“Labor Pains”
Cartoon Pen & Watercolour 9″ x 12″
Copyright 2009 Jean Burman
Yes… it’s irreverent. But heck… someone has to say something and it might as well be me (grin) This is the second cartoon that would have otherwise gone off to the Rotary Cartoon Awards had I not found out that the cartoons had to be without captions… and then later discovered (after the closing date) that captions were fine… (okay *sigh* it’s complicated)
For those not in the know about doings here in the Sunshine State…. um… well… what can I say?
It’s a great place to live!
A bit of background though is probably necessary for the decipherment (yes… there is such a word ~grin~ I checked it) of the above cartoon and now follows:
- Queensland currently has a Labor State Government led by Premier Anna Bligh.
- Anna (rumour has it) is a descendent of Lieutenant William Bligh commander of The Bounty.
- Mutiny broke out on the Bounty on 28th April 1789.
- The ship was commandeered by Christian Fletcher who later sailed off into the sunset.
- Before doing so… Bligh and 18 loyal supporters were pushed off onto the high seas in a 23 foot (7 m) launch.
- They were given food enough and water to last for three days… along with a sextant and pocket watch.
- No maps or a compass were issued.
- They sailed for a year and a day and washed up on the shores of Timor 3,618 nautical miles away (oh okay then) not a year and a day but 47 days later.
- All but one survived.
- Um… you didn’t really need to know any of that… but it was rather interesting don’t you think? Grin.
I’ll close with a quote from J.C. Beaglehole who once wrote:
”[Bligh made] dogmatic judgements which he felt himself entitled to make… he saw fools about him too easily… thin-skinned vanity was his curse through life… [Bligh] never learnt that you do not make friends of men by insulting them” [or their intelligence]
The apple… after all… may not fall so very far from the tree.
I rest my case. (((chuckles)))
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
That is fantastic Jean – I hope the El Premiero gets a copy!!!! Loving your artwork – and your blog. Nice to see such beautiful pics of you as well. We must try and catch up sometime soon for a coffee and a chin wag. Lots happening in this little world.
Cheers for now,
Andrew
X
Thanks so much AG
Great to see you here… are you back from the US book tour yet? Would love to have coffee sometime and hear all about it. Sounds like it’s all happening yay!
I love it, Jean!
Decipherment? I guess now I have to stop using decipherage (which your spell checker objects to).
Thanks John
Decipherage! What a great word that is! Sorry the spell checker won’t have a bar of it though… the thing has no sense of humour. LOL But some words really rankle don’t they? I guess we have to accept that language is in a constant state of flux just like the rest of us. Grin. Misuse of YOUR probably causes the most grief for me (which I’m sure [your] already aware of) but there are words creeping in from all over the place misspelled… mispronounced… and misused. If SMS speak keeps up we’ll be back to hieroglyphics in no time! Bring on the modern day Rosetta Stone… (which of course was the [last word] in decipherment of the previously undecipherable) (((chuckles)))
I’m totally in favor of hieroglyphics. In fact, I think we should each have the option of making up our own written language. Indeed, I think I’ll start working on it. Good idea for a book, don’t you think, Jean, an entirely new kind of alphabet book.
Great idea John! And there’s plenty of inspiration around with all the buzz words and new usage turning up in the spin generated by the media. It’s a brave new world for words.
I was talking to someone the other day about Pitman shorthand. Shorthand was a language not dissimilar to hieroglyphics except that the symbols didn’t represent “things” so much as learned meanings for “sounds”. I guess it has it’s basis in phonetics more than anything. It’s a bit like a foreign language and must get stored in the brain in a similar way. I learned shorthand back in school and for some strange reason it has never left me. A bit like learning to ride a bike. Sometimes when I’m really really tired and someone is talking to me I find myself writing what they’re saying in my head. Certifiable I know… but it only happens sometimes! (((chuckles)))