iPhone, therefore iAm

Today's Bizarro gag tweaks our culture's obsession with having the latest technology, even if we're not sure what the upgrade is. (I include myself in that group, by the way.)

Here's the published cartoon, followed by the rough version from my sketchbook:

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The joke itself is very simple, similar to the fictional musician Nigel Tufnel having an amplifier made with a volume knob that goes to eleven, because "It's one louder."

My friend Michael "Zombo" Devine, a musician, artist, DJ, and all-around swell guy, once joked on his radio show that a particularly low-fidelity recording sounded "like an mp2." that joke turned out to be fact-based, as there actually is an audio format called mp2, which is indeed of lower quality than an mp3.

Other jokes can be built around this "one higher/one lower" premise, but I won't waste any in a blog post, as I might be able to squeeze one into a future cartoon.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that this gag was plucked from an actual conversation, something I've done before. We were at dinner with a friend who is happily un-addicted to constant communication, and only uses his cell phone for calls. Another of our companions tried to talk him into upgrading to an iPhone to which he replied, "Oh, I'm waiting for the jPhone."

My next (original) Bizarro gag will pop up in a week. Until then, I invite you to browse my previous collaborations with the comic's creator, Dan Piraro.