You’ll get a charge out of this

As you may or may not know, the state of California has banned the sale of new gas-powered cars after the year 2035 and that matters to those of us who live in Missouri because whatever happens in California might be happening in the Midwest after we see how it works out for the people on the West Coast and I for one am looking forward to getting indoor plumbing.

OK, that was a very cheap joke based on the largely fictional stereotype of people in the Midwest being behind the times, which if you ask me isn’t always a bad thing because anytime you find yourself on the cutting edge of anything you stand a good chance of eventually needing stiches.

Let somebody else be the first to try that cool, new Reverse Mohawk haircut or Capri pants for men or buy a Tesla and then find out just how long it takes to charge its battery.

OK, let’s stop here for a moment because I totally made up two fashion disasters (Capri pants for men and a Reverse Mohawk) and wondered if those two things actually existed and according to the internet the answer is:

And:

So apparently no matter how goofy an idea is, someone, somewhere will say, “Reverse Mohawk? Bitchin’!” and give it a try.

Also…

According to the internet (and when has it ever lied to us?) a Toyota Matrix — which is what I drove to California — has a 13.2 gallon gas tank and gets between 26 and 36 miles per gallon on the highway so let’s split the difference and say it’s 31 miles to the gallon which means I can go 409.2 miles on a tank of gas.

Go on the internet and try to find out exactly how long it takes to charge a Tesla and how far you can drive one once it’s charged and there’s no shortage of articles, which turns out to be frustrating because they don’t all say the same thing, but according to the Tesla support website, 15 minutes of charge at a Tesla supercharger will allow you to drive 200 miles which means I‘d have to charge my Tesla 8.595 times to make it back home to Kansas City and I’d be looking for charging stations in Bumfuck, Nevada and Horse’s Breath, Wyoming and I don’t like my odds when regular old gas stations are few and far between.

Here’s an article if you want to read more about it:

https://www.tesla.com/support/charging

Anyway…

In a completely unscientific survey based on noticing the cars around me, here in California they seem to be handing out free Teslas at the border and you see a lot more charging stations than you do in the Midwest which raises the highly-inconvenient question of just how the electricity for charging electric cars is generated.

Turns out, you might be driving an “emission free” vehicle that’s getting charged by a coal-fired power plant.

If you look up an EPA article on electric cars (which I did) it says electric cars “typically” have a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline cars, but a word like “typically” has enough wiggle room for the entire cast of Hullabaloo, a reference that will make a lot more sense after you watch this clip from the 1960s TV show which features the Mamas and the Papas and some completely unnecessary dancing that seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the song being sung:

Word of advice:

When a writer isn’t sure of his or her facts, they’ll “typically” use a word that lets them weasel off the hook in case they’re wrong and “generally speaking” I’ll do the same thing and “odds are” what happens “on average” may not happen to you, so don’t blame me if you find some story that disagrees with what I’m saying because, “typically” I won’t give a shit.

OK, then.

So after seeing all the Teslas and charging stations here in California, I decided to draw a cartoon about electric cars getting their power from coal-fired power plants and when I described what I’d spent the day doing, a friend said she thought she’d seen that cartoon somewhere before so I Googled it and just about every cartoonist in America beat me to it.

It’s not surprisingly when a bunch of cartoonists and stand-up comedians and late-night talk show hosts make the same observation because we’re all working with the same news at the same time, but generally speaking it’s better if you don’t draw a cartoon six months after everybody else drew the same cartoon because it looks like you stole the idea.

So I won’t be sending the above cartoon into the syndicate, but didn’t want to completely waste a day of work and research so you get to see it here even if you’d rather not.

When Worlds Collide

Sometimes you get lucky and one news event will allow you to comment on another news event and I came up with this cartoon after reading that the James Webb Telescope would allow scientist to look 13.6 billion years into the past because that’s how long the light from the far reaches of space takes to get to us so maybe we’re looking at planets that are no longer there and it made me wonder what we might see if we could look 13.6 billion years into the future.

The news that they have come up with yet another COVID vaccine made me think in 13.6 billion years we might almost be done getting vaccinated, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

I’ve been vaccinated four times and I’m probably going to get vaccinated five times and frankly, they could give me a shot each and every day as long as it kept me and the people around me from getting sick.

And if you’re thinking that’s naïve, maybe you should watch the Netflix standup comedy special, Bill Burr Live at Red Rocks, in which he points out that a whole bunch of flag-waving, America-Love-It-Or-Leave-It types were all about being loyal patriots until they were asked to get vaccinated to stop a pandemic and suddenly decided they didn’t trust the government.   

Taste Is In the Mouth of the Beholder

The above cartoon is based on the mishandling of official documents by Donald Trump and I used exaggeration to make a point, but I don’t know if the syndicate will send it out to the client papers because it wanders into the minefield of questionable taste.

So once again I may have drawn a cartoon that will only be seen here and that’s OK. It’s my job to come up with the best cartoon I can and somebody else’s job to decide if that cartoon is worth distributing.

OK, that’s it…gotta full day of drawing cartoons, looking for Capri pants and finding a barber who isn’t afraid to ruin his reputation by giving me a Reverse Mohawk. And if it looks like crap, that’s OK as long as I buy a Tesla and drive it back home to Kansas City because that will take so goddamn long my hair have a chance to grow back.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/