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Peggle Replays Infrequently Asked Questions Paul Notley The Leaden Angels Alt Oscars 2012 Alternate Oscars 400 Fave Movies 500 Fave Songs 100 Movie Murders MORE FROM PAUL! Paul's Favorite 495 Songs 882 Movies plus Updated Alternate Oscars, circa 2019! PopStrips! Yep! Buy Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots. It's a poster! Angryflower.com generously hosted by Brunching Shuttlecocks.com Books!!! 
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Fri, May 21 - Fine, I'll Update the Web Site Whoops! Got a bit sidetracked last night, no big deal, but it did leave our beloved angryflower.com without an update. So let's correct that sad state of affairs... now! I don't know about you folks, but I'm rather enjoying  Fri, May 14 - Oof So I guess last week I went to all the trouble of composing the update, and then never uploaded it. HILARIOUS! So, if you're curious about things a week ago, they're talked about below. Speaking of the past, how about a cartoon that's a hot hot take on a mid-90s comic book trend? Let us all consider the curious case of  Fri, May 7 - Sunshine I know, it's crazy, but what can I say? We have some in Seattle. All this sun is something of a grim reminder of all the sun I won't be seeing with any of my friends back in Alberta, at least as long as Alberta continues to boil with unabated COVID-19 fury, the most-stricken province in Canada, as well as being worse than all the states in the U.S.! Now that is... really something. Anyway, here's a cartoon NOT about giant sand penises, metaphorical or no. At least, I don't *think* it is...  Fri, April 30 - Success! One of the things about pain is how, while you have it, it's all-consuming, but then once it's gone, you forget about it. Last week I was complaining about my arm being sore. This week, it's not been sore for several days. I didn't even notice the pain had gone away. So, thanks for leaving, pain! I appreciate you! By which I mean, your absence! A little bit longer ago than last week, I was whining that my cartoons didn't seem to hit with people any more. Then along comes this week's strip, which I didn't feel was anything particularly special, and it got waaaaaaaay more attention on Facebook and Instagram than most. What gives? I guess people really really dig the desert planet, Arrakis, otherwise known as  Fri, Apr 23 - My Arm Hurts Yeah, I know, this doesn't really have anything to do with this week's cartoon. But darn it, my arm's really sore! I certainly haven't done any physical exertion with it lately, or banged or bruised it, but oorg, it's stiff and achey nonetheless. Stop feeling this way, arm! Now we have THAT out of the way, it's time to present this week's cartoon, which I feel has a very good shot at being the strip after which the next book will be named. So in a way, this is like a new book preview!  Fri, Apr 16 - At Last  I kept making this joke and nobody was laughing, so I finally went ahead and made a cartoon out of it. Let it never be said I refuse hammer a joke to death and beyond out of sheer arrogance. I really like this one, too, and I spent a lot more time and effort on it than usual, but it's probably gotten the least reaction out of any strip in the last six months. That's what I get for doing things I like! Fri, Apr 9 - Emojis! Hey, folks, check it out. An ardent Bob the Angry Flower enthsusiast took it upon himself to create some BtAF Emojis. Here are a few:  And here's the link: remember to Right-click and "Save As." And here's this week's cartoon, 
Fri, Apr 2 - Livestock Complacency? False Prosperity? So I've been watching a lot of Attack on Titan lately. At the same time, my longtime cartooning colleague Ted Rall has been going on and on and ON about how he thinks Joe Biden is senile. Seems to me like kind of a cheap cut, and honestly I don't see it, but mulling the two disparate thoughts lead to the following toon:  Fri, Mar 26 - Ce n'est pas une bande dessinée Please enjoy this week's cartoon, entitled:  So far Falcon and the Winter Soldier seems like it has promise. Only six episodes, so it'll be over in the blink of three eyes, but so far, so good! Fri, Mar 19 - Bucky and the Wingman Now that WandaVision is receding into the past, we have naught but Falcon and the Winter Soldier to satiate our everhunger for new Marvel Cinematic Universe content. I don't have much of a connection to either of those characters, or the actors who play them, and after Wandavision's meta-trippiness the prospect of a super-powered spy-buddy show seems kind of quaint. But hey... maybe it'll be good! Also, here's a cartoon: 
Fri, Mar 12 - How 'Bout That Wandavision? 
Fri, Mar 5 - Waiting for Wanda Headline says it all, folks. I'm composing and posting this angryflower.com update mere hours before the final (?) episode of Disney+'s WandaVision airs this night at, for me, 12 midnight PST March 5, give or take about 20 minutes for Disney+'s servers to unclog themselves and allow people to watch the TV show. It goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: I am very excited! Who knows what secrets will be revealed? Who knows what emotions may be unearthed? Will red magic spontaneously erupt out of my television and envelop me, Seattle, the rest of the world and the universe a little after 12:03am Mar 5? Honestly at this point I wouldn't cross anything off the list of possibilities. Meanwhile, by which I mean almost a week ago, CPAC happened. What's CPAC? You're on a computer, you have access to Google -- look it up! In response to some of the CPAC-y business, a week-ish ago I drew the following cartoon: 
Fri, Feb 26 - Attacked 
Fri, Feb 19 - Mortal Yep, Socrates was mortal and so am I, at least as far as being fallible and frail. I'm talking about this week's strip, which while partially successful, goofs the dismount sufficiently that I can't call it a triumph. Even after all these years of using cartoons to get ideas across, I still miss the free throw or even the layup, to use a football metaphor in a golfing context. Or maybe I'm just being too harsh on myself? I dunno, how about you fine readers decide by clicking the link below and wrapping yourselves in a fine, fresh-tailored 
Fri, Feb 12, 2021 
Fri, Feb 5, 2021 - Hades Not the place, but the video game. It's a roguelike, which means that you play it over and over and every time it's a little bit different but mostly the same. Great game, even though it's kicking my ass. But as a game designer, I'm in awe of the polish and thought and care and attention they put into it. Even if I've beaten the first boss once in 50 tries! Anyway, how about this krazy kartoon action? 
