Alektropogonoamaxophobia — the fear of chickens with beards in cars.

Looking like something out of a surreal ZZ Top music clip, the fear manifests when raging roosters and hateful hens — sporting well-maintained beards of questionable length — spawn inexplicably inside a car’s interior. More often than not, their appearance is foretold by a dark, stormy night, empty streets, and a strong KFC scent in the air.

It should be pointed out that the roosters have the more impressive beards, being better equipped with larger combs for facial maintenance.

My only suggestion for managing such a fear is to carry a glove compartment full of wheat or chook pellets to appease the nocturnal, bearded freaks of vehicular infestation.

Have you ever spotted a spotted chameleon on top of a spotted toadstool? If so, have you spotted a spotted chameleon on top of a spotted toadstool taste-testing a ladybird?

I have to admit that I haven’t, though I imagine the colour scheme would be fairly psychedelic. The only things missing would be strobe lighting, a mirror ball and some trance music. A dream environment for a ladybird chameleon.

I very much doubt if a chameleon’s tongue could have an influence over its resultant skin colour, but if it could, I believe chameleons everywhere would be seriously playing with their food to produce some amazing colour effects.

When I was at primary school, there was a pine plantation on the school property that was abundant with the type of toadstool pictured here. Ladybirds also made occasional appearances, though not necessarily confined to the bounds of the pine plantation. Alas, chameleons were noticeably absent from the entire district (to my knowledge).Toadstool-mounted chameleons were even more absent.

I may have gone a little overboard with the polka dots in this cartoon, but can confirm I was not under the influence of any illicit substances during the making of this (nor prior, nor since).

My previously drawn chameleon was camouflaged on deer antlers. Perhaps this is the same one, bored with the monochromatic blending and up for a challenge.

The creepy clowns continue with their unconventional shoes. Are their feet really that big or are they wearing ridiculously large shoes for the fun of it? I find the latter hard to believe because wearing shoes that large couldn’t be fun with all the problems wearing them would cause.

For one thing, it’s not the most practical of things to wear when cramming into a Mini with multiple other clowns. I would have thought that maximising room in the car by wearing smaller shoes would be common sense, but then if you’re cramming yourself and as many of your colleagues as possible into a confined space, common sense departed long ago.

So I got to wondering if, were a clown to go bowling, would he or she be compelled to replace his or her enormous shoes with mandatory bowling shoes of the same size? Would bowling lanes even keep such zany shoes for their clown patrons if they have clown patrons? Surely there have been kids’ parties in the past involving clowns and bowling simultaneously that warranted such a tragic shoe exchange.

I can only speculate (and draw) what such a scene might look like. For reasons inexplicable, I have done so in the cartoon above. I pity the woman having to serve this clown and don’t know why she didn’t run and hide and cringe in the back room when she saw him enter the building.

December has been unseasonably cold in Victoria. It’s been in the low 20s for the most part so far (that’s Celsius, low 70s for the Fahrenheiters). That’s apparently about to change with a run of days above 30C over Christmas. One example of the media’s interpretation of this is the headline “Melbourne set for Christmas heatwave”.

I had drawn this cartoon without hearing any weather forecast, but figured in Australia as a whole, on average I couldn’t go wrong with hot and dry when considering all the extreme inland temperatures.

I don’t know where this idea came from. I imagine through thinking all things Santa and reindeer. It just occurred to me that a woman should be looking at and announcing reindeer, and that her husband, obliviously reading the paper, should be misinterpreting what she’s saying.

The reindeer look happy to be seen, as does Santa, indicated by their friendly waving gestures, though the woman looking at them may not be so happy with her hands on hips, matter-of-factness attitude.

Regardless of character temperament, I had fun drawing this. It’s one of those silly things that amused me at the time of creation and still amuses me in looking back on it.

Wishing everyone a very happy and safe Christmas.

Leaping Lemming Batman!

A few years ago, I drew the Tenth Day of Christmas cartoon (AKA Ten Lords a Leaping). I recently thought once more about lemmings and their magnificent cliff diving exploits. I wondered what might give their jump more meaning. If they’re going to crescendo like that, they might as well make a statement in the process.
I decided that cosplay might be the go. Each lemming could don his / her favourite superhero costume and jump for life in a frenzy of fantasy.

As an example of this, I give you lemming Batman. This is one on his way to the big jump, done up as the Caped Crusader, complete with some pretty flowers and a delusional attitude, which I think is important to have when jumping from perilous heights in to unknown depths of water below.

If I were a lemming and was destined to jump off a cliff, I’d want to wear an outfit that gave at least some chance of flight. Perhaps a wingsuit would be a good idea or maybe an accessory like a little hang glider. Then a more gentle and acute angle could be made with the water upon landing, increasing the probability of survival (until the sharks discover the sudden influx of air-delivered food).

Every year Melbourne has the Birdman Rally on the Yarra River as a part of the Moomba long weekend. It’s a competition where people create outfits and (non-)aerodynamic accessories and compete to see how far they can travel through the air along the river. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone dressed as a lemming.

