Sunday Funnies: Hawk v. Fish
As part of its relaunch, the B Square Bulletin aspires to offer to readers what the "local paper" used to offer in days gone by, in towns all across the country. Where I grew up, in Columbus, Indiana, that included the Sunday Funnies.
In that spirit, The B Square offers today's cartoon, which is probably hilarious only if you have some acquaintance with the song lyrics of Carly Simon, and maybe not even then.
The origin story for the image might make the cartoon a little funnier, if you're a reader who does not instantly recognize the fish.
On top of the historic Monroe County courthouse there is a weathervane featuring a metal fish crafted by blacksmith Austin Seward, which is called Hoagy as the result of a naming contest in 2018. Sometimes, one of the red-tailed hawks that lives in downtown Bloomington will land on the fish. The art for today's cartoon was made by applying a software filter to a photograph of that scene.
B Square readers are probably plenty clever enough to come up with jokes of their own based on a two-turn conversation between a hawk and a fish.
Please think hard on it and submit your own jokes: dave@bsquarebulletin.com
The jokes have to be two-turn conversations starting with the hawk with a reply from the fish. Please make them short enough so that the words will fit inside the speech bubbles.
For now, The B Square is committed to eventually publishing with attribution, all submitted hawk-fish jokes using the same image, with the submitted text filled into the speech bubbles. There are just a couple of commonsense conditions—that they are family-friendly, include some discernible humor, and do not make a person the butt of the joke.
Depending on the level of response, this feature might evolve into a regular sponsored contest with valuable prizes.
I suppose this could be understood as a threat, but if there is not a solid response from readers, then more of these Hawk v. Fish cartoons will be published by The B Square in the coming weeks—with jokes that I have written myself. Today's cartoon was the very best of the batch I tried to write. Otherwise put, they will get worse until readers submit something better!