Fri, Jan 29, 2021 - Nor...mal? Now that the President of the United States is no longer a cheap funhouse mobster, it feels like, maybe not that things have turned around and that the world has hope, but at least that we're not trapped in a craptastic psychodrama with no escape. Perhaps we can afford to take a few minutes to be amused by a Reddit crowd ruining a bunch of skeezy hedge funds' attempts to short sell Gamestop, of all things. Fun! Meanwhile, I and Bob are 
Fri, Jan 22, 2021 - I Guess Bernie's Super Hot Right Now So we had the inauguration, and ushered Donald Trump into, we can only hope, the dustbin of history, but it seems all anybody wants to do is share images of a seated Senator Bernie Sanders wearing mittens, amusingly pasted into incongruous situations. I honestly don't know what to make of it. A friend asserts that "the internet was thirsty for a new meme," and that explanation works as well as any other. Anyway, in the spirit of fresh-minted President Joe Biden's call for unity, peace and even-handedness, I give you 
Fri, Jan 15, 2021 - Bean Dad? So this week I don't have a blistering hot cartoon take on the fun and games last week at the US Capitol. Since I was going to be on a plane for 13 hours on my usual cartoon-drawing day, I was a good little toonist and got my strip done ahead of time, on Tuesday. There's no news during the week, anyway, right? What could go wrong? As it happened, though, the following strip was inspired, in part, by actual events. Like everything these days, it feels like a thousand years ago, but on the weekend prior to the Unsurrection, there was a blow-up on Twitter about a guy everyone called "Bean Dad." This was, as it turned out, John Roderick, co-host of Friendly Fire, one my favorite podcasts. He'd done a bit on Twitter about forcing his 9-year-old daughter to figure out how to use a can opener. People started taking it seriously and getting mad, which led to dragging his old Twitter to find a bunch of edgelord "anti-semitic" tweets that did not age well, leading to his (and by extension, Friendly Fire's) eventual cancellation. Goddammit! Not that any of this is directly depicted in the following cartoon, but I was thinking about old John Roderick as I drew this strip posing the urgent question: 
Fri, Jan 8, 2021 - Woof! Ah, well, it seems armed insurrection failed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race.  Whew! That was a close one! Speaking of cartoons, here's one! 
Fri, Jan 1, 2021 - A New Year In a way, every day marks a new year, but in another way, fuck that shit. It's January One, the year of Our Lord 2021, give or take some calendar hijinx. So let's put on this web-site a cartoon that has made its limping rounds for most of a week on social media! It's this! 
Fri, Dec 25 - Merry Christmas No big joke, here. I hope y'all have as merry a Christmas or holiday or what have you as you're physically, mentally or emotionally able. Have it be nice. Soon we'll be done with this wretched year and we'll have a fun gander at the exciting new one fate has cued up for us. What a load of fun that'll be! In this spirit, then, please enjoy 
Fri, Dec 18 - Locked Yep. Lockdown. Groovy. Doesn't feel too different from quarantine, except now I can go out for milk. Only thing that matters. Speaking of only things mattering, check out this 
Fri, Dec 11- Free...dom? YAHOO! Quarantine is complete! Now I get to... stay indoors and not see anybody in person as Alberta goes into its long-delayed lockdown for the entirety of my remaining time here? Aces! I LOVE IT. To be honest, though... I don't love it. I'm sad about it, to continue with the truthiness. But it's the right policy. It was the right policy a month aqo, but I guess certain Alberta Premiers weren't ready to get jiggy with reality at that point. Better late than never, people have said in the past! Regardless, and in an entirely unrelated matter, here's a cartooned-strip: 
Wed, Dec 4 - Quarantine? Well, just wrapped up the first week of happy-go-lucky Canadian quarantine, punctuated by a brief involuntary breaking of said quarantine by virtue of a fire alarm. Luckily, said alarm was FALSE.  So far, it seems to be going peachily. But why take my word for it, when you can take a handful of Bob's? 
Wed, Nov 25 - Zoom! No, not the highly successful and popular computer videoconferencing application that's been a real life-save for at least me and I'm pretty sure other people this pandemic. No, the kind of zoom I'm talking about is the kind wherein one hops on a succession of airplanes in order to travel somewhere. In this case, it's from Seattle to Edmonton, making a couple of stops in Vancouver and Calgary. I'm making a break for it, trying to have some semblance of a Christmas by getting back to Dirt City in plenty of time to wait out the quarantine and still have a decent amount of time left over. That particular plan is looking mighty shakey at the moment, as Alberta experiences its most shocking rise in covid cases since this whole party began. Kind of an "out of the frying pan, into another frying pan" sort of situation. But at least it'll be insanely cold! Speaking of pandemices, here's a cartoon! 
