Creative Cogitation

The hol­i­days are over, but before I get back to my usual paint­ing pro­gram I want to dis­cuss this year’s Xmas Demen­tia Car­toons.  First up, “Touch My Junk.”

Touch My Junk, Xmas Demen­tia by Jake Beck­man, Santa advises Timmy the TSA employee not to touch his junk. Mean­while Rudolf gets zapped by the back scat­ter radi­a­tion machine in the background.

I don’ think I have to tell you what this car­toon is all about, but just in case you have been liv­ing in a cave, it’s about the new secu­rity mea­sures being imple­mented at US air­ports.  I haven’t trav­eled since the new reg­u­la­tions went into effect, but I can hon­estly tell you, I do not feel any more secure.  I do not think grop­ing grand­moth­ers, ladies in wheel chairs, or expos­ing the gen­eral pub­lic to more radi­a­tion will do any­thing to improve our secu­rity.  In all like­li­hood the vast major­ity of the fly­ing pub­lic vis­it­ing rel­a­tives over the hol­i­days, not to men­tion grand­moth­ers and ladies in wheel­chairs are not ter­ror­ists. There is *noth­ing* is to be gained by sub­ject­ing them and your ran­dom TSA employee to all this added unpleasantness. 

Also, I am just wait­ing for one of them new fan­gled back-scatter machines, which will not be oper­ated by some­one such as a trained med­ical radi­a­tion spe­cial­ist, to break­down and zap some­body with a haz­ardous dosage. IMHO all of this *added secu­rity* is just a Band-Aid put in place to make con­gress feel like they are doing some­thing, and make some con­trac­tor a whole lot of money. 

As for avoid­ing exces­sive grop­ing, Santa does have bet­ter deter­rent than some I think.

Mov­ing along.  The next car­toon is called “Boozuc­ci­nos”.

Boozuc­ci­nos, Xmas Demen­tia by Jake Beck­man, Santa advise the deer to drink up their Fyooz, Sparcs & 9Loco so they can fly.

This car­toon is also about some­thing that was in the news late in 2010.  Sev­eral man­u­fac­tur­ers of alco­holic bev­er­ages incor­po­rated large doses of caf­feine and other stimulants, like guarana,  in them too.  Accord­ing to Wikipedia, Four bev­er­ages appeared 2005. After sev­eral inci­dents involv­ing alco­hol poi­son­ing among col­lege stu­dents (shocker-college stu­dents drink too much alco­hol?) sev­eral states began inves­ti­gat­ing the pro­duc­ers of these bev­er­ages for mis­lead­ing mar­ket­ing — some­thing about the caf­feine mask­ing the effects of the intoxication. Um.. Duh.

 I guess we do not count caf­feinated mix­ers that have been around a lot longer-Jaeger bomber anyone?

Any­way, sev­eral pro­duc­ers refor­mu­lated their drinks, e.g. Anheuser-Busch over­hauled Tilt and Miller­Coors changed Sparks in response to the attor­ney gen­er­als’ atten­tion. How­ever sev­eral man­u­fac­tur­ers con­tin­ued busi­ness as usual, lead­ing to out­right bans of cer­tain bev­er­ages in many states and on many uni­ver­sity campuses. 

On Novem­ber 17, 2010 the FDA stepped in and sent a let­ter to the mak­ers of Joose, Max, Four Loko, Core High Grav­ity HG, Core High Grav­ity HG Orange, Lemon Lime Core Spiked and Moon­shot; the FDA con­tends the caf­feine added to their malt bev­er­ages is an “unsafe food addi­tive”, and con­sti­tutes a pub­lic health con­cern. If the man­u­fac­tur­ers con­tinue to pro­duce their prod­ucts in the cur­rent form, they could be sub­ject to fur­ther action includ­ing seizure of these prod­ucts. Wow.

Again I am of the opin­ion this ban doesn’t really *do* any­thing to improve pub­lic health.  You can still pick up a can of Kro­nik, Red Bull or Mon­ster, or an “energy” shot such as Fixx or Red­line, mix it with a lit­tle vodka, Mike’s hard Lemon­ade, Zima or Smirnoff Ice and see all the sparks you want to inside your head while get­ting trashed. 

But still… fly­ing high could be a the­ory of rein­deer flight, hence the Xmas Demen­tia Car­toon.  Hope you enjoyed them. 

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

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