Less common than Dogs Playing Poker, goats playing poker are less serene, picturesque and orderly than their canine counterparts and also tend to eat more of their environment. Snacking on poker chips, playing cards and lamp shades, their game is destructive but nonetheless enjoyable. It can be difficult to determine a winner at the end of the game. Perhaps it’s the goat with the biggest belly after there is nothing left to eat.

Far removed from their high altitude mountain bike relatives, poker-playing goats prefer to hide away in ground-level secluded rooms, away from nature and any form of transport.

Unlike fainting goats, poker-playing goats remain conscious at all times and thrive on the excitement of eating everything that can possibly be eaten at the poker table.

Goats are remarkable animals. They have a lot of quirky and varied tendencies from rock climbing to fainting to screaming. One of my favourite traits is their ability to precariously stand on obscure objects, such as the shells of old cars in paddocks or cylindrical tanks on their sides (without rolling); whatever is available to them really. I’m sure if they had access to columns of wobbly vertically stacked furniture, they would proudly balance themselves on those as well.

When I have some Porsches to spare, I think I might give this a go. A prerequisite though, would be a questionable state of mind. It couldn’t be good for the car paintwork or window integrity to have a perpetually rocking rocking chair on top of it, supporting the weight of blanket and cane bearing senior citizen with possible undiagnosed Tourette syndrome.

For some reason I’m fond of the stereotypical grumpy old man sitting on his rocking chair on his front porch (or indeed Porsche), rocking incessantly, mumbling to himself and yelling unreservedly at anything moving within his field of view.

For this reason, I’m a big fan of Clint Eastwood’s movie “Gran Torino”, but also because it’s a powerful and moving movie. While he didn’t sit on top of a Porsche and yell at people and all things in motion, he did have a Gran Torino on which he also didn’t sit atop. Happily though, there was quite a bit of mumbling and expression of discontent with the world.

I somewhat amused myself with the drawing of this cartoon. Admittedly I didn’t laugh out loud at the absurdity / stupidity, but there might have been a tiny hint of a smile off and on. If someone else had drawn it however, and I were seeing it for the first time, I dare say I would have been significantly more amused.

Growing up in Australia, Halloween was something almost unheard of apart from what was seen on American television shows, but over the last few years it’s gradually become more and more prevalent. Many Australian children are now going on trick-or-treating expeditions, influenced by television shows, advertisements, the media and what they are taught in school.

One of the biggest influences is probably the promise of confectionery while on these door-knocking outings.

I’ve never really looked at the origins of the Jack o’ Lantern before, but when I hear the words mentioned, I tend to think less about giant carved pumpkins and more about wild foreign dogs with glowing light sources. So this drawing is my interpretation of the Jack O’ Lantern.

I enjoyed adding in the lighting effects and glowing eyes, peering through the darkness.

My only other associations with Halloween (in no particular order) are Peanuts comics / cartoons, the song by Christian metal band, Bride, called "All Hallows Eve", and the German metal band "Helloween" as fronted by Michael Kiske.

Thinking about “fool’s gold” recently for no apparent reason (doesn’t everyone?), I found myself speculating what a fool’s goldfish might look like. If a fool were to have gold, it’s even more probable that they would have a goldfish, since goldfish are more common than gold.

There were several different scenarios that played out in my head, but this was the least harsh on my poor imaginary goldfish so I went with it for illustrative purposes.

I owned a couple of fish many years ago. One was a goldfish and the other, a black moor. Neither was green at any point. They were very soothing to watch. I can understand why some hospitals feature large fish tanks in their waiting rooms and why fish tank screensavers are so popular.

There was even a community television station in Melbourne that used to have a show called Fish TV. While nothing else was screening, they would just film and broadcast a large tank full of fish. I’m not sure how many episodes were made or how many seasons it ran for. The plot was always much the same, so I didn’t bother recording any shows, but now I wish I did for something relaxing / soothing to watch. The extra benefit with virtual fish on TV or a computer monitor is that no tank cleaning or fish feeding is necessary.

There’s a saying that music calms the savage beast, but I believe fish do also. Musical fish? Even better, so long as they aren’t unnaturally green.

There are many activities that a Tyrannosaurus rex would find extremely difficult given its tiny arms, and this cartoon illustrates one such activity.

If dinosaurs were still around, and if they had mobile phones and if they were obsessed with taking photos of themselves, then that would be a lot of ‘ifs’. Even so, they might run into a spot of bother with reaching out far enough to fit their big heads and bigger bodies into the frame.

One solution might be to stand in front of a mirror to take the photo, but that’s not so practical since mirrors aren’t everywhere. A giant portable mirror would be necessary to take everywhere in case the occasion for a quick selfie should arise. This would be most inconvenient.

These days, many touristy types carry an extension for their phone (and arms) known as the Selfie Stick. This phone accessory allows them to snap a photo from a greater distance, but for the poor Tyrannosaurus rex, even this distance would sadly not be great enough because their ‘wingspan’ is considerably small. Their incredibly big body sizes make the selfie snapping process even more problematic

It’s understandable that such carnivores might well hope for and enquire about the existence of an extra long Selfie Stick to compensate for their challenged reach.

Then again, to avoid the embarrassment of having to make such a request, it might be simpler for them to just devour the fad along with all people, mobile phones and Selfie Sticks.