Fri, Nov 20 - For Pete's Sake Good gravy, America. When I drew the below cartoon less than a week ago, I felt like, "Well, this is already moot, but I feel like drawing it, so let's do it." And now it's getting unmooted by Dumpy's team? IN PUBLIC? Yeesh! Speaking of this cartoon, here it is: 
Fri, Nov 13 - President-Elect Joe Biden Yeah. Feels good to type it, just in defiance of the shameless, hopeless bundle of pissflaps who currently holds the office, raging and howling like a hated gym teacher's spoiled child. Gosh, I hope we're rid of him soon. Anyway, speaking of things I'm glad are over, how about a cartoon concerning 
Fri, Nov 6 - Still Waiting No conclusive results in the President Trump Season 1 two-parter finale. Looks like they're stretching it out over a whole week. Damn, that's gutsy tv. Still think a strong pivot into getting booted out of office and facing numerous criminal prosecutions is the way to go for Season 2. We'll see. Meanwhile, how about a largely out-of-date cartoon about soemthing that didn't really seem to matter that much? OR DID IT?  Fri, Oct 23 - Happy... Hallowe'en, I Guess? My interest in doing Hallowe'eny things has been waning for many years now after a youth where crafting fun costumes was a creative priority. This year I wore a piece of fibreboard cut to look like a Bejeweled gem at an EA murder mystery Zoom event. How the mighty, by which I mean my passion for Hallowe'en, has fallen. I do have, I suppose, a Hallowe'enish-themed cartoon for you folks this week, though it wasn't constructed with that intent in mind. Friends, I give you  Fri, Oct 23 - Debated Huh. Weird. I feel like I just watched something that could be described as a Prsidential debate. I did not expect that. Here's a cartoon! Unrelated... or not?  Fri, Oct 16 - No No-Debate So first there was gonna be a debate, and then there wasn't, then there was, but not, then not, then not but twice over. Simple! And on that note, let's have fun with the following cartoon:  Fri, Oct 9 - The Hits Keep Coming It's been pretty dizzying, these last couple of weeks. I had to step back and let an old character step up to handle this week's duties. Please welcome  Answers! Last week's cartoon posed some bonus puzzle questions: can you spot all 11 fun fallacies? Here's the answer key as I see it: 
Fri, Oct 2 - Wow That Was Fun 
Fri, Sep 25 - Strong Letter to Follow 
Fri, Sep 18 - The Following Week Wow, it's hard to believe the debut of Keith Knight's new new series on Hulu, "Woke," was just last week. It feels like an eternity! Have you seen it yet? If not, get on it! Watch that series. All the way to the end! It's very important to Hulu's number-crunchers that series be watched all the way to the end. Meanwhile, I just zipped through a comics version of the Mueller Report. Not the one Too Much Coffee Man's Shannon Wheeler is illustrating, but still, an interesting read, and one that led to some cartoony ruminations on 
Fri, Sep 11 - Woke, Darn it! What are you doing visiting a web site on the internet when you could be watching Keith Knight's brand new show Woke on Hulu? Good grief, get your priorities straight! Go watch it and come back! Did you watch it? Fun, right? Jokes? And how about that season finale? MAN! Let's all join in urging the universe in the form of Hulu to quickly order a 2nd season. And now... a Bob the Angry Flower cartoon! 
Fri, Sep 4 - Tempus Fugit See, this is why I try not to do topical stuff. Something happens, I draw a comic about it, and a week later it's ancient history. Who can remember old stuff with all-new stuff shoving it out of the way? And I took the time to draw all those panels, too! Anyway, here's the cartoon. Hope you like it! 
Fri, Aug 28 - Time Enough I feel bad for Christopher Nolan. Sure, I'm luekwarm on some of his grander efforts like Inception and Interstellar, but I appreciate, at least in principle, his formalism and his commitment to extravagantly staged in-camera blockbuster action. It'd be insanely frustrating to spend months meticulously crafting an enormous, time-bending fantasy filmed in IMAX with the widest scope possible, only to have a pandemic come along and shut theatres down across the country. So while much of Hollywood is slowly coming to grips with the (we hope) temporary unfeasibility of in-theatre movie watching, he's just plowing ahead and putting his palindromic new thriller, Tenet, into theatres anyway, gosh darn it. I'd almost be tempted to risk catching a deadly disease to see it, but none of the theatres in Seattle are open, admittedly for pretty good reason. And it's not going to a streaming service any time soon, either, so I guess we'll just have to wait. Anyway, here's this week's Bob the Angry Flower cartoon: 
Fri, Aug 21 - Biden Time Pretty good speech from Joe Biden last night. I could tell because even the venom-spitters on Fox News reluctantly conceded so, at least at first. Biden can say the words "compassion" and "united" and sound like he means them. Tall order these days. Meanwhile, the United States Postal Service is going through a tiny bit of a 
Also, Star Trek: Lower Decks is friggin' incredible. I am in awe of it. Annotating Ted My friend Ted Rall, legendarily litigious iconoclast contrarian political cartoonist, is currently doing his level best to get Donald Trump re-elected, all in the name of progressivism. He posted this article on his site last week, and I couldn't help myself, I annotated it. My stuff is all the junk that starts with _. NEVER TRUMP. NEVER BIDEN. THE PROGRESSIVE CASE FOR VOTING THIRD PARTY OR BOYCOTTING THE ELECTION by Ted Rall "Republicans will vote for Trump no matter what. Democrats will vote for Biden no matter what. This column is for progressives weighing the pros and cons of succumbing to the two-party trap, and voting for Biden." _ Or in other words, "Why a 2nd Term for Trump is No Big Deal," by Ted Rall "Unless you've been sucking through a ventilator in a COVID-19 ward for the last few months, you know the argument in favor of swallowing your disappointment that neither Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren are the Democratic nominee," _ disappointment non-progressives also feel "resisting the temptation to punish the DNC for rigging the primaries," _ putting aside the millions of primary voters who voted for Biden and the greater millions we wish existed for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren but who, much as it angers and frustrates us, failed to materialize, "and forgetting Joe Biden's right-wing voting record and Kamala Harris' penchant for locking up innocent people of color and throwing away the key: " _We haven't forgotten. We know their records. "Trump is a monster, his second term will bring fascism to America, Biden will be more amenable to pressure from the left than Trump." _ Much as we'd love to believe in the second part, we admit we don't have our hopes up. But that first part is pretty urgent, even if you spend the rest of this article trying to argue otherwise "Except for the part about Trump being a terrible human being, the call to sell out is all based on nonsense." _ And here we go "Reelecting Trump would send a nasty symbolic signal to the world but his actual presidency will almost certainly be characterized by the plagues of lame duckery. Second terms are worthless. Presidents don't get anything done during their second term. Even FDR floundered. Whatever you think of Trump, does this president strike you as a brilliant Machiavellian tactician who has been holding back his most extreme instincts for four years? Smarter than Reagan, Clinton or Obama? Should Trump be reelected, he will almost certainly be impeached again. Allies like Mitch McConnell will drift away. He may face prosecution." _ If he's re-elected, we've seen quite clearly that he won't face prosecution. We've also been shown that impeachment is off the table as an enforcement mechanism. So while for sure, Trump is very much part of a