like an unfortunate frog.

I’m constantly running into odd little items in the paper that I wouldn’t see taking the online, laser beam route. New analysis, in depth investigations (like the one I recently did about poor Mr. Broom) and other stuff that is too tedious to read online (ie, longer than 3 paragraphs). Crimes and mysteries are my secret indulgence.  But I don’t want to go to those weird creepy sites like News of the Weird – I want the LA Times to vet things, clean things up. And I like the entertainment business news – I even got Slate to start a section of Entertainment cartoons that they never had before!

Huffington Post, eat it.

Cartoon caption: “You’ll start a great knitting blog, but Arianna Huffington will find it, and squish it.” This was my very first cartoon for Double X, Slate’s sister site!

And I haven’t done any knitting for the longest time, but I love it, and I have a pattern for a rug in mind, once I get time. And find the right color yarn.

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