long line of GOP assholery, he is uniquely blatant about not considering himself to be bound by law in any respect. An executive with that attitude can do unimaginable damage in four years. For cryin' out loud, at this very moment he is openly using the power of the Executive Branch to interfere with the election, and this is when he's still supposedly trying to get people to trust him. He doesn't have to be a brilliant tactician to bully the parts of the government under his control to do what he wants. He's already doing it. We've already seen how ineffective the legislature has been in curbing him. I consider this argument that his lame duckness will blunt his damaging effect to be extremely unconvincing. "Some progressives are vulnerable to the argument that, though far from ideal, a neoliberal warmonger like Joe Biden nevertheless represents an improvement over Donald Trump. That argument fails." _ I'll take a moment to comment on the characterization of Biden as a "neo-liberal warmonger." Yes, he voted for the Iraq War, and yes, that vote was stupid, cowardly or likely both. However, a lot of the discussion I've heard about Biden's Iraq vote makes it sound like he was the architect and prime mover of that sick, immoral, illegal invasion. It elides the responsibility of the actual criminals. Biden was not the warmonger. Others monged that war. Biden was in marketing at best. "Left-of-center electoral politics in the United States is not like football, a game in which a team moves the ball down the field in incremental steps. Mainstream corporate-owned Democratic Party politics is not on the same continuum as progressivism. Neoliberalism isn't watered-down progressivism; progressivism isn't a more robust form of neoliberalism. They are opposing ideologies. Progressives and centrists are enemies." _ This is too much to get into in a simple rebuttal post. I'll just say I believe that they can be allies, if actual outcomes in real people's lives are brought into consideration. "When neoliberal centrists achieve power, progressives find themselves in the political wilderness. Obama didn't have a single progressive in his cabinet. Biden doesn't have any progressive top advisors." _ This is a fair comment, if overly simplified. I'm sure, for example, that you could easily find people who'd characterize some of Obama or Biden's advisors, or Obama or Biden themselves, as not just progressives but as full-blown socialists. It's almost as if many people have many different perspectives. It doesn't help that progressives count themselves as the sole arbiters of who counts as a progressive, and they are notoriously stingy with that ribbon, subject to constant revision. But yeah. The Democratic National Committee's snubbing of the progressive wing sucks and is angering. "Corporate Democrats ignore progressives. They crush them. Two major protest movement emerged under Obama, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. Obama deployed the surveillance state to eradicate both. Ask Julian Assange and Edward Snowden how amenable corporate Democrats like Obama are to progressive demands for change. It would be idiocy to expect anything different from Biden, who just appointed an out-of-control former prosecutor during a period of unprecedented protest against police brutality." _ Also reasonable points, if again stated so hyperbolically as to erase all complexity in those situations. But once again, we've neglected to mention the other side of the equation. We may deeply mistrust Biden & Co. on their attitudes towards progressive political action, but does that mean that we seriously consider Trump's approach to be preferable on this issue? Oh, I forgot. We're not comparing them; we're just slamming Biden. "Would Biden be better than Trump? Only in temperament. Qualitatively, Biden presents a friendlier face for a pro-business domestic agenda that features few substantial differences with the Republicans. Under his proposed Democratic administration, we can expect to see a continuation of a text structure that favors wealthy individuals and corporations, shrinking union power and rising income inequality, a horrible for-profit healthcare system, and systemic police violence directed disproportionately against people of color and the poor." _ All of this is understood by Biden voters. It sucks. But once again, we're slamming Biden and giving Trump a pass, especially on that urgent "his second term will bring fascism to America" stuff we talked about above and somehow didn't get a mention in that previous paragraph when we were considering state violence and political suppression. Fixing wealth inequality, union evaporation, healthcare disasters and systemic state violence might just be easier if America isn't formally a fascist state. Or, to put it another way, if Republicans are ardent warriors for wealth inequality, union evaporation, healthcare disasters and systemic state violence, and Democrats are merely milquetoast defenders of same, who would you rather fight? "Understandably, there is trepidation about the possibility of Donald Trump naming a successor to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is ailing. Even if Democrats control the Senate after January, and Biden pushes through a liberal-which, given his record, is unlikely-the overall balance of the court will not change. It is a conservative court and it will remain one." _ Whoof. Huge elide here. Four years ago you were making similar "both sides are bad" arguments, and since then Trump has seated three Supreme Count Justices. Oh well, too late to do anything about it now! "In foreign policy, there is far less cause for optimism. From Bosnia to Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria, Joe Biden has enthusiastically voted for and convinced his fellow legislators to support brutal foreign interventions. Though disgusting, Trump's record is nevertheless far better than Biden's. Trump has expanded Obama's drone wars and supports the bloodthirsty Saudi regime in the proxy civil war in Yemen. Yet he also negotiated a deal for total U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and repeatedly expresses his willingness to negotiate with such adversaries as North Korea and Iran without pre-conditions." _ This is another core point that's reasonably made and probably beyond my ability to fully address here. Indeed, it's the key point. For all his horrors, Trump is not a crazed warmonger. Beats me why not. I think, fundamentally, he's not a Saddam Hussein-style strongman because he's not a strong man. As I say, this is the hardest to judge. America is responsible for its actions in the rest of the world, but it's not responsible for everything that happens there. It can't be. It shouldn't be. Because it can't be. I believe America's taste for war is bigger than the Democratic and Republican parties, and even bigger than the dictates of corporate capitalism. At the moment nobody in America is really eager for a war. Eighteen years ago, it required courage to say that you weren't --courage, I will freely grant, Biden lacked. I'll just say I'd rather not put the reins of power to deal death and suffering on a monstrous scale in the world back in the hands of the GOP, who were primarily responsible for cooking up the last big-ticket atrocity. As I said above, I am just not convinced by your earlier assertions that Biden is rarin' and eager to start a war and bomb brown people if Republicans aren't leading the charge. But I acknowledge that some may see it differently, and if so, vote accordingly. "Neither Trump nor Biden will do anything that progressives really care about. Neither will support the Green New Deal or, for that matter, doing anything real about climate change. Neither is in favor of student loan forgiveness. Neither will take the profit incentive out of healthcare." _ Some classic excluding-the-middle bad argument stuff here. You can fail to adopt the Green New Deal, or do "anything real about climate change" (though of course nothing they propose will be "real" to your satisfaction), or forgive student loans, or take the profit incentive out of healthcare, and STILL do things that progressives really care about. For all the disdain towards incrementalism, every incremental step helps hundreds or thousands or millions of people. Meanwhile, every incremental (or catastrophic) step back hurts hundreds or thousands or millions of people. To dismiss those incremental steps either way is to obliterate the experiences of countless multitudes of real, living people. I seriously don't understand the indifference. "Some progressives worry about "wasting their vote" on an outfit like the Green Party. What could be more of a waste than voting for someone who is against everything you care about?" _ I dunno, maybe not voting against someone who is absolutely out to destroy everything you care about? That seems like a bigger waste to me. "In high school civics class they told you that a single vote can make a difference. They lied. Not in a national election. Not at the state level of a national election. In the closest battleground state of 2016, New Hampshire, Clinton beat Trump by 2,701 votes. Sure, if you and thousands of other folks vote the same way, outcomes can change. But you have no control over other people. You have one vote. That's all. Even if you live in Ohio, you personally can't change anything. So live free." _ Oof. It's true each voter only has their own vote. But each voter also has the right and privilege to talk to people and try to sway their vote. You are doing it right now. It's a vacuous truth to point out that elections are rarely decided on the basis of one vote. Elections are collective actions. I'm kind of shocked that an anti-capitalist like you is so contemptuous towards individual effort for collective goals. Your vote joins with others to determine outcomes. Much as we may feel the electoral system is a sham, those outcomes attach to real power wielded by real people in the government. Different things happen because of different votes. Yours matters. "On the other hand, withholding your vote from the Democratic Party can have a positive impact. Several million primary voters cast ballots for Bernie Sanders in 2016 but stayed home in the general election. Primary voters are fanatics-only 12% turnout compared to about 55% in the general election-so when they don't show up it's a boycott, not apathy. After Hillary lost, party insiders concluded they would have to move left in order to motivate progressive base voters. Many contenders in the 2020 Democratic primaries espoused elements of Bernie Sanders' platform. Without the 2016 progressive boycott, that never would have happened." _ I'm not convinced that "without the 2016 progressive boycott, that never would have happened." Progressive ideas are good. They inspire people. It's a frustrating mystery why they didn't inspire people to come out in sufficient numbers to make a difference in the primaries when it mattered, when overwhelming numbers could have flattened DNC machinations to control the narrative. I wish it had turned out that way. It didn't. When I hear progressives talk about this or the last election, I don't hear a lot of soul-searching along the lines of "What the eff is going on? Our ideas are good and polls show they're popular. Where the hell is our vote? What are we missing? Why are we not connecting politically?" I fear a good part of the answer is that progressives tend to boycott and withhold their vote in order to "send a message." Meanwhile, crazed Tea Party fanatics votebomb primaries and get their lunatics on ballots and into legislatures. Why can't we do that? "If you are trying to send a message with your vote, voting for a third party is likelier to register with analysts than staying home on election day." _ This is certainly true. Whatever you do, vote. Vote for a third party if you must, but do vote. Non-votes are invisible. There are hundreds of millions of non-votes out there already and the levers of power bend to none of them. "Voting for Biden sends only one message: you approve of him and his politics. Why, after getting the milk for free, would he pay attention to any of the cow's complaints?" _Why, if the cow has loudly tied off its teats for months, would he bother even trying to milk it? Fri, Aug 14 - Happy Birthday! Oh, no, not my birthday. My brother Paul's birthday! It was yesterday, or now as I write this, and we had a nice little cross-country Zoom chat to celebrate. Not really the same as a real birthday celebration, and a harbinger of the sincere bummer it'll be when my 50th birthday rolls around next month in these non-partying circumstances. FUN! So let's read a cartoon! 
Fri, Aug 7 - Lower Decks Yep, I like it. Probably my favorite bit of NuTrek by quite a margin. Maybe it's because it's got that Rick & Morty feel, or maybe I'm just trying to convince myself that all the money I've flushed down the crapper on CBS Online or whatever the eff it's called hasn't been wasted, but I dig. Feels like the mix of Star Trek and workplace comedy I've been waiting for. Let's hope they don't screw it up! In other news, 
Fri, July 31 - Back From Comic-Con Pretty much the same as being at Comic-Con, this year, seeing as how it was, as they say, @Home. So let's charge directly at this week's cartoon! 
Fri, July 24 - Comic-Con @ Home Part 2 Normally round this time of year I'd be sweating behind a table in the Small Press Area at San Diego Comic-Con, trying desperately to draw sales out of random passersby in the same manner that a freelance dentist might draw teeth. Sadly, this year San Diego Comic-Con has gone virtual on account of plague. No table, no book sales. But there's still lotsa Comic-Con-y goodness to be had, so why not pop over to https://www.comic-con.org/cci/2020/athome and see what's up over there? Finished? How was it? Did you even go and check it out? It matters not to me if you did or didn't. I'm not your mother. In any case, here's a fun cartoon about "police": 
Fri, July 17 - Comic-Con @ Home So this year San Diego Comic-Con is trying something different: not happening. Ever since it started it hasn't not happened until now, so they're not sure how to handle it. So far the idea seems to be some kind of virtual San Diego Comic-Con. I don't really know all the details right this second. However, a detail I do know is that I've agreed to do some sketches as part of a fundraiser for the Cartoon Art Museum. So hey, why not click https://www.cartoonart.org/store?category=Comic-Con to bid on one, or some of the amazing other ones done by hot hot artists that people love! Meanwhile, as you mull over clicking on that big fat fundraising link up there, why not take a brief tour to consider the simple truth of 
Fri, July 10 - Hygenic We all think we're clean. And for the most part, we're all correct. But you know, there are some occasional occasions in which we're mistaken. And it's in those cases that Bob the Angry Flower is ready to set folks straight and 
Fri, July 3 - Almost Independent Let's take a week to turn away from the real world and all its horrors and bummers, shall we? Let's look instead to the worlds of fantasy, of make-believe, of role-playing, worlds where we may marvel at the sublime perfection of the 
Fri, June 26 - Some Fun Now Whew! That pandemic thing sure was a drag, huh? Remember that? In the past? How bummery it was? So glad we can put it all behind us and 
Fri, June 19 - Juneteenth I'll admit, I had no idea what Juneteenth was until I looked at the 2020 Calendar Keith Knight was kind enough to gift, noticed that it was on there, and looked it up. Then the next day I saw it was an episode title in the first season of Atlanta. So I'm very late to the Juneteenth party, though I can say with confidence I'm still two weeks ahead of the President of the United States. Anyway, how about a cartoon? 
Fri, June 12 - Live From CHAZ Well, not quite. I'm about 12 blocks down the hill from the fresh-minted Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. And this isn't an area where mannequins walk and the Nestene Consciousness reigns supreme, either. A whole other kind of consciousness rules this roost. How it develops we shall wait to see. I only pray the situation continues to evolve without loss or injury to any 
Fri, June 5 - Long Delayed Wow, this week kind of came out of nowhere, huh? And yet, in a way, it's been coming for decades and long overdue. 
Fri, May 29 - Undo the Do I don't really get hung up on continuity too much, so I can't say why I felt it necessary to draw this week's strip. Shame? Yeah, probably shame, and a disinclination to play the cards I dealt myself. 
Fri, May 22 - I Shall Not Want Nope. I refuse to refuse myself anything, y'know, in these troubling times. Thus, we have the following: 
Fri, May 15 - Productive We're all trying to keep ourselves busy in this pandemic. Well, I'm happy to announce that I've come up with 6 new phone application designs that are sure to transform our world, some for the better! Please enjoy 
Fri, May 8 - More Dead Might as well open all the states up, give that coronavirus the burst of infection it needs to catapult into total overconfidence. We'll expose its weaknesses by amplfying its strength! Just when it thinks it's winning... it will continue to win! On a related subject, 
Fri, May 1 - Happy May Day! Is May Day on the first? Or the fourth? Or some other? I don't know, and I refuse to find out. Happy May Day, angryflower.com readers! Here's a cartoon.  Fri, Apr 24 - And Now  Fri, Apr 17 - Back to Business Whew! That sure was a thing, huh, that whole coronavirus situation, folks dying, everybody confined to their homes, the economy slashed across the belly, its guts spilling to the floor. Sure glad that's over! So now that nothing happened and nothing changed, let's take a moment to bask in  Fri, Apr 10 - Confinement Dept. I guess this one could be said to be about the same subject matter as the preceding three. Does that make it an ongoing story? Not really! See for yourself:  Fri, Apr 3 - Shambolic Tril So I guess this one and the previous two make up a trilogy of sorts? It wasn't planned that way and it doesn't really work, but here it is regardless!  Fri, Mar 27 - Some Fun Now  Fri, Mar 20 - Fine, fine. We're all fine here Been a week since last update, and things are looking quite a bit more terrifying. Already it's looking like last week's prediction of a return to normality by March 31 was laughably optimistic. What an exciting fun ride we're all on, with so many twists and turns! Now, for larfs, how about  Fri, Mar 13 - Going Viral Well, I'm back from my Star Trek Cruise (it was fun, thanks for asking!), only to find my adopted home of Seattle in the moist, fleshy grip of a pandemic. Fun! I've been on mandatory Work From Home since I got back Monday night, with the prospect of it being extended at least until March 31. Let's hope this abundance of caution has the desired effect of, y'know, not having everybody drop dead of the plague. In any case, as noted in exhaustive and exhausting detail two weeks ago, there was no update last week. But I'm back, babies, and that means Bob the Angry Flower cartoons. And you read that letter "s" correctly at the end of the word "cartoon"; this week has plural toons for your consideration! First up we have a strip where I can't say for sure what I was going for,  And then let's follow it up with a collaboration with one Lisa Martin, who was my co-guest on the inaugural episode of the Mike Griwkowsky Hour podcast back during the holiday. I challenged her to write a sonnet, and she challenged me to illustrate it if she did. Well, she did, so I did, and here it is: 
Fri, Feb 28 - No Update There's no update! Not this week, of course. This week has an update. It's this! No, I'm talking about next week, a week which will have no angryflower.com update. Why? The reason is, I hope, simple. This time next week, I very much expect to be on a Star Trek Cruise, Star Trek Cruising, where I will have neither the ability nor the inclination to update my web site. Hence me warning folks about it now, a week before then, when I won't be warning anybody of anything, because there will be, as I mention above, no update. But just because there's no update next week doesn't mean we can't have an update this week, right? Quite! So let us update this week by updating this week to include the following cartoon, a rather dumb one called  Y'all have fun, now! I certainly intend to! Sun, Feb 23 - Late! Yep, it's true, this is a late update, not falling as they almost always do on a Friday, but delayed instead until Sunday. The explanation for the tardiness is simple. This past Thrusday I raced home from work in order to hop a bus up to Vancouver to watch my good friend Keith Knight wrap up shooting on Woke, his upcoming show on Hulu. In all the fuss of packing and grabbing the bus, I forgot to do the week's update. OOP! No fear, though, folks. Bob's still around, and we've got a tasty cartoon for you, almost fresh, called  Fri, Feb 14 - Emma So there's a new Emma movie coming out, according to the trailers, and it occurred to me that I'd never seen an Emma movie, or read Emma itself. Thus, the obvious next step was to read Emma. Once I finished, I had a bit of a thought about an Emma cartoon, so I wrote it and drew it. It's this:  Fri, Feb 7 - Not About Impeachment Not wanting to have anything to do with the miserable impeachment proceedings that recently concluded, I certainly don't want to post a cartoon about them. Thus, we have an entirely unrelated strip I call  Fri, Jan 31 - Peachy Man, how about that impeachment, huh? K-K-KRAY, am I right? ZOWIE-WOWIE! Okay, enough of that bullshit. It's annoying. Let's have a cartoon, a good one for a change!  Fri, Jan 24 - Good God, Fox News It's on the TV in the other room as I compose this update. I figured I should get in a quick taste of television impeachment coverage, a little from MSNBC and now Laura Ingraham's show on Fox. It's poop. Poopy poop poop. Bleah. So tiresome. Instead, let's ask a pertinent, searingly urgent question:  Fri, Jan 17 - Soldiers Yep, soldiers. Men of war. There sure are a lot of them in that new 1917 movie. Oh, sure, there are parts where there are hardly any soldiers at all. Whole handfuls of minutes go by where there are no more than two soldiers at any one time. But I assure you those minutes are made up for by other minutes in which there are many, many solidiers all at once. Yep. If you're looking for a film which features large variations in the number of soldiers it depicts, you could do far, FAR worse than to see 1917. Trust me! And, speaking of trusting me,  Fri, Jan 10 - Newest Year Yet! Hey, dear readers, Happy New Year! It's a bit late, as I just got out of Ford vs. Ferarri (good flick!), so we're gonna have a nother stripped-down update. The good news is that it's got a bunch of cartoons in it! First, we'll get saucy with  Then we'll follow that up with a little good ol' fashioned  And finally we'll bring it home with a strip that probably should have been the last strip of last year, but wasn't: 
Wed, Dec 18 - Catch Ya later, 20-Teens! Wow, it's kinda snuck up on me, the idea that next year is 2020. Cool year-name, that. Sleek. Sexy. It's got a sci-fi sheen and yet it's super contemporary at the same time. Lookin' forward to it, even if it's an appalling shitshow! At least we got out of the 20-tens without World War 1: The Reboot. I'm hoping it's because history isn't interested in directly repeating itself, though I'm not sure I'm ready for the wacky twists and turns it has in store. Guess we'll find out, huh? Okay, quick wrap-up of stuff I liked this year, no particular order: One Punch Man Enter the Gungeon The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Spider-Man PS4 Avengers: Endgame (I guess) The Mandalorian (sorta) HBO's Watchmen (surprise!) The Shaggy D.A. Steven Universe: The Movie Amazon Prime's The Man in the High Castle The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (really good!) and of course Bob the Angry Flower: exciting space adventure! Buy it! I probably missed some, but there we go, that's a list. MY list. I deliberately excluded people, places and experieces because Jesus, who wants to be here all night? Not me, man. Hell, no. And so here we have the strip for the last update of the year:  There will be a bit of a pause on updates until I get back from holidays, but patient readers will be rewarded with a flurry of strips all at once! Or, if you fancy, you can keep up with them as they go live on Gigcity.ca. Do that! And that's it! I'm out! HAPPEEEEEE NEWWWWWW YEEEEEEEeeeee..... (off into distance) Fri, Dec 13 - More Aliens? It seems so. I guess I just have 'em on the brain. Let us then consider this epochal moment when Bob, in all our names, makes 
Fri, Dec 6 - Mando I'm having fun with Disney+'s The Mandolorian, but at the same time, something about it makes me itch. Perhaps it's simply that I'm not sure how I feel about your everyday 
Fri, Nov 29 - Podded Wee-oo, that was fun! Got to see the penultimate Harmontown, got to sing some karaoke with Harmontown Comptroller Jeff Davis, got to hang with excellent Edmontonian Dwayne Martineau... laughs and good times all around. Surprising! And now, let's have a quick dumb 
Fri, Nov 22 - Harmon Down Ooh, boy, kinda excited, I'm heading to Los Angeles on the weekend for the penultimate episode of Dan Harmon's Harmontown podcast. As I may have mentioned before, I'm quite late to the podcast party, only starting to listen to any of them in earnest maybe a year or so ago. Along with The Greatest Generation, The Greatest Discovery and Friendly Fire, Harmontown has become a reliable part of my weekly walk to work. And now Harmon is hanging up his Harmontown spurs! Outrage! Loss! What of my Thursdays, DAN? What of THEM? In other news, let's talk about the Star Wars: 
Fri, Nov 15 - Another Quick Update Yep. Just like the update title says, this is a short one. Indeed, so short that, other than the cartoon link, it's already done! 
Fri, Nov 8 - Go See Jojo Rabbit Seriously, you should watch it. It's good! It's a good movie. Very light touch, but it works. Right, then. Who's up for a cartoon? You? Then I shall provide, thusly: 
Fri, Nov 1 - Post-Hallowe'en It's November first, everybody, and we all know what that means: it's not Hallowe'en anymore! I hope you all got whatever necessary Hallowe'ening you needed into and out of your system, because it's November now and Hallowe'en is OUT OF THE PICTURE for 364 days. Sorry to break the truth to you so coldly, but it's best to face it with courage and continue with life. Speaking of continuing with life, here's a cartoon! It's, by my estimation, about 4 weeks too late. Enjoy! 
Fri, Oct 25 - Quick! That's how I'd describe this week's update: quick. I'm drowsy as all heck at the moment, so it's back to bed I go, with a mere pit stop here to offer the world yet another Bob the Angry Flower cartoon, to wit: 
Fri, Oct 18 - FREEEEEE I'll direct your attention to this week's cartoon,  ,and then go on to say that thankfully, the situation has been resolved. Not directly by me drawing the cartoon, mind, but the whole business of the Alarm That Would Not Fucking Shut Up reached, for me, a point of sufficient temperature that I not only drew a cartoon, but posted a passive-agressive message to the building web site asking for precise information about the alarm's location such that this information could be conveyed to the Maintenance folks so they could find it and change the battery. And they did! Fri, Oct 11 - Why So Serious? Gosh, things are a drag these days. What with the president adding impeachable offenses to the docket faster than Congress can write them down, or bad movies about evil clowns, it's time to take a step back, a deep breath, and a long look at 
Fri, Oct 4 - Not Birthday! I mean, I'm sure it's somebody's birthday. Just not anybody IMPORTANT. At any rate, here's a cartoon! 
Fri, Sep 27 - Earlier that Week! I don't always do birthday cartoons. It's usually when the birthday actually lands directly on a toon-drawing day and I decide to go easy on myself and do something silly and birthday-y. Such is the case with this whirlwind of a cartoon, affectionately called 
Fri, Sep 20 - Birthday! Well, not quite... still a couple of days. But soon! So, not at all in honor of my upcoming 49th birthday, I give you folks a Bob the Angry Flower cartoon. It's this one! 
Fri, Sep 13 - SPX! Yep, it's time for the Small Press Expo in unsunny Bethesda, MD! I don't actually have much to say about it other than I'm not tabling, just attending, for the sheer sake and glory of indy cartoonists like Lonnie Millsap and Keith Knight! I anticipate FUN! Thus, I'm just gonna hurl this strip at you folks and get back to packing! 
Well, okay, one more little tidbit. A reader commisioned me to draw a Bob-ish banner for his girls soccer team, and to my utter shock, I actually did it! And here it is! Look at those fresh-faced competitors, so filled with the spirit of sport! We may be assured they will INCINERATE THEIR ENEMIES without hesitation! 
Fri, Sep 6 - Plus and Minus! I've read that electricity is simply the rapid movement of unthinkably many instances of positive and negartive charge. If one could... harness this movement somehow, tap it, drive it from one's very being... why then, one would become an eternal source of 
Fri, Aug 30 - Check it out! It's a cartoon about murder! Or... is it? YOU decide! 
Fri, Aug 23 - No Gig? A bit of a sadness this week, in that with all the attention being paid to Edmonton's Fringe Festival over at Gigcity.ca, they didn't have time to post the new Bob the Angry Flower cartoon. LAME! So let's get this bad thing onto the Internet, thusly! 
Fri, Aug 16 - Ha! Hey, folks, let's have a fun little cartoon that isn't about horrible awfulness just for once, what do you say?  Fri, Aug 9 - Short AGAIN! I'm gonna level with you folks... I am really into the Spider-Man game for the PS4. In. To. IT. I'm so into it, I am actually inside it as we speak. Perhaps not literally, or even figuratively, but sufficiently in some manner to find myself doikng this update wayyyyyy later than I thought I would on account of how I've spent the last three hours playing Spider-Man. Why? Because it's FUN, goddamn it! Meanwhile, the world continues to turn, assholes continue to murder large numbers of random people with weapons I am assured are completely harmless, or at least blameless, and I keep drawing cartoons on the subject, cartoons such as  Fri, Aug 2 - August! Heyyyyyy, folks, how's August treating you? All right? Well? Groovily? I sure hope so. After all that time in July of July being July, and it now being August, gosh darn it if I don't feel like I done crossed some kinda krazy  Fri, July 26 - Not @ Con! Sorry, folks, what happens at the Com, stays at the Con. Which is to say, I didn't really get up to anything moreexciting that standing behind my table for 4 days and a bit selling books. Which is plenty exciting, to be sure! But not nearly as exciting as me right now this second posting this great new cartoon:  And why not buy Bob the Angry Flower: exciting space adventure already? It's so easy and Amazon-peasy! Tues, July 16 - The Con of Comics! Yep, it's San Diego Comic-Con, held yearly at the San Diego Convention Center at something-something West Harbor Drive, starting with Preview Night on Wednesday and then extending for four exhausting days, Thursday through Sunday, July 18 -21, there to culminate with it being over. I'll be selling the new book, of course: Bob the Angry Flower: exciting space adventure. Come by and get one! I'll be at table K16, Small Press Area, Aisle 1400, just like always. Buy some books, so I don't have to spend the whole con whining about how this con is the worst one ever until I turn around on Sunday and find I'm down to like three books. Let's get to that point by SATURDAY EVENING, folks! You'll note that this update is a bit early for the week, as I'll be a-connin', so allow me to bless y'all with a very on-point cartoon I have chosen to title 
Fri, July 12 - ELEVEN! That's right, folks, it's the 11th Bob the Angry Flower book, Bob the Angry Flower: exciting space adventure!!! I've posted this image before, but I'm posting it again with an important difference: this baby is 100% CLICKABLE! That's right, folks. If you click this image, it'll take you directly to a page on Amazon.com, a page featuring this book, a page with buttons on it that will allow you, the discriminating Bob the Angry Flower book fan, to swiftly purchase this fine, fine book. SO FUN AND DELIGHTFUL!!! 
But wait! That is not all! We also have a cartoon for y'all this week, a little thingy called 
ANDSan Diego Comic-Con is comin' up like a whirlwind! Next week, even! Stay tuned for more info on THAT astonishing occurance, coming soon! Fri, July 5 - Independence! It seems a bit off-brand for July 4 to fall on a Thursday, so you get what feels like a long weekend but then have to go back to work for one day before getting just a normal weekend. It makes me so SLEEPY! Or maybe it's all the drinking I did last night. That could also be a cause. Speaking of drinking, why not post this week's late-to-the-party about events of last week that were already old when I drew it? Why not indeed? 
Fri, June 28 - Bider-Mannnn! I dunno about you guys, but I am relieved to discover that, while I am very late to the Spider-Man on PS4 party, I have finally arrived and can now devote most of my precious waking hours to swinging around an erzatz New York taking pictures of monuments and tourist attractions. Whew! I shudder to think what would have happened if I'd not broken down and bought it. Who KNOWS how many hours I might not have spent web-slinging? Too many. Too. Many. Anyway, I'm back from North Country Fair, so as promised, here's a Bob the Angry Flower cartoon! 
Mon, June 17 - Oily! I don't really mean oily, silly. Not as in oil! But as in something that sounds like "early," which is what this update is: early! Early cuz I'm heading back to Edmonton tomorrow for the North Country Fair. I sure hope it's not burned out, or rained out, or choking with smoke, or too hot, or too windy, or too wet. I hope a lotta things! Meanwhile, with this early update, comes an early cartoon. Here's me making the same point everyone else on Earth is also making, and better. Behold, it's 
Fri, June 14 - Sleepy! Hey, folks, yeah, kinda sleepy this evneing, stayed out a bit late last night and all, so I'm just gonna doink the cartoon up and we'll call it good. All right? Sweet. Here we go: 
Earlier Updates Interested in earlier updates? Here they are!
June 7, 2019 - Up to exciting space adventure cutoff Go nuts! It's content! And a big mess o' cartoons...
Bob the Angry Flower runs weekly in VUE Weekly and Terminal City and some other papers I'm too lazy right now to detail, though the Buffalo Beast is one. This Web page is created and maintained by Stephen Notley - To complain, simply e-mail stephennotley@comcast.net. © Stephen Notley 2008 